Garden City Telegram, Marianne Salcetti
Published December 11, 2001
Part of ConAgra Foods Inc.'s official silence on its Garden City plant could be attributed to the company's environmental challenges, a paperwork chain stretching back several years.
In July 2000, ConAgra was one of only two Kansas polluters, along with Dodge City's Excel Beef, identified in a report by the Environmental Working Group as "Major Polluters listed in noncompliance of the CWA (Clean Water Act) and not inspected FY 1998-1999."
Called "Prime Suspects: The Law Breaking Polluters America Fails To
Inspect," the report outlines loopholes that have emerged since the Clean Water Act passed nearly 30 years ago. EWG's report outlines what's happened over the last 10 years to neutralize the force of healthy water guidelines and ensuing penalties for violators.
EWG indicated in the report environmental concerns over healthy air and
water have increased over the last 25 years.
"Yet almost unnoticed during the 1990s, there was a fundamental shift in environmental law enforcement authority away from U.S. EPA and back to the states," notes the report.
While both federal and state laws exist regarding safe air and water, Prime Suspects outlines a systematic pattern of non-compliance or enforcement of those laws, leaving their legal and health intents essentially gutted.
The result of passing enforcement responsibility back to the states has been "major polluters are slipping through the growing gaps in environmental enforcement," according to Prime Suspects.
ConAgra made the Prime Suspects' list because in both 1998 and 1999, the Garden City plant was identified as a major polluter, a term used for both clean air and clean water violators.
Explains EWG's Sarah Feinberg, "(The) major facilities are delimited from guidance, but the designation attaches to specific sources and that drives what information needs to be reported to U.S. EPA."
ConAgra became a "Prime Suspect" for water violations regarding its lagoons at the Garden City operation. State officials did not re-inspect the plant during the 1998-1999 period, even though the initial 1997 fine of $200,000 was reported as the largest ever imposed by the Kansas Department of Health and Environment on a meatpacking facility.
ConAgra was required by federal and state law to obtain a permit allowing the plant to discharge wastewater into the Arkansas River. Plant wastewater resulted from activities associated with butchering and processing thousands of cattle each day.
According to Bruce Bowersox, environmental scientist with KDHE's southwest district office, ConAgra has two permits - one for discharge and one for non-discharge.
When ConAgra first received its permit to discharge its treated wastewater into the Arkansas River, it agreed to follow both state and federal regulations. Federal standards for such activities are called the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System.
NPDES permits are administered by KDHE. They are public documents and can be found on KDHE's Web site.
Congressional sanction with the Clean Water Act required the EPA to codify legal contexts and definitions for activities considered "as a potential 'point source' of pollutants to the nation's waterways," according to the National Center for Agricultural Law research and Information. "Point sources have a number of important regulatory distinctions."
In other words, ConAgra's meatpacking activities qualified as a point source -- the origin of activities that could be considered carrying such potential for pollution that a permit was required in order to discharge.
Effluent, water filled with body fluids and wastes - and fat, literally tons of it, were treated by the company's wastewater system each day.
NPDES permits carry certain responsibilities and activities, which
themselves carry a legal accountability standard or environmental
compliance.
ConAgra's wastewater was used to irrigate and grow crops and after
treatment, flow into the Arkansas River, which is still popular for people wading and animal drinking.
Whether that wastewater went into the river, an irrigation sprinkler or a lagoon, Kansas environmental officials first issued ConAgra a wastewater permit April 1,1996, which was to last five years until Jan. 31, 2001.
By Dec. 12, 1997, KDHE had issued an administrative order, charging ConAgra with numerous water pollution violations. Not only are administrative orders rather unusual, this was the environmental violation list that spurred ConAgra's placement on the Prime Suspects list of national Clean Water Act violators.
Included in the charges were that ConAgra had failed to "comply with
schedule of compliance to clean up the north anaerobic lagoon ... maintain adequate freeboard in the wastewater lagoons" and that it applied tainted wastewater onto agricultural land and failed to maintain required records.
It was reported at the time that the original $200,000 fine was the largest levied by KDHE against such a facility.
Identified in the charges by its previous name of Monfort, the company
"filed a timely notice of appeal denying the allegations and requesting an administrative hearing."
Before the hearing though, lawyers on both sides agreed to a settlement in August 1998 requiring ConAgra to pay a $50,000 civil penalty and also contribute $20,000 to the Kansas Association for Conservation and
Environment Education, a "non-profit corporation dedicated to continuing environmental education in the state of Kansas."
ConAgra's fine was divided into three payments.
"The payments were made in 1998, 1999, 2000 and have all been paid,"
Bowersox said. "All requirements of the order have been met or transferred to the permits. The case is closed."
