A former plant manager and a supervisor at a Nashville industrial waste facility pleaded guilty in federal court to conspiring to bypass waste pretreatment systems and tamper with monitoring equipment, the Justice Department announced.
David Ray Stark, former plant manager at Allwaste Onsite LLC, doing business as Onsite Environmental, entered his guilty plea Tuesday in U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee. Caleb Warren Randall, a former plant supervisor at the same facility, pleaded guilty April 22. Both men admitted to bypassing pretreatment processes at the facility and discharging untreated waste into the Nashville sewer system during late 2022 and early 2023.
Court filings show that Stark and Randall also directed plant employees to tamper with a sampling device installed by Nashville’s Department of Water and Sewerage Services to monitor the facility’s discharges. The tampering involved removing the device’s hose from the facility’s discharge flume and placing it into a bucket filled with cleaner water that did not reflect the actual waste being discharged into the city’s sewer system.
Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Adam Gustafson of the Justice Department’s Environment and Natural Resources Division said the prosecution was intended to signal that those who deliberately undermine federal environmental laws and endanger public infrastructure face felony charges.
EPA Assistant Administrator Jeffrey Hall said the defendants did more than violate a Clean Water Act permit — they discharged industrial waste and landfill leachate directly into Nashville’s sewer system when the facility accepted more waste than it could treat, then had employees manipulate monitoring equipment to avoid detection. Hall said the waste clogged and damaged city water infrastructure, posing a health risk to the community.
Nashville incurred more than $80,000 in additional sewer maintenance and repair costs attributed to the illegal bypassing at Onsite Environmental. The city later recouped those costs, along with $299,576 in unpaid surcharges, from the company in a separate action.
Last year, Onsite Environmental was sentenced to pay a $512,000 fine after pleading guilty to discharging waste into the Nashville sewer system.
Stark and Randall each face a maximum sentence of five years in prison and $250,000 in fines. Stark’s sentencing hearing is scheduled for Aug. 19; Randall’s is set for Aug. 4.
The case was investigated by the EPA’s Criminal Investigation Division and Office of Inspector General, with assistance from the Metropolitan Government of Nashville and Davidson County.
This article was constructed with the assistance of artificial intelligence and published by a member of The Washington Times’ AI News Desk team. The contents of this report are based solely on The Washington Times’ original reporting, wire services, and/or other sources cited within the report. For more information, please read our AI policy or contact Steve Fink, Director of Artificial Intelligence, at sfink@washingtontimes.com
The Washington Times AI Ethics Newsroom Committee can be reached at aispotlight@washingtontimes.com.
