FAIRFIELD -- The owner of a local septic tank service has been charged with unlawfully operating a waste facility after police allegedly caught him dumping loads of raw material into sewer lines bound for the Waterville treatment plant.Jeffrey A. Longstreet, 38, of Gibson Street, is charged under civil law, meaning he could be ordered to pay restitution to rate payers in Fairfield and perhaps to all Kennebec Sanitary Treatment District communities.
The district serves about 30,000 people in Waterville, Winslow, Fairfield, Benton and at Huhtamaki Packaging, the former Keyes Fibre Co. plant.
Fairfield Police Chief John Emery said Longstreet allegedly would pump the contents of customer septic tanks into his truck, then return home and hook the truck to a pipe directly into sewer lines.
Emery said Longstreet may have been routing septic tank material every day for years, at a significant cost to district rate payers.
The cost of treating the material, said sanitary district Superintendent Timothy LeVasseur, is calculated at 3.8 cents per gallon.
Each tanker truck load costs $38 per thousand gallons to dump and each carries between 2,500 and 3,500 gallons per load, LeVasseur said.
"We suspect it's been going on for quite some time -- years," Emery said Monday. "It has been a suspicion for quite some time."
Emery said workers servicing a manhole on Dyer Court, which connects to Gibson Street, discovered a more than usual flow coming through the pipes. They also heard a pumping sound and saw the septic trucks parked by the back of Longstreet's house.
"They watched the flow and could hear the pump and when the truck shut off, the stream of septic coming through the manhole subsided and they kind of put two and two together -- they heard, they went and saw and they also had a strong, strong odor coming from the residence," Emery said. "Apparently there is quite a distinct difference between septic and household waste. Not only volume, but color, odor and everything else."
LeVasseur said the treatment system is designed to treat sewage from homes, schools and businesses -- a combination of bath water, laundry soap and toilet water.
"Traditionally, when that is in the sewer system it has a very sweet, fresher smell, naturally organic matter decomposes," he said.
"And the concentration coming out of people's homes is mostly water."
The material from septic tanks has collected on average for five years or more and is thick and not diluted, he said.
One septic tank can hold the equivalent of 220 homes flushing and dumping all at once, he said.
"It puts additional cost burdens onto us -- this plant can handle it, but we charge $38 per thousand (gallons) to treat it," he said.
"We actually measure it per gallon. It's an additional cost burden to operate this facility and not a fair share cost to everyone."
Emery said it appears Longstreet would go to private homes, pump the contents of the holding tanks into his truck, then return to his home.
He then allegedly would tie into a 6-inch PVC pipe to divert the stuff into his household plumbing, which in turn dumped the material into the sewer lines.
He said an unmarked police car followed him one day and charted the course of alleged illegal activity.
Emery said the state Department of Environmental Protection will be involved in the case because a permit is needed and quarterly reports are required for such a business.
"I don't think it's unreasonable to speculate that he's emptying his truck at least a couple of times a day -- it adds up over a number of days, weeks and years," he said. "It's kind of sad; you've got other people in the business doing it the right way."
Longstreet is scheduled to appear to face civil charges at Skowhegan District Court on Oct. 25 at 8:30 a.m.
Doug Harlow -- 861-9244
dharlow@centralmaine.com
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I don't know how they will ever set a dollar amount of what he owes for this, but you know it's gonna be high... We will only end up supporting him when they take everything he's got... Another leech on society...
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