Toxic Spill In Northport Prompts Lawsuits Against Two Local Companies

NORTHPORT, AL — A total of 14 Northport residents are listed on a civil lawsuit in Tuscaloosa County Circuit Court against two local companies viewed as responsible for a hazardous fuel spill near numerous homes and an elementary school.

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The defendants on the lawsuit are named as Northport-based Burgess Equipment Repair LLC and its owner Jerry Wade Burgess, in addition to Tuscaloosa-based Delta Oil Services, Inc. and its owners — brothers Logan and Lucas Hayes. The property itself is owned by Burgess, while Delta Oil has worked with the company for a numbers of years, disposing of oil and other chemical waste.

What's more, former Delta Oil Services employee Joseph Ellis was named as a defendant, which comes after he spoke with Tuscaloosa Patch on record earlier this year, laying out pointed claims against his former employer for their alleged unlawful business practices.

The group of residents mentioned as plaintiffs are represented by Tuscaloosa attorneys Ward Pearson and Bob Prince in a 21-page complaint filed in Tuscaloosa County Circuit Court on Thursday, which includes five separate formal allegations of negligence, conspiracy, wantonness, trespassing and nuisance.

Patch has individually interviewed several of the plaintiffs, who each provided their own stories of living with the unbearable smell, resulting in lightheadedness and illness for some, along with worries of the contamination of streams in the area, which feed into Carroll's Creek and ultimately into Lake Tuscaloosa — the source of drinking water for tens of thousands in the county.

In the lawsuit, attorneys for the residents argue that, for the last two years at least, Burgess and his company have participated in and/or allowed the "illegal leakage, burning, dumping and discharge of chemical waste materials, petroleum products, solvents, sewage wastes, and other waste materials on-site that have migrated and further been discharged off-site onto and across the residential properties of the plaintiffs."

Pearson told Patch on Friday that after several months of investigations, which included preliminary soil, air and water tests conducted by an independent consultant, the evidence was there pointing to illegal dumping in the area.

"Our consultants found evidence of a petroleum-type contamination," he said in a phone interview. "So once it was confirmed on our side, we decided to move forward with [the lawsuit]."

While the lawsuit filed this week will no doubt add additional pressure on the two firms and their owners, it is just the latest legal hurdle, following a lawsuit filed in federal court in November against Burgess and Delta Oil by Pro-Built Development — a company that owns roughly 20 acres directly behind Burgess Truck & Equipment Repair on Mitt Lary Road.

According to records obtained by Patch from The United States District Court for the Northern District of Alabama, the property owner's attorney, Michael Comer, levies many of the same complaints as residents in the Circuit Court lawsuit, while also claiming that the companies violated the federal Clean Water Act.

Indeed, an independent investigation by Patch confirmed oil sheens and fumes were readily noticeable in and around the streams behind the business and in close proximity to Palmetto Street. Oil booms were put out to mitigate the potential spreading of hazardous chemicals, which residents claimed would do little in curbing the years of potential contamination.

Tuscaloosa Patch has reached out to the legal counsel for Burgess Truck & Equipment Repair, but has yet to receive a response.

A Toxic Saga

The controversy can first be traced back to March 16, when the Northport Police Department began to ask for the public's help identifying the source of a foul, chemical smell in the vicinity of Huntington Place.

Residents informed Patch, though, that the problems only worsened, especially amid a particularly wet spring and summer that saw creeks and streams surge.

The following April, Northport Fire Rescue received a call of a chemical odor from Fairwood Drive in Huntington Place. Once crews arrived on scene, they walked the wood line and discovered what they believed to be the source of the odor near the Burgess property, in addition to black sludge that appeared to be petroleum.

The Alabama Department of Environmental Management arrived at the spill site on April 16, before finding that the owner of Burgess Truck & Equipment Repair was out of town and Miller Petroleum, which had two trucks parked near the site of the spill, also declined to take responsibility for the spill. State officials would then be left with no choice but to contact the federal Environmental Protection Agency.

"They weren't even going to notify people had we not put this on Facebook. We had asked questions, we were trying to get ADEM and the EPA to see if a report had been filed, and they couldn't give me that information."

- Sam Key, Palmetto Street resident.

