We embedded four PO electric weigh-in motion sensors in the asphalt apron on either side of the bridge. The sensors recorded axle weight, gross vehicle weight, vehicle speed, and direction of travel, accurate to within 2%. They were buried under fresh blacktop, indistinguishable from the road surface with a Cat 5 cable running back to a small weatherproof junction box behind a cedar stump. We installed six highresolution license plate reader cameras at the bridge approach. Two facing east, two facing west, two facing the bridge deck itself.
Each camera fed back to a Raspberry Pi server in my barn that timestamped, geotagged, and archived every frame. We installed a network of 12 motion activated 4K trail cameras along the dirt access road leading from my bridge to the back hollow where Pernell Bighgam had documented the landfill. The cameras logged every truck, every load, every dumping event. We installed a remote drone hanger, a small camouflaged shed at the high point of my farm from which Jasper could launch a quadcopter at the touch of a button. The drone was programmed to fly a preset route over the back hollow at any trigger event, record 16 minutes of 4K video, and return on its own.
Finally, we built the alert system. The system was simple in concept and devastating in execution. Whenever a vehicle crossed my bridge over the 5-tonon weight limit, the WIM sensors triggered the LPR cameras. The LPR cameras pulled the plate. The plate ran against a watch list of known Hulcom paving and contractor vehicles.
If matched, the system sent an automated, timestamped, evidence-packaged email to a preloaded list of recipients. The recipient list had grown over the two weeks since Pernell's visit to 14 agencies. Tier 1 was North Carolina State, NCD OT Bridge Division, NC State Highway Patrol Motor Carrier Enforcement, NC Department of Environmental Quality, NC Attorney General's Environmental Unit, Haywood County Sheriff. Tier 2 was federal. Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, EPA Region 4 Criminal Enforcement, EPA Office of Inspector General, US Department of Justice Environmental Crimes Section, Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigation Division, US Forest Service Law Enforcement.
Tier three was the press tier, the Asheville Citizen Times, the Wainesville Mountaineer, Channel 13 News out of Asheville, National Public Radio's Western Carolina Bureau. Every email contained a single attachment, a coordinated 30inut evidence package showing the weight violation, the license plate, the truck's destination at the back hollow, the dumping event captured by drone, and the water samples from downstream of the hollow. Pernell's two years of work integrated with my two weeks of work, all delivered in a single Tuesday morning's worth of data. Whitlock Trit drove up to inspect the system on the 11th day. He stood in my barn for a long time, watching the dashboard on my laptop tick through test events.
Then he looked at me with the same dry smile he had given me the morning we filed the lawsuit. Brennan, when this trap fires, every agency on the list will be staring at the same evidence at the same minute. They will all start calling each other. They will all start calling Tessa Hulcom. By lunchtime, she will not know whether to answer her phone, hide her phone, or throw her phone in the creek.
By dinner time, she will be in custody. I asked the question that mattered. Whitlock, when do we arm it? Brennan, you arm it the night before Roland's biggest scheduled load. Pernell has been watching their dispatch.
The biggest load of the month is scheduled for next Tuesday morning. a 46,000lb dump truck coming up from a tearown job in Atlanta. Roland will be on site. Tessa will be on site. Channel 13 is doing a feature piece on Eagle Ridge that same morning, completely by coincidence. The cameras will already be there.