Norfolk dock master, assistant charged with faking oil spill

NORFOLK

In a bizarre twist to an already odd case, the dock master and assistant dock master at a private marina have been charged with faking an oil spill by throwing beer bottles full of motor oil and grease into a sunken boat they want removed.

Bill Pont and Winston Williams, who run the American Legion Post 60 Marina off Colley Avenue, were both charged Wednesday night with illegal dumping and making a false report.

Each faces up to three years in jail and a maximum fine of $7,500. They also could face felony violations of the Clean Water Act for intentionally polluting a public waterway, according to city officials.

Assistant City Attorney Cynthia Hall called the case the weirdest she has dealt with in her many years with the Norfolk Environmental Crimes Task Force.

"We've never had someone stage an oil spill," she said Thursday. "That's definitely a new one."

Hall said the two men were captured on security video filling up the beer bottles with oily wastes and walking toward the sunken boat, named Problem Child, which has been on the bottom of Knitting Mill Creek since late September.

The bottles were recovered this week inside the flooded, oily cockpit of the boat - one day after Pont again called emergency crews to respond to a spill.

Pont has insisted to the media and emergency teams for weeks that the boat is leaking oil and should be removed from the creek as an environmental hazard. He erected a hand-painted sign proclaiming "Polluting, Nobody Cares."

But city, state and federal inspectors, who have visited the scene numerous times, all have said the boat is not leaking. The Coast Guard said the owner, David Alton Brad Harvey, pumped fuel and oil off the boat after it initially sank.

On Thursday, Pont denied that he and Williams faked the spill to provoke action.

"No, we didn't do that," he said. "Of course, we didn't."

Pont said he has not seen the videotapes at the heart of the prosecution, supplied to authorities by leaders of the American Legion Post 60. He suggested the city might be trying to frame him.

"It sounds like a sour-grapes kind of thing," he said, "retribution for us embarrassing them."

Williams did not return a phone call Thursday seeking comment. No one returned a call to the American Legion hall, either.

Also Thursday, city officials said they have instructed the owner of a nearby private pier to remove three dilapidated boats that appear to have been abandoned in Knitting Mill Creek. One of those vessels sank earlier this week, requiring the Coast Guard to wrap a rubber boom around it to protect against a fuel spill.

Harvey, the owner of Problem Child, remains in jail on malicious wounding charges after he allegedly pummeled Pont and sent him to the hospital after an altercation at the marina in mid-October.

He is under city and state orders to remove his boat but won't answer his charges in court until Nov. 30.

Officials have said Harvey floated the vessel once but was kicked off the property. When he returned to the marina to do more work, he and Pont got into an argument, partly over unpaid docking fees.

Pont has said Harvey broke one of his ribs and caused cuts to his face and mouth that required stitches.

City officials said they got suspicious on Sunday after Pont again called a hazmat team to respond to an oil spill.

The team found no problem but installed a rubber boom around the wounded boat anyway. An investigator for the city's Fire Marshal's Office, Karen Barnes, then was dispatched. She saw no oil, either, but decided to contact Hall, the assistant city attorney, for a once-and-for-all meeting at the marina.

When Hall and Barnes returned later for the meeting, they said they smelled a strong odor of fuel and saw a small oil sheen within the cockpit of Problem Child. Barnes could not recall smelling or seeing anything like that just hours before.

"I said something like, 'I smell a rat,' " Hall said.

Pont quickly left at that point, Hall said, but Williams remained behind to berate the two officials for not removing the boat in the face of its environmental problems.

Barnes next checked footage from a marina security camera and said she saw the two men pouring oil into one beer bottle, grease into another bottle and, later, carrying an old oil filter out to the docks.

Scott Harper, (757) 446-2340, scott.harper@pilotonline.com