I bring you this story to show you the inside of the system, its weaknesses, how I would improve what I did, and how you could do better. It’s boring and mostly facts with no narrative really. I’m a plumber, not a writer.
Some clarification: the dumping was not done by me, my same level friend, or my supervisor. Me and Same Level do not have CDLs and my super always disposed of it properly at a special facility. The dumping was done by the assistant super and the dedicated pump truck driver, both close friends of the owner. The owner did the majority of the dumping though. My offhand curiosity is what uncovered the issue.
Feb 23: This started almost a year ago now. I’m a plumber in the Midwest and discovered my chain plumbing company franchisee boss was dumping extracted hazardous waste on his father’s farm.
I’ve worked off and on for this company due to the long, 80+ hour weeks but was good enough at my original job to be hired on to a more laid back crew. This crew was in charge of using hydro excavation, flammable waste pumping, and underground/floor repairs. One day a year into this I was curious where we dumped, just didn’t know the process and was wondering where this stuff goes. They told me and I was floored.
Mar 23: I looked into it and realized we were committing countless violations, some felonies. Even if it was just septic tanks we could’ve only dumped on this land a few times a year with tilling (which we didn’t do either). Worse yet the farm was right on the edge of the city proper, there was a residential development about 100 feet from where they were dumping waste extracted from metal and electronics fabrication shops. These people are on well systems too.
Called the sheriff who directed me to the state level EPA knock off who told me to gather evidence. The attached pictures are just an example. The reason I was able to get this evidence is I rode along to a dump “out of my curiosity” where I let my supervisor onto this who was instantly on my side.
Mar 23: After that it was waiting, after a couple weeks my employer was informed an investigation of his business will happen. Within the hour we were sent out to the field to clean it up with only garden gloves, 5 gal buckets, and a tilling rake. We were pulled from a job to replace a sewer main for this.
The coworkers we couldn’t trust to not rat we convinced to half ass it “as they didn’t commit the crimes” and the inner circle just dumped the most dangerous material back on the ground, as much as it pained us. We filled 10 buckets and got maybe 2% of the material.
We were promptly chewed out for not fulfilling an impossible task. The next day the investigation occurred where the local EPA knock off inspected our shop and the job site. They found several violations in our shop alone I wasn’t even aware of.
The next day the department heads were called into a meeting, I quickly taught my supervisor how to make audio recordings on his phone. This meeting was unhinged.
In it he admits to not keeping load logs, back dating documents, lying to the investigators, admitting to dumping at least 3,000,000 of waste conservatively in a single year – 500,000 of which is hazmat (not poop for the sake of the law for dumping, poop is hazmat but not like… terrible). Again, his best, low end estimate.
April 23: I fucked up at this point. I learned he was making the office girls back date and forge documentation of waste and I secretly informed all of them that the penalty for assisting in this is up to half the punishment he was getting – which could be 20 years in jail or millions in fines. Only one told on me. I spun this around and acted quickly and quit explosively in front of everybody while they were cleaning up the shop and their trucks at the end of the day.
I made it look like a rumor I heard and only said stuff that pretty much everybody knew at this point. I called him a fuck up and an embarrassment to the trade. He stood there with his head down and hands behind his back like a child. I’m not intimidating guy either. I’m tall and big but stutter and have a lisp so I sounded more like a nerd raging at a video game and he still was like a boy getting dressed down by dad.
This spurred a second meeting where he said I was out the door anyways for performance (he had a recruitment bounty on me to rehire me a year before this because I was so good at my job) and it’s all rumors and he kept everything legal. This meeting was for everybody and not just the department heads.
August 23: I will go to the media soon. I was informed he was recently getting ride alongs from the actual EPA, state Department of Transportation, and the state EPA. All separately. I don’t want to fuck up the investigation with the news.
BUT he said in the department head meeting that he can bully the local news orgs because of his advertisement contributions, which is hilarious because I intend on clipping that and sending it to them.
I also contacted corporate about it and it’s likely after this he’ll lose franchise rights.
My tips for wannabe whistleblowers:
document everything. Audio, video, and pictures.
Tell nobody
be safe not stupid.