Kentucky man ordered to pay $34.8 million, go to prison over huge military munition dump, blast

A federal judge on Thursday ordered $34.8 million in restitution from the owner of a company that committed what a prosecutor calls the nation’s worst-ever dumping of military explosives — a case stemming from a huge 2012 munitions blast. U.S. District Judge Elizabeth Foote also ordered David Alan Smith to spend 4 years and 7 months in prison.

Smith and four officials of his Explo Systems Inc. were sentenced in Shreveport. The four others drew sentences ranging from 2 to 5 years in prison and were ordered to repay the federal government a total of $598,000.

Explo Systems, which went bankrupt in 2013, had an $8.7 million Army contract to “demilitarize” artillery charges at a Louisiana National Guard facility called Camp Minden.

“The defendants sentenced today used Camp Minden here in northwest Louisiana as the largest illegal dumping ground of military explosives in the history of the United States - at over 15.6 million pounds of explosives,” U.S. Attorney David C. Joseph said in a statement.

Read more: https://www.kentucky.com/news/local/counties/clark-county/article222423230.html

Cross-posted in the Louisiana Group.