THE BEVILL AMENDMENT

CHAPTER 14

Alabama’s capitol originated in the town of Cahaba before moving to Tuscaloosa in the early 1800s ahead of its permanent relocation to Montgomery (1847). Alabama’s religious, if not cultural roots, resembled the European pancake formed by Protestant Holland atop Catholic-dominated Belgium, although north Alabama’s Protestant leanings are not the primary reason why it attracted national attention during the early twentieth century.

Buoyed by mid-century successes tied to river navigation, power production and perhaps even disease prevention, TVA broadened its mission to include fertilizer research and development. While agribusiness hardly welcomed TVA’s quasi-governmental agricultural establishment, they were largely ineffective in halting efforts. By 1980 nearly four hundred full-or-part-time technicians and administrative staff complemented more than one hundred PhD-prepared scientists at TVA’s National Fertilizer Development Center Muscle Shoals campus.

Not unlike TVA’s fertilizer operation, Steiner Concrete had competitors, detractors even. Steiner’s big advantage was its regional quarries, offering reduced limestone feed costs.

Steiner quarrying operations early-on provided alternative employment for sharecropping, perhaps more accurately termed subsistence farmers, many of whom were of African-American origins. By the time Betsy flew back to Tuskegee in 1944, Steiner had employed multiple generations of similarly-named Jeffersons,

Johnsons, and Venables. Betsy avoided ‘lay-offing’ trusted employees during patches of poor weather or unsuccessful contract negotiations.

Betsy’s plans increasingly emphasized revenues generated by recovering wastes, adapting Steiner’s high temperature, Portlandcement producing kilns to dual purposes. The commodity that might help her do that possessed an interesting name, ‘fly ash.’ While its limestone and sand reserves might confer a small cost advantage, the same wasn’t true regarding fuel necessary to produce incredibly hot kiln temperatures, Steiner certainly didn’t own any oil or gas wells. Furthermore, combinations of OPEC greed and a national reluctance to tap the oil and gas reserves had generally sent fuel prices sky rocketing.

While the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency experienced a slow start in the early 1970’s, that was changing, too. Key pieces of legislation such as the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act were changing not only the general environment but the business environment as well. Betsy’s Emelle trip in April that same year convinced her that Steiner should capitalize on the fly ash market and their kilns’ capacity to incorporate toxic, although often flammable, liquid wastes, into a useful fuel blend.

Doing so would not be without its risks, though. Capital costs suggested by the Cincinnati Haz waste-to-concrete project and others initiated by Ash Grove Cement in Kansas suggested that plant modifications necessary to effectively ‘feed’ a variety of fly ash substrates while also accepting Haz-waste liquids would investments totally one million dollars per plant. And perhaps more importantly, that was before the EPA and other regulatory officials issued a permit to move from testing to actual operation.

Steiner’s Decatur, Alabama rotary kiln cement plant was her firm’s flagship, the plant that always made money. No surprise there,

Steiner – Decatur next door to concrete-hungry Huntsville, Alabama, a community supporting the Marshall Space Flight Center, the Army’s Redstone Arsenal, the Olin Corporation, maybe a dozen others. Steiner – Decatur possessed an advantage given it was within a day’s truck drive of multiple TVA coal-powered and fly-ash producers. Interstate-65 was a natural corridor for fly ash and even liquid Haz-waste shipments originating in Tennessee, perhaps in Kentucky, too

Betsy piloted a ‘Daytona-fast’ 1956 Hudson Hornet toward Huntsville’s Marshall Space Flight Center for a meeting with Congressman Tom Bevill, someone Alabamians jokingly referred to as the state’s ‘third’ senator, an offhand reference to Beville’s ability to sponsor bills.

Betsy slid the Hudson into a slot identified by a ‘Welcome E.B. Steiner, CEO Steiner Stone.’ Before quieting the hot rod Hudson, she popped its hood and performed a quick engine check, the sure sign of a pilot.

His advance team had shared with Betsy that Bevill’s appearance was primarily to announce a twenty-million-dollar building expansion at the Marshall Space Flight Center. Retrieving a plastic identification badge in the reception area, she nodded to David S. Freeman., the current TVA board chair. Betsy viewed Freeman’s presence as a positive, perhaps they could work together to muster some Congressional support for her Haz-waste-to-concrete scheme.