The following day, April 17, Tuscaloosa Patch was first made aware of the spill and received photos of black sludge gathering in stream water. Upon the first visit to the site, dead foliage and undergrowth was visible near the south end of the Burgess property, which meets with backyards on Palmetto Street in Huntington Gardens.

After attracting the attention of authorities and the media, Burgess hired Spectrum Environmental Services to begin cleanup and reclamation efforts.

Despite making contact with officials on background, in addition to independent, visual confirmation, it would be on April 24 that Northport Fire Chief Bart Marshall would first confirm the spill. However, he and other officials stopped short of naming Burgess Truck & Equipment Repair as being responsible as the early investigations commenced.

The following day, however, the City of Northport called a press conference where officials directly cited Burgess as the source — or at least the originating site — of the spill, in addition to confirming a criminal investigation was underway by state and federal officials.

The swift cleanup efforts and acknowledgement by public officials, however, still did not stop residents of Palmetto Street, in particular, from continuing to express frustration at the lack of prior notification once the spill had been identified.

"They weren't even going to notify people had we not put this on Facebook," Palmetto Street resident Sam Key told me. "We had asked questions, we were trying to get ADEM and the EPA to see if a report had been filed, and they couldn't give me that information."

"It was no kind of accident. It was deliberate. A lot of times, [Logan Hayes] would make sure Mr. Burgess was not around, and if not, he would do it after hours."

- Joseph Ellis, former employee for Delta Oil Services.

Patch would go on to speak with Joseph Ellis — a defendant in the Circuit Court lawsuit and a former driver for Delta Oil Services — who said illegal dumping went on at the southern end of the Burgess property for the two years he worked for Delta Oil Services.

The illegal dumping, he said, was done under the direction of his supervisor, Logan Hayes — the brother of Delta Oil President Lucas Hayes. Ellis also insisted Burgess Truck & Equipment Repair had no involvement in the illegal activities.

This is a viewpoint that attorneys for the residents flatly refute, citing the company's lack of cooperation in claiming that the legal counsel for Burgess had recently gone silent, despite previously being in contact with respect to any pending or potential litigation against Burgess.

"I don't want to see anybody get in trouble, but that was a bad mistake on his part for dumping that and I had a feeling it was going into the water source," Ellis told me in May. "I hate it for everybody involved and I was involved in it, too. I don't have any hard feelings against Logan or Delta Oil and I enjoyed working there, but we did a lot of things we shouldn't have been doing and I don't think Wade Burgess should be held responsible for something he had no knowledge of."

However, prior to speaking with Ellis, Patch reported on a past investigation by the Alabama Department of Environmental Management that seemed to align with current concerns raised by residents in the most recent lawsuits.

In 2014, an investigator visited the Mitt Lary Road location following an anonymous complaint and found oily stains evident at the southwest corner of the property. This is the same spot where cleanup efforts had been focused after the large-scale contamination was identified earlier this year.

The initial ADEM complaint said a large pool of what appeared to be motor oil was possibly coming from a truck at the top of the hill near the southern end of the Burgess property.

Per the ADEM inspection notes, Burgess at the time produced roughly 150 gallons of used oil per month. Additionally, following the inspection, Burgess was asked to address improvements, such as marking containers and getting new equipment, to which he responded with photos of the progress on what was asked.

It does not appear that the company was hit with any fines or citations as a result of the 2014 inspection. And at the same time, many of the business practices brought into focus through allegations and complaints over the last year do not appear to have been addressed or have been cast aside in the six years since the ADEM investigation.

While the past complaints of noticeable oil stains and improver vehicle and container markings are consistent with present concerns, attorneys representing the residents pointed to additional practices that tell a broader story of malfeasance and irresponsibility.

In summation and apart from the oil and chemicals dumped on the property that was visible to the naked eye, these accusations include the release of toxic emissions (resulting in the chemical smell reported by residences), the illegal burning of highly-toxic waste materials and the discharge of raw sewage on the property.

Separately from Burgess, Patch has also received multiple unverified reports from reputable sources on background that Delta Oil Services operates several other dump sites across West Alabama, which no doubt raises concerns of other potential illegal practices by the company that have not yet come to light.

The complaint filed in Tuscaloosa County Circuit Court provides requests for compensatory and punitive damages for the residents listed, in addition to the court requiring the companies and their owners to take appropriate remedial actions and steps as the Court deems proper.

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