Bayer is one of the largest pharmaceutical, chemical, and biomedical companies in the world, with a reported revenue of over $54 billion in 2023. After it acquired Monsanto in 2018, Bayer became the sole holding company of P4 Production, which operates a phosphate ore mining and refining facility in the town of Soda Springs, Idaho. […]
Known as “America’s Port,” the Port of Los Angeles is the largest container ship port in the Western Hemisphere, encompassing some 7,500 acres and handling almost $1 billion worth of cargo every single day. Despite the size and scope of the Port’s operations, NELC attorneys have determined that a major wastewater treatment system at the […]
The soup production and canning facility operated by Campbell Soup Supply Co. in Napoleon, Ohio, produces many of the soups, juices, and canned goods that have long been staples of pantries and cupboards throughout the country. Such products have helped turn Campbell’s into a food manufacturing behemoth, with over $9.4 billion in sales in 2023 […]
Styropek USA, Inc. operates a major plastic production facility at the confluence of Raccoon Creek and a heavily industrialized stretch of the Ohio River, approximately 20 miles outside of Pittsburgh. Along with its wholly-owned subsidiary BVPV Styrenics LLC, Styropek produce approximately 123,000 tons of expandable polystyrene (EPS) beads, or “nurdles,” at the nondescript facility each year. The […]
For years, Kenyon Industries operated what it called 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 indicated the mill had violated the Clean Water Act 1,784 times since 2017, routinely discharging wastewater with concentrations of copper, […]
For several years, AK Steel Corporation’s Dearborn, MI, facility had been one of Michigan’s most persistent polluters. Despite being subject to an old U.S. EPA enforcement order, the sprawling steel mill remained out of compliance with its permit limits for lead, manganese, and particulate matter, spewing the pollutants into a nearby elementary school. Teachers reported […]
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 […]
36,000 people, five schools, and over 20 churches are located within a three-mile radius of Valero Energy Corporation’s Port Arthur, TX, oil refinery, according to 2019 data. Surrounded by Valero and several other refineries and chemical plants, residents live in fear of chronic exposure to harmful pollutants such as sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, and fine […]
On Christmas Eve 2018, residents of Clairton, PA, woke up to a sooty haze and a strong sulfurous stench in the air. Earlier that morning, U.S. Steel Corporation’s sprawling Clairton Coke Works experienced a catastrophic fire in the building that houses equipment tasked with removing sulfur and other dangerous pollutants from coke oven gas, a […]