Bevill’s comments regarding the building project’s importance to the Huntsville area were uncharacteristically brief, allowing preselected campaign donors, Betsy among them, to move to the Marshall conference room. Other invitees had apparently come only to shake Bevill’s hand and leaving, leaving only Betsy for a sitdown. Past pleasantries, he gave her the lead-in she hard traveled there for ‘How can my office help you and your folks there at Steiner Stone?

Betsy shortly summarized the Haz-waste to cement scheme, getting quickly to specifics. ‘How do we obtain an assurance from the EPA regulators and their counterparts at the state level that what we propose to do is reasonably acceptable to them before we invest millions.’

Bevill responded in kind. ‘Senator Bentsen and I have worked hard on Subpart C of the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act’ that specifically addresses incorporation of fly ash in Portland cement products. If you encounter misunderstandings initiated by regulators, please call my office so we can help unravel them.’

While regarding the response as thoughtful, Betsy pushed on. ‘Our problem goes beyond the Subpart C exclusion, we need to devise improved means of working with both regulators and the big energy companies, certainly with TVA.’

Bevill had a question and a comment. ‘Do you have somebody who could ‘run herd’ on testing technology, that will likely prove important. One thing Lloyd (Senator Bentsen) and I learned while formulating the subpart C exception is that we required staff who could both understand the technology and speak EPA’s language.’

Invariably the campaigner, often a congressional ally and frequently a funder, Bevill moved past regulatory constraints to his ‘good news’ department. ‘We’re working on another bill to support something called Small-Business-Innovative-Research (S-BI-R). I think Steiner Stone should one of S-B-I-R’s first contract recipients, that would let you access some federal funds to support new concrete technologies. I’ll make some phone calls.’

Betsy laughed, graciously thanking the Congressman for his efforts. Before departing she performed a walkaround of her car, giving her a chance to speculate how many females might be given a chance for one of the Space Shuttle’s pilot and mission specialist positions. Flying past the Courtland airfield, she figuratively tipped the Hudson’s wings, a sign of respect for the deceased chief pilot from there who had taught her to fly.

Paid to steal Chapter 15

Trace’s Lark delivered him on agency business to colorfullynamed mid-south destinations, Bugtussle and Ducktown among them. Occasionally, he temporarily abandoned the Lark in a regional airport parking lot, mostly occasions when he traveled with agency managers who favored passenger seat cocktailing as part of their Monday through Friday work weeks.

The eighty percent travel requirement proved to be a low estimate, Trace rarely visited Blacksburg even though he stayed current on rent payments to maintain the flat there. The exception to the eighty percent travel commitment occurred across the Thanksgiving-to-Christmas holiday span when TVA offices emptied. Few TVA employees reported to nearly-empty Knoxville administrative offices during what they termed the holiday ‘intermission.’ RG ‘Bob’ Eagerly, an assistant purchasing agent, however, reported daily to TVA’s Summit Hill offices.

Given that switchboard-mediated long distance call volume was similarly reduced, TVA operators quickly connected Eagerly with chemical sales offices belonging to Spencer Chemicals in Kansas City and DuPont’s offices in Wilmington, Delaware. Eagerly left multiple answering machine messages in Midland, Michigan for a Dow call back.

Chemical sales staffs scratched their heads at Eagerly’s questions, finding them more representative of a chemical manufacturer than ones originating with a purchaser of herbicides, Most of his questions surrounded drum stenciling practices, plus other peculiar inquiries regarding barrel durability.

A Kansas City-based Spencer sales specialist nearing retirement speculated Eagerly might be preparing a large blanket purchase bid announcement and did everything he could to convince Eagerly that Spencer had exactly the products TVA sought. What a way to go out, a big cash sales bonus, perhaps one sufficient to finance a post-retirement cruise for him and the Mrs., all he needed to do is tolerate a few more of Eagerly’s nutty calls. While chemical manufacturers generally favored easily pronounced trade names, Eagerly consistently stumbled through an old government designation, ‘Herbicide – Butyl ester (2,4,-dichlorophenoxy acid).’

Mostly to tease sales staffs, chemical industry receptionists chuckled their way through ‘Eagerly again’ announcements. Seeking head-of-the-line standing for his firm, a soon-to-be-retired representative hatched a plan when he announced ‘I’m going to be in Knoxville anyway (lie one) so why don’t I take you out to dinner so I can make sure we’ve covered all your needs.’ Knowing that Trace had already finalized the 1981 purchase, Eagerly deferred, claiming he would be out-of-town (lie two).

