Winter 2025: Vol. 27, No. 1

NELC staff conduct site visit at Campbell Soup plant

NAPOLEON, OH—In August 2024, NELC attorneys Chuck Caldart and Josh Kratka, accompanied by NELC paralegal Lauren Justice and wastewater engineering consultant Charles Bott, conducted a two-day site visit to Campbell Soup Supply Company’s processing plant in Napoleon, Ohio.

This soup, beverage, and sauce production facility is Campbell Soup’s largest, and produces many of the staples found on grocery shelves throughout the country. However, Campbell’s own self-reported compliance data shows years of persistent, sometimes egregious violations of the facility’s Clean Water Act permit. Facility processes such as canning and fruit and vegetable washing and blending, together with an aging and ineffective wastewater treatment plant, have combined to produce effluent violations for numerous pollutants, including E. coli bacteria, nitrogen, oil and grease, carbonaceous biochemical oxygen demand, total suspended solids, and phosphorus—the same phosphorus that has long afflicted the Maumee River and Lake Erie, where toxic algae, fed by phosphorus-driven eutrophication, bloom each summer.

To its credit, Campbell’s has been a willing participant in ongoing settlement discussions, both with NELC and with the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), who have filed a companion suit against the company.

With the goal of understanding each component of the current wastewater treatment system and of the proposed wastewater treatment upgrades, and to get a sense of the layout of the plant and its food production processes, the NELC team, along with attorneys and technical staff from DOJ/EPA, joined attorneys, engineers, and management staff from Campbell’s for two days of site inspections and technical discussions during the heat of late summer.

After an informative and productive visit, NELC staff were struck by the incredible efficiency, cleanliness, and reliability of the production side of the facility. Canning occurs at high speeds, ideal temperatures are precisely held, and any setbacks or machinery errors are swiftly corrected.

“It was not simply these qualities that so impressed us,” remarked NELC’s Lauren Justice, “but also their juxtaposition with the state of the wastewater treatment facility. It was clear to us that Campbell Soup is capable of innovative and streamlined industry, but had cho- sen for too long not to bring these qualities to bear on its wastewater treatment.”

An important goal of the NELC lawsuit will be to ensure that Campbell’s invests in effective and reliable technology and infrastructure for the side of its operations that governs what the facility discharges to the aquatic environment. That side may not produce marketable products, but it does affect the lives of the fishers, boaters, hikers, conservationists, and other Ohioans who use and enjoy the Maumee River and Lake Erie.

Closure of plastics plant does not end its nurdle pollution

PITTSBURGH—In December 2023, NELC attorneys filed a Clean Water Act citizen suit against Styropek USA, Inc., alleging that the plastics-manufacturing giant illegally discharges small plastic pellets—commonly called “nurdles”—from a plant located approximately 20 miles outside of Pittsburgh.

Evidence cited in the complaint indicates that the process wastewater and stormwater discharged from the aging facility into Raccoon Creek, a tributary to the Ohio River, routinely contains large quantities of the nurdles manufactured on site.

Just short of a year after NELC filed suit, Styropek announced plans to stop production at the Raccoon Creek plant in 2025, acknowledging in a November 2024 press release that it is “an aging facility” that is unable to meet the company’s own “long-term goals and sustainability initiatives.”

Between the lawsuit’s filing and Styropek’s closure announcement, the vast potential for future nurdle releases at the facility has come into clearer focus.

Three Rivers Waterkeeper, a plaintiff in the suit and the source of much of the evidence cited in the complaint, has continued its monthly “nurdle patrols” of Raccoon Creek, consistently documenting the ongoing presence of nurdles emanating from the Styropek facility. On a boat ride to the site, NELC attorneys and representatives of co-plaintiff PennEnvironment witnessed nurdles floating just a few feet downstream of Styropek’s wastewater outfall.

During a subsequent site visit in May, they also identified countless loose nurdles in stormwater drainage zones located on the nearly 265-acre site, scattered across parking lots and walk-ways. A subsequent series of studies commissioned by the company has revealed numerous factors that will complicate efforts to eliminate discharges of nurdles in stormwater, including previously unmapped stormwater tunnels, drainage vaults riddled with nurdles, and numerous areas of the facility with concentrations of “legacy” beads, allegedly left by previous operators.

Accordingly, even if Styropek follows through on its closure plans and ends the production of plastic pellets at the facility, the Clean Water Act lawsuit will continue.

“NELC attorneys, working in conjunction with the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection, will pursue a comprehensive resolution that ensures that all nurdles present at the facility are either removed or properly contained on site,” stated NELC attorney Matt Donohue.

“This will require,” Donohue noted, “the development and implementation of measures to prevent nurdles from migrating through the stormwater system and into neighboring water bodies.”

Pesticide plant fails to report types and amounts of illegal emissions

SODA SPRINGS, IDAHO—In September, NELC attorneys formally notified P4 Production, LLC, a subsidiary of the chemical conglomerate Bayer, that it has violated the federal Clean Air Act more than 750 times over the past five years by failing to report the types and amounts of illegal pollutants it has released into the southeast Idaho air during hundreds of equipment breakdowns and outages at its phosphorus production plant.

The P4 plant, located along the Oregon Trail in southeast Idaho, processes phosphate ore into elemental phosphorus, a highly toxic substance used as the active ingredient in the notorious organophosphate herbicide Roundup. According to U.S. EPA, the refining process generates numerous harmful air pollutants, including fine particulate matter, sulfur dioxide, lead, hydrogen cyanide, and the radioactive polonium-210.

NELC’s pre-suit notice was served on behalf of Idaho Conservation League and Environment America. Although P4 has filed excess emission reports, these reports neither identified the pollutants involved nor estimated the quantities released. Full and accurate public reporting of illegal emissions is essential to enable public interest groups and regulatory agencies to determine whether public health and the environment are being put at risk. At press time, preliminary settlement talks had begun.