Tierra Environmental & Industrial Services, Inc., proudly sports the slogan, "Tierra has the expertise to quickly and effectively resolve a sewer crisis and get you back in business." According to the US Department of Justice, Tierra management allegedly conspired to crimes that were tantamount to actually causing a sewer crisis.
On November 3, 2011, Ronald Holmes, Tierra's Owner, and Stewart Roth, a Project Manager at the company, were indicted in the US District court of Hammond, IN, with one count of conspiracy and six counts of violating the Clean Water Act.
Holmes and Roth were charged with illegally discharging wastewater into the sewers of the Hammond Sanitary District from a closed, unpermitted facility. According to the indictment, Tierra's primary facility in East Chicago, IN, held no permit to discharge industrial waste into the district's sewer system and the facility's connection to that sanitary sewer system had been sealed shut; therefore, the company had to transport wastewater to other facilities for final treatment and disposal.
The defendants allegedly conspired to cut the costs associated with paying other facilities to lawfully treat, store, or dispose of the wastewater Tierra collected from its customers. The pair allegedly ordered their dispatchers to direct wastewater transporters to a shuttered facility on 141st Street in Hammond, IN, a separate property owned by Ronald Holmes. At this facility, the wastewater was discharged directly into the Hammond Sanitary District's sewer system.
The Clean Water Act makes it a felony to knowingly discharge hauled pollutants into publically-owned treatment works (POTW) from a discharge point not designated by the POTW.
The 141st Street property is adjacent to a residential neighborhood and Hermit's Park, home to a number of youth baseball fields.
If convicted, Holmes and Roth each face up to 5 years in prison on the conspiracy count, and if convicted on all six Clean Water Act counts, they face 18 more years in prison and fines that could total $1.5 million. The company itself may also face fines and probation.
In 1988, Roth, as district manager of the Hammond Sanitary District, was indicted on federal charges for falsifying documents to conceal the illegal dumping of approximately 12 billion gallons of untreated, hazardous industrial waste into the Grand Calumet River. He pled guilty in 1990, was sentenced to three years probation, paid a fine of $5,000 and served 500 hours of community service.
The case was investigated by the Northern District of Indiana Environmental Crimes Task Force, including agents from the EPA's Criminal Investigation Division, the Criminal Investigations Office of the Indiana Department of Environmental Management, the Inspector General's Office of the US Department of Transportation, and the Criminal Investigative Arm of the US Coast Guard. The case is being prosecuted by the US Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Indiana and the Environmental Crimes Section of the Justice Department’s Division of Environment and Natural Resources.