Eagerly’s holiday calls weren’t limited to chemical suppliers, he also frequently phoned the Gulfport Navy SEABEE base, mainly reaching watch standers assigned holiday duty. Given good weather and nothing else to do, they spent days there Truckstertime-trialing, stop watched events in which they navigated the barrel maze in the Cushman golf cart.

While Eagerly’s naval reserve commitment was largely satisfied by showing up at the Gulfport SEABEE base in uniform for two weeks each summer, across December he placed repeated calls to the naval base regarding what he termed ‘shared warehousing matters.’ While having no idea what he was talking about, Gulfport answerers coined a phrase. ‘Eagerly again!’ Why was a

TVA assistant purchasing agent and part-time petty officer fascinated with outdated stocks of Agent Orange chemicals.

For the combined civilian and uniformed staff manning Gulfport’s Area-7 chemical storage area, the only break in a nearly perpetual process of inventorying and inspecting barrels came when one of them sprang a leak, usually meaning that toxic barrel seepage first contaminated its underlying pallet and then the pebbled surface below. Three staged responses followed: One, notification, two, sprinkling a fluffy vermiculate absorbent, and, three, arranging to have the contents of the leaking barrel transferred into a more secure empty barrel. Compensated features attending ‘step three’ fascinated Eagerly.

Brazil’s president general João Baptista Figueiredo, no stranger to coups or radical plans had weirdly asserted that his country might be prepared to accept the United States’ expired Agent Orange inventory. While likely more concerned with rain forest-based farming as opposed to spraying deadly chemicals, world news services quoted Figueiredo, mostly a tongue-in-cheek story.

In 1979, however, as he read a newspaper account of the Brazilian proposal, RG Bob Eagerly adapted their initiative. But Eagerly’s Agent Orange ambitions didn’t arise in Brazilian-based deforestation, instead Eagerly wanted to get rich, maybe even include his older brother Carl in that financial journey.

Carl Eagerly eked out a modest living in nearby Biloxi, mostly scrapping pallets, meaning cruised through industrial parks, surveying warehouse docks and dumpster drop zones for discarded pallets could resell. He had also expanded his scope of operations by adding 55-gallon barrel discards to pick-ups. Retrieving them meant that following a quick steam-cleaning he could return recyclable barrels to local paint or chemical suppliers for a fee.

Carl shared his expansion plans with brother Bob, adding how he had recently rented an enclosed metal building, a storefront where he could store and sell pallets and barrels. The metal building adjoined a weedy, abandoned railroad siding.

Bob Eagerly welcomed his brother’s move to secure the steel building, finding both the building and Carl’s barrel operations consistent with key features of a profitable ‘recycling’ program he had devised, shortly hatching a plan in which Carl would act as a front man in a scheme that would appear to aid Gulfport’s naval base with redrumming leaking barrels.

While complex, the plan involved creating a shell corporation in which he and his brother would be compensated for redrumming expired Agent Orange stocks before selling them as recently manufactured herbicides. Front-man Carl would reload the contents of a leaky Agent Orange barrel into an unrelated secure barrel Carl had scavenged elsewhere in Biloxi. That barrel would not return to Gulfport, instead it would be re-stenciled as if it contain freshly manufactured concentrates. Instead, Carl’s one-ton rated truck would be used to return a similar freshly-painted barrel containing mostly cheap kerosene spiked with a small volume of Agent Orange liquid to Gulfport’s Area-7 Agent Orange storage area.

All parties would appear to get what they had contracted for, sort of. Navy officials would witness a contractor leaving with a leaking barrel secured in a hoist-and-berm equipped truck followed by lateafternoon return of a secure barrel, one presumably full of the original barrel’s contents.

Having spent nearly the entire Vietnam war era (1959-75) performing stateside reserve duties following an earlier stint at the

Norfolk naval supply center (1955-59), Eagerly discounted reports describing illnesses and injuries arising among Vietnam war veterans, preferring to believe herbicides only disturbed plantspecific pathways.

Bob Eagerly reasoned his older brother would have no problem stenciling a second secure barrel as containing fresh herbicidal concentrate from Spencer Chemicals even its contents had just been funneled out of a Gulfport barrel. Certainly, given his status as an assistant purchasing agent, he foresaw no difficulties in procuring herbicidal products from the shell, E-A-G-E-R enterprises.

Furthermore, Trace – Ted, whatever his name was, just needed chemicals that worked. Once applied, what difference did it make if the concentrate originated somewhere else, nobody grew aboveground crops below the powerlines, the Gulfport Area-7 product would eliminate volunteer trees, kudzu and invasive honeysuckle as well as anything else.

