Kenyon Industries operates what it calls a “state of the art” textile manufacturing facility on the Pawcatuck River in southern Rhode Island. Yet its reports to the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management indicate the mill has violated the Clean Water Act 1,784 times since 2017, routinely discharging wastewater with concentrations of copper, a toxic […]
By early-2017, eighty residential wells in Southbridge, MA, tested positive for lead, 1,4-dioxane, or carcinogenic chlorinated volatile organic compounds (VOCs). Residents did not need to look far for the source of these contaminants: monitoring reports from Casella Waste Systems revealed that a landfill it operated in Southbridge had been releasing these toxins into groundwater for […]
North and South Rivers Watershed Ass’n v. Town of Scituate, a 1991 case with nationwideprecedential value, misconstrued a provision of the Clean Water Act that prohibits the federal Environmental Protection Agency and citizen suit plaintiffs from seeking court-imposed penalties for violations that have already been the subject of a diligently prosecuted administrative penalty. The First […]
Residents of Bethlehem, NH, voted against the expansion of a Casella Waste Systems-operated landfill two years in a row. Then they learned that the landfill had been leaking. On behalf of Toxics Action Center and Conservation Law Foundation, NELC filed a lawsuit in 2018 against Casella and its local subsidiary, alleging that the New England […]
Florida’s Suwannee River is a state ecological treasure, famous for 185 freshwater springs that provide both critical wildlife habitat and water for Florida residents, tourists, and agricultural producers. To help protect this invaluable resource, in 2017 NELC filed suit against Pilgrim’s Pride’s Live Oak, FL, poultry processing facility for illegally dumping hundreds of thousands of […]
Reports from a metal galvanizing plant to the State of Connecticut revealed it was discharging stormwater with excessively high concentrations of heavy metals into two local streams, and that its stormwater runoff, loaded with zinc, lead, and copper, was highly toxic to aquatic life. After a wastewater engineering expert retained by NELC concluded that Connecticut […]
Valley Creek, which flows through Valley Forge National Historical Park in Tredyffrin Township, PA, is designated as an “Exceptional Value” stream by the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) and a “Class A wild trout stream” by the Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission – the highest water quality classifications the state of Pennsylvania can bestow. […]
A century ago, Maine’s Androscoggin and Kennebec Rivers historically featured annual Atlantic salmon runs of 10,000 or more. By 2010, however, the salmon were in steep decline: only ten adult salmon returned to the Androscoggin, and just five made their way up the Kennebec. Hydroelectric dams are a primary driver of this precipitous drop. The […]
A small group of Newport, RI residents, self-dubbed the “Sewer Rats,” spent over a decade monitoring the city’s illegal sewage discharges and urging local officials to protect Rhode Island’s beaches from raw sewage contamination. Because Newport had not fully separated its sewage drains from stormwater drains, it suffered “combined sewer overflows,” in which untreated sewage […]
Middletown, RI’s sewage overflows and stormwater discharges, in conjunction with stormwater contamination from the adjacent city of Newport, repeatedly forced closures of popular public beaches on Easton’s Bay. During closures, residents were warned not to swim in the bay due to health hazards caused by high concentrations of fecal coliform and enterococcus bacteria. In 2008, […]