City officials were alerted to possible irregularities in Fish Garbage Service dumps at the Rapid City Landfill as early as May, but according to city documents, they appear to have quickly dismissed them as unsubstantiated.

Alderman Sam Kooiker e-mailed city Public Works Director Robert Ellis and the Solid Waste Committee on May 2 about concerns from an anonymous source that a hauler may have paid less than fair price for dumping building debris a month earlier.

“The information I am getting indicates that this hauler may have been getting deals like this for awhile from an inside connection at the landfill,” Kooiker wrote.

Ellis responded three days later, saying they had investigated the April incident and found no wrongdoing.

“We spent a great deal of time yesterday investigating this matter and I am confident in saying there exists no collusion to defraud the City Landfill between either Fish Garbage Service or our landfill attendants,” Ellis wrote May 5.

Kooiker contends the tip should have been the ignition point for what, seven months later, became a high-profile lawsuit against Fish Garbage Service, its owners and a former landfill attendant and the revocation of the commercial hauler’s license for “unfair business practices.”

“I passed along the concerns of the people, and clearly, Mr. Ellis and the administration should have brought in other resources to take the concerns of my constituents seriously,” Kooiker said. “Instead, they put the crooks on notice and potentially gave them time to destroy evidence.”

But there’s some question whether Kooiker’s inquiry broke the case or is even directly related.

“If you actually read the e-mails Alderman Kooiker sent in May, they’re unrelated to the current investigation,” Mayor Alan Hanks said. “It’s about the disposal of a roof of a demolished building and what it was charged at the scale.

“If Alderman Kooiker had any other information, he didn’t share it with us.”

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In his May 2 e-mail, Kooiker outlined a number of concerns tied to the April 2 disposal of a building that exploded near East Main and Maple streets. Attached to the e-mail was a one-page landfill report from that day.

The printout listed six loads of refuse dumped that day by a truck No. 401 — one of mixed waste, one of mixed construction debris and four of asphalt shingles. Asphalt shingles are charged $16 a ton, mixed construction debris and mixed waste $53 a ton.

“Apparently this hauler has also been allowed to dump for free or a reduced rate when the garbage is classified as ‘alternative cover’ used for fill,” Kooiker wrote.

Alternative cover, or fill, is clean material such as dirt or sawdust that can be used safely to cover trash on the operating face of the landfill. The landfill has accepted it free of charge for years.

Upon receiving the e-mail, Ellis told Kooiker that he and solid waste manager Jerry Wright would investigate the incident.

“These are very serious accusations to be throwing around in the public domain without any evidence of wrongdoing,” Ellis wrote May 4.

The next day, Ellis reported the findings of their internal investigation to Kooiker, the Solid Waste Committee and the mayor.

According to the May 5 e-mail, Wright and landfill supervisor John Leahy interviewed both Clifford Fish of Fish Garbage Service and landfill attendant Randall Meidinger about the day in question.

Fish told them their trucks only hauled roof structure and wood debris April 2, loads which would have contained shingles.

“Randy (Meidinger) was asked directly how he treats the customers of the landfill, and he said something to the effect, ‘I treat them all the same.’ Jerry (Wright) even more directly asked him if he was, or is, on the ‘take’ with Fish Garbage Service, and he said ‘No,’” Ellis wrote. “Jerry and myself take Randy for his word and John (Leahy) has further stated he has no reason to believe that Randy is a dishonest person.”

Ellis also explained accepting alternative cover helps save the landfill money.

“Because we reuse this material (which saves us in purchasing an alternate landfill cover material, hauling it from somewhere else within the landfill, and reduces landfill content) those loads have the tipping fee waived,” Ellis wrote.

Hours later, Kooiker replied thanking Ellis and Wright for “diligently looking into this issue.”

“Based on the info provided, I consider this to be a settled issue,” Kooiker wrote.

