A Victory Against Pollution in Lawrenceburg, Tennessee
One of our most significant legal victories at Tennessee Riverkeeper was in Lawrenceburg, Tennessee. This lovely town boasts scenic frontage along the beautiful Shoal Creek, but unfortunately, it allowed the creek to become an eyesore due to frequent sewage overflows that went unaddressed.
Our team discovered sewage debris and evidence of flows through a city park basketball court, as well as condoms hanging out of a manhole at Veteran's Park campground. Lawrenceburg had accumulated numerous Clean Water Act violations resulting from raw sewage overflows. Despite this, the city and their attorneys dragged their feet on taking responsibility to stop these illegal discharges and fought our efforts every step of the way.
The city even claimed that we couldn't prove these overflows were reaching waterways, despite many instances where a creek was downhill mere yards away from overflowing manholes. We found that Lawrenceburg's own self-reporting forms described releases as "overflow" with the term defined as "makes it to a stream."
Lawrenceburg continued to deny the facts and fight our team for 40 months. They took depositions from both our scientist and executive director, filed a motion for summary judgment (which they lost), and even claimed victory at mediation.
To prove that gravity exists and sewage does indeed flow downhill, our scientist and attorney went to the site of several overflows and documented the law in action. We borrowed a garden hose from a neighbor near one overflow, attached it to a spigot, let the water run past an overflowing manhole with clear evidence of overflows, and then documented that it flowing into Shoal Creek.
This case settled at mediation on October 23, 2023. Lawrenceburg agreed to comply with repair items in the existing TDEC order they had not been meeting before our case, provide us with copies of submissions to TDEC concerning compliance with the order, make substantial improvements in how they track and report overflows (including detailed maps and locations), comply fully and strictly with reporting requirements of their permit, and reimburse our attorney fees and costs for this case.
Case Details:
Case number: 1:20-cv-0052
Court: US District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee, Columbia Division