RG Bob Eagerly left minor details to brother Carl’s attention, leaving him free to focus on ‘Big lick’ issues. Maybe Carl could even use paint strippers to wash to de-identify the leaking barrel’s origin before selling it as metal scrap. One detail remained, though, although one readily addressed by his petty officer background.

Three summers earlier, he had shadowed a SEABEE barrel-transfer technician, noting she used a color change reagent paper to verify barrels as containing Agent Orange. The female petty officer had volunteered the test had been designed to detect part-per-million concentrations of 2,4-D or 2,4,5-T, meaning it produced a positive result if Agent Orange chemicals were present. Presciently, petty officer Eagerly had asked her how it would respond to a kerosenefilled barrel spiked with a quart of Agent Orange. Having no idea why he asked the odd question, she laughed off Eager’s inquiry. ‘It would test positive of course.’ Appreciative of the information,

Eagerly invited her to lunch with him at the Hung Foo buffet in nearby Biloxi.

Technical issues resolved, he turned to financial matters. Carl’s redrumming fee would be set at eight hundred dollars per barrel while he reasoned he could provide TVA with a good price for fresh herbicide, twelve hundred dollars per barrel. The net result would be that he and Carl would collect two thousand dollars every time a Navy barrel sprang a leak, less rent payments and gas and oil for the hoist truck.

Regardless of whether he was listening through another boring ‘contract ethics’ lecture at headquarters or even chewing his way through another Summit street soup-and-salad, he returned to the ‘Big lick’s’ key feature, he and Carl would be paid to steal.

Only one item separated the Eagerly brothers moving to the ‘Big lick’s’ operational phase, a carefully precut sheet of poster board, otherwise known as a stencil. While he doubted the veracity of Eagerly’s claim that a hail-storm had erased stenciled identifiers on some Spencer-originated barrels, a Kansas City-based sales rep shoved three identical Spencer labels into a large padded mailer, dispatching them to TVA’s Summit street address, c/o RG Bob Eagerly, of course.

Three days later Eagerly visited the mailroom, asking if anything large with his name had arrived. Delighted, Eagerly impatiently pulled the stencils from the mailer and examined it as if he were a radiologist reviewing a chest film.

Herbicide – Butyl ester (2,4,-dichlorophenoxy acid)

Manufactured by Spencer Chemicals

(note) Distributor designation appears here

Eagerly wielded an exact-o blade as if a surgeon, adapting the stencils, curiously electing to add an address designation for Spencer Chemicals, perhaps for effect. Regardless, the adapted stencils appeared to be professionally done.

Herbicide – Butyl ester (2,4,-dichlorophenoxy acid)

Manufactured by Spencer Chemicals - Kansas City, Kansas Distributed by E-A-G-E-R Enterprises - Biloxi, Mississippi

Given difficulties surrounding identifying qualified vendors for barrel transfers, Gulfport Navy officials were delighted to receive a bid from a nearby Biloxi firm, shortly arranging a signing conference with ‘Carl Eggers,’ the E-A-G-E-R enterprises’ CEO.

Over the following fall and winter months E-A-G-E-R Enterprises responded to Navy calls for re-barreling assistance, dependably arriving in a chain hoist-equipped one-ton truck, shortly chainhoisting a leaking barrel into its berm-fitted bed. By Navy close-ofbusiness the truck’s driver returned a full non-leaking barrel.

By spring 1981

E-A-G-E-R Enterprises had transferred a dozen leaking barrels, an eight-hundred-dollar fee accompanying each transfer. As he liked to say, the TVA Eagerly ‘flexed’ some purchasing muscle on Summit street, purchasing all of them for further storage and distribution from a TVA Muscle Shoals warehouse.

The Muscle Shoals warehouse was state-of-the-art, one featuring automated materials handling systems, a great destination for both school and chamber of commerce tours. As its manager hosted a distributive education (DECA) class, he directed their attention toward the warehouse’s newly-installed chemical storage area, noting its berm - dike features could contain chemical spills.

Requesting questions, the manager was shocked by the DECA advisor’s comment. ‘I don’t know where you got those barrels but they didn’t originate with Spencer Chemicals. My father retired there after thirty years and their facilities were always located in Missouri, never in Kansas City, Kansas.

Two months following the DECA revelation, Carl Eggers arrived at Gulfport’s Area-7, shortly chain hoisting a leaking barrel before securing it and exiting the base Returning to his Biloxi-based metal building he didn’t appear to notice a panel truck parked alongside the railroad siding.