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The subject quieted, according to city documents, until early August, when Kooiker and Alderman Ron Weifenbach met with City Attorney Jason Green about “landfill issues” related to alternative cover.

“I brought the concerns of my constituents (owner of a private landfill) to the City’s attention in May 2009. The investigation was accomplished on May 4, 2009, by asking employees and a private hauler if they were involved in a scam,” Kooiker wrote to Green in an Aug. 10 e-mail.

Kooiker expressed concern in the e-mail about Green delaying his interview of the landfill owner for a week and asked whether he had the proper resources to investigate.

Green responded that he had arranged to meet with the landfill owner Aug. 14, saying for the time being, the investigation was moving forward as a personnel issue and it would be premature to involve police investigators.

“Even with the documentation you have presented to me, the only evidence that is available is hearsay twice removed. Further, at face value, the evidence does not itself prove any criminal activity, but rather, shows a possibility of something that might be criminal in nature,” Green wrote Aug. 11. “It is very important when conducting an investigation not to jump to conclusions, but to let the evidence lead the way.”

A month later, on Sept. 14, the city terminated Meidinger’s employment, according to court documents. Sometime in September, the Rapid City Police Department also opened a criminal investigation.

The lawsuit, filed Dec. 28, names Fish Garbage Service, owners Clifford and George Fish and Meidinger and accuses them of conspiring to cheat the city out of tipping fees by lying about truck weights and the contents of trucks.

According to the complaint, Fish Garbage allegedly falsely declared loads as alternative cover and provided inflated information about the empty weights of the compactor trucks hauling refuse to the landfill.

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What that timeline means, though, depends on whom you ask.

Kooiker said had Hanks’ administration taken his May concerns seriously, it would have investigated it differently and more promptly.

“Public Works management marched right out there and asked the alleged crooks if they were on the take and accepting bribes. It was a travesty how the investigation was handled,” Kooiker said. “Even five minutes of one episode of ‘Law & Order’ is a good indication that you shouldn’t just go ask someone if they did something wrong. The answer you’re going to get is ‘No.’”

Hanks and Green defended the city’s reaction to the original e-mail. Wright and Leahy declined to comment on their investigation.

“Given what’s in it, I don’t know what more could have been done in the investigation of it,” Green said.

Green was tightlipped on the status of the criminal investigation.

“All I can say at this point is other information was presented to me,” Green said. “It was other information besides this e-mail, and it was significantly after that e-mail.”

Hanks said comparing the e-mail to the current investigation is “apples and oranges,” given Fish was sued for abusing the city’s alternative cover policy.

“All the correspondence I’ve seen, the only time he asked about alternate fill was whether it was free,” Hanks said. “As soon as we had information we could act on, we went after it extremely aggressively. You can’t find something if you don’t have any information to lead you there.”

Weifenbach sees things a little differently. While Green has been responsive since taking up the investigation, the end result is a credit to Kooiker’s persistence, the alderman said.

Weifenbach said he met with Hanks in 2007 about similar concerns, but Hanks remembers no such conversation.

“There is an investigation. It was important and necessary. And it was because of Sam dogging this and his persistence,” Weifenbach said. “I’m not taking credit for anything that Sam did. If he hadn’t mentioned it to me, I don’t know if there’d be any investigation today.”

Ellis said Kooiker’s e-mail just wasn’t enough to prove anything more than one improper dump ticket.

At the time, the landfill’s policy was to trust truck drivers to make accurate declarations of their loads, and so long as a majority of the material was what they said it was, scale house attendants didn’t have a problem, Ellis said. That has since changed, Ellis said, with the installation of cameras recording every aspect of a transaction.

“They paid the fee for shingles, they were hauling some shingles with some wood pieces in there,” Ellis said. “There’s nothing illegal about it. There’s nothing criminal about it.

“To say this is what broke a case — there just isn’t enough information there.”

Contact Emilie Rusch at 394-8453 or emilie.rusch@rapidcityjournal.com.