Dist. Judge Alonzo Harris will hold an Aug. 4 hearing to sort through the invective that whirls about Mayor Bob Morris and Environmental Processing Inc. and its owner John Baham, including EPI’s request to have Morris jailed.

Morris, who claims the court has exceeded its authority, allowed EPI to re-connect to the wastewater system earlier this month after being bluntly advised that if he did not he would be arrested.

In directing Morris or the city to renew service to EPI, Harris told the Sheriff’s Department, “Failure of the City of Eunice and its employees to restore access to EPI shall result in the Sheriff’s Department immediately arresting Mayor Robert Morris for contempt of court,” Harris stipulated on July 16.

His order came on the heels of EPI’s lawyer Doug Summerlin’s motion to have Morris held in contempt for allegedly violating a Temporary Restraining Order issued by Harris last September, a TRO which has languished on his docket while both sides maneuvered through discovery.

Vernon McManus, the city’s attorney in the dispute, this month advised the court that discovery, the process allowing each side to learn more about the other’s case, was complete and asked for a hearing date.

Summerlin, reviewing events related to the re-connection, pulls no punches in his appeal to the court:

“I can think of no time when anyone has show such utter disrespect for an order of a court or where someone has so blatantly attempted to mock the legal process as a whole. Through misuse of his powers as mayor, he is carrying out what appears to be a personal vendetta against EPI.

“We request Morris be punished to the fullest extent of the contempt power of the court, including imprisonment at an amount of time deemed just by this court,” the motion pleads.

The city contends Summerlin and his client are off base and attempting to convince the court to overstep its bounds.

“The city asserts its authority and its right to enforce its own sewerage ordinances in order to protect its sewer system was not restrained by the Temporary Restraining Order,” the reply states.

Any actions taken by the city, the petition asserts, “were under orders and requirements” by EPA and DEQ.

“To disregard would expose the city to strict and severe penalties and ultimately its citizens,” the response continues.

Morris and EPI/Baham have been at odds for more than a year. The mayor asserts EPI has an illegal, sweetheart contract and that its use of the wastewater system threatens the system’s integrity.

EPI/Baham label those assertions as rubbish, claiming EPI is permitted, regulated and monitored by the state and that the $300 monthly it pays is a fairly negotiated fee agreed to and approved by the City Council.

The city says the TRO obtained through Harris belittles the legal system.

“The TRO is nothing more than a malicious abuse of the legal system in an unscrupulous attempt to grant EPI the highly implausible, unbelievable, unconscionable, unlawful and illegal right to operate outside the law and use the Eunice sewer system without having to comply with federal, state and city law,” the city claims.

“There exists no judicial power to control the executive discretion, however erroneous it may seem to have been - and there is no error in this matter,” the city asserts, pleading that “the TRO should be dissolved and dismissed because it is a malicious abuse of the legal system.”