Wednesday, April 28, 2004
By Brian Mittge, bmittge@chronline.com
The owner of Twin City Sale Inc. in Centralia pleaded guilty last week to illegally dumping manure into the Centralia city sewer system and a ditch connected to Salzer Creek four years ago.
Kyle Cheney, owner of the Centralia livestock auction business, signed documents April 21 in a settlement with the U.S. Attorney’s office.
According to the plea agreement, employees of the South Gold Street sale company would clean up after the weekly cattle auctions by washing manure residue into a series of three sloped concrete pits.
Solid waste would settle in the bottom of the pits, and the liquid would overflow, according to prosecutors.
In a charge dating to October 1999, prosecutors say the liquid animal waste flowed out of the pits into a cement manhole Cheney had arranged to connect to a city sewer line without a permit or pretreatment.
Samples taken from the sewer line showed high levels of suspended solids, materials that looked like animal waste, and a cow tag, prosecutors say.
Centralia Utilities Director Dick Southworth said city workers had found the sale barn doing this before.
“We brought it to their attention ... it would stop periodically and start up again,” Southworth said.
The wastewater system is made for human sewage, so animal manure can foul up the treatment process, Southworth said.
The second charge is that the manure would overflow the pits and run through a series of concrete drainage pipes into a ditch leading several miles to Salzer Creek,where the liquid would pool up and be pumped over a dike into the creek.
An analysis of the ditch on April 2, 2000 showed “very high levels of fecal coliform colonies,” an indication of animal waste, according to prosecutors.
Cheney’s Tacoma attorney Zenon Olbertz said there is no proof the manure itself made it the two or three miles to Salzer Creek. The fecal coliform testing was done on samples taken near the sale barn, not the creek, he said.
“There’s no evidence it ever reached Salzer Creek. The government is saying it could have. We’re not in a position to dispute that,” Olbertz said.
He said the manure was always picked up and hauled away for use as fertilizer, and only the residue was washed out of a covered barn. The process has now been changed and no water is used to wash out the barn, he said.
“The problems were fixed and resolved. There was never any damage to the environment, and the problems were resolved back in 2000,” Olbertz said.
Cheney, 65, of Centralia, has owned the company for 12 years. He said it has been in business at least since the 1940s.
He said the charges and settlement shouldn’t keep him from continuing to operate the sale.
“Sure, one sale a week,” Cheney said.
The charge of dumping manure into the city sewer system without a permit earns a fine of $2,500 to $100,000, plus up to a year in jail.
The penalty for discharging pollutants “into a water of the United States” runs from a minimum of $5,000 up to $500,000.
The plea agreement suggests an eventual federal fine of $20,000, a three-year probation period, and a $5,000 restitution payment to the city of Centralia.
Sentencing for both counts is scheduled for Aug. 13 in U.S. District Court in Tacoma.
Brian Mittge covers politics, the environment and Lewis County government for The Chronicle. He may be reached by e-mail at bmittge@chronline.com, or by telephoning 807-8237.
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