Inside the panel van two federal officers, ones equipped with telephoto lens cameras, recorded the driver’s activities. Because he was transferring toxic chemicals, the driver left the building’s overhead doors in the open position, providing good camera angles for the NCIS officers inside the panel van.

The truck’s driver shortly used the truck’s chain hoist to invert and place the leaking barrel in a wooden cradle arrangement positioned above a receiver barrel. Once cradled, he carefully unscrewed the barrel’s ‘bung-type’ opening, allowing its cap to fall into broad metal funnel atop a receiving barrel. The receiving barrel received most of the photographic attention. NCIS officers employ identically configured cameras to record dual images, in the event one camera fails . Dual images recorded the same result.

Herbicide – Butyl ester (2,4,-dichlorophenoxy acid)

Manufactured by Spencer Chemicals - Kansas City, Kansas Distributed by E-A-G-E-R Enterprises - Biloxi, Mississippi

The driver’s efforts on behalf of the leaking Agent Orange barrel transfer were complete. Rather than loading the receiving barrel, he backed the truck close to five unlabeled barrels and used its chain hoist to lift one of them into its bed. Given the slow, deliberate nature of the motorized lift it appeared that barrel was likely full. With his truck loaded its driver then turned his attention to the receiving barrel.

Sufficient time had passed that telephoto images suggested the suspended barrel had mostly emptied. The driver shortly secured the Kansas City, Kansas-derived product’s bung, using a pallet jack to move the freshly loaded to the corner of the building where it joined five identically-labeled companions The driver then hoisted an unrelated barrel onto the truck’s bed and pulled outside where he examined his surroundings before double-padlocking the metal building’s wide doors.

As often the case for white-collar crimes, federal prosecutors privately named their case against the Eagerly brothers. Rather than ‘Big lick,’ they labeled their prosecutorial efforts as ‘Big suck.’ Multiple lines of evidence incriminated RG Eagerly, and to a lesser extent his older brother, Carl.

Meeting after meeting began with the same prosecutorial question: ‘So, you’re saying someone removed hazardous leaking wastes from a government facility ahead of repackaging them in fresh containers and successfully selling them to another government agency.’ Prosecutorial teams found it in the government’s interest to avoid a jury trial or publicity-generating events that might expose an embarrassing incident.

Nearly eight weeks were necessary for investigators from four agencies including the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, the TVA inspector general, USEPA’s criminal crimes unit and the Alabama Department of Environment to assemble their respective cases.

On a bright May day federal officials arrived at the metal building, shortly taking Carl Eagerly into custody. While Carl requested a phone call to Knoxville, that request was denied. RG Bob Eagerly was similarly apprehended by an undercover officer waiting for Eagerly to pay for his soup-and-sandwich at a Knoxville lunch counter, comically suggesting to a street person as they took frontcuffed Eagerly to the car, that there was a soup-and-sandwich inside for him.

Multiple layers of explanations were required to explain a crime in which the Eagerly siblings replaced barrels of expired Agent Orange chemicals with low-toxicity kerosene and then sold dangerous chemicals to an unsuspecting TVA. The environmental crimes unit debated the likelihood of a conviction given intent issues but were relieved dangerous chemicals had been recovered prior to use.

Whether from fear or due to a limited understanding, Carl Eagerly could not provide a logical account of their activities. Bob Eagerly was placed on administrative TVA leave before being fired and was similarly separated from the naval reserve.

Early in the Eagerly affair Clearnet let Trace know he was taking over Eagerly’s purchasing assignments, adding that Trace should identify a vendor prepared to supply a dozen replacement herbicide barrels for Muscle Shoals, oddly specified that the vendor list would not include any version of Kansas City’s Spencer Chemicals. Finding Clearnet’s message cryptic but important, Trace visited the TVA credit union to learn Eagerly was in jail.

Whether due to Eagerly-initiated embarrassments or Reagan-era contract fervor, enthusiasm surrounding TVA’s Fairway herbicide initiative waned. Clearnet phoned Trace one evening as the latter stretched out in a Nashville Best Western, informing him that TVA was contracting out its herbicide management program, that Trace could exercise re-employment rights by interviewing for one of several open NFDC positions.

So that was it, no more King Air rides, no more Truckster tours nor Hung Foo lunches, no more Eagerly, no more job. Lacking further agency ambitions, Trace considered university-based options.