EPA’s Failure to Update Wastewater Guidelines is Allowing Contamination of Nation’s Waterways
Media contact: Tom Pelton, Environmental Integrity Project, (443) 510-2574 or tpelton@environmentalintegrity.org; Betsy Nicholas, Waterkeepers Chesapeake, (202) 423-0504 or betsy@waterkeeperschesapeake.org
Washington, D.C.— Conservation groups today filed a
formal notice of intent to sue the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
for failing to update slaughterhouse wastewater guidelines as required
by the Clean Water Act.
More than 8 billion chickens, 100 million hogs, and 30 million beef
cattle are processed each year in more than 5,000 slaughterhouses across
the country. An estimated 4,700 of these are currently allowed to
discharge processed wastewater directly into waterways or to
publicly-owned treatment plants.
“Many of these dirty slaughterhouses contribute to impairments in the waterways where they discharge their pollution,” said
Sylvia Lam, Attorney with the Environmental Integrity Project.
“The most polluting plants also release far more pollution than the
cleanest plants. EPA needs to step in, set stronger national water
pollution standards for meat and poultry processing plants, and level
the playing field.”
The Clean Water Act requires the EPA to annually review, and
potentially strengthen, industry-wide water pollution standards—called
effluent limitation guidelines —for slaughterhouses to ensure the
guidelines keep pace with advances in technology that reduce the amount
of pollution animal processing and rendering facilities discharge into
the nation’s waterways.
Since at least 2016, the EPA has failed to conduct the required
annual reviews for meat and poultry slaughterhouses. The agency last
revised a subset of the guidelines for slaughter facilities discharging
wastewater directly into rivers and streams in 2004. But some
slaughterhouses are still operating under guidelines originally
established as far back as 1974.
The EPA has also failed to review whether “pretreatment” guidelines
should be developed for slaughterhouses that send their wastewater to
publicly-owned treatment facilities.
“Slaughterhouses often release toxic pollutants that impair drinking water supplies around the country,” said
Peter Lehner, Managing Attorney at Earthjustice.
“They are also the linchpin in the highly polluting industrial meat
production chain. Nitrates run off from over-fertilized fields growing
animal feed; manure lagoons leak and overflow; animal waste is spread on
fields and flows into rivers. We need to clean up every stage. We need
the government to do its job.”
“Some of the world’s largest meat companies are dumping huge volumes
of pollution into America’s rivers, contributing to toxic algae, dead
zones, and fecal bacteria that can make swimmers sick,” noted
John Rumpler, Clean Water Program Director at Environment America.
The slaughtering and rendering processes generate wastewater that is
contaminated with blood, oil and grease, and fats that contain
oxygen-depleting pollutants like nitrogen and phosphorus, pathogens, and
other contaminants. When released into waterways, these pollutants can
drive excess algae growth, causing algae blooms that suffocate aquatic
life, and turn waterways into bacteria-laden public health hazards.
“At a time when communities, businesses, and citizens across the
country are facing the devastating consequences of massive toxic algae
blooms, EPA must take urgent action to address the largest sources of
pollutant discharges fueling those outbreaks,” said
Kelly Hunter Foster, Waterkeeper Alliance Senior Attorney.
“Slaughterhouses are major sources of this pollution through discharges
into rivers and streams, or into city wastewater treatment systems. Our
cities’ treatment systems often lack capacity and technology to
properly treat this waste – overwhelming the treatment systems,
increasing pollution and improperly putting taxpayers on the hook for
the industry’s waste treatment problem.”
“The EPA must stop allowing slaughterhouses to treat many of the same
rivers and streams we depend on for drinking water and recreation as
industrial sewers,” said
Hannah Connor, Senior Attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity.
“Especially in rural communities, the Trump administration’s ongoing
failure to oversee slaughterhouse wastewater is putting wildlife and
public health at risk.”
America’s largest slaughterhouses are clustered in rural areas,
including northeast and northwest Arkansas, central Mississippi, Iowa,
northern Georgia, east central Pennsylvania, eastern North Carolina,
southern Indiana, and Sussex County, Delaware.
“Scattered throughout our region, there are several slaughterhouses
that have discharged high levels of pollutants into our local waterways,
violating their permits with little or no enforcement,” said
Betsy Nicholas, Waterkeepers Chesapeake Executive Director.
“As an example, in a recent 18-month period, a meat processing plant in
Pennsylvania violated its water discharge permit 62 times, discharging
excessive amounts of nitrogen pollution into a tributary to the
Susquehanna River.”
Updated regulations would lead to significant improvements in many
waterways across the country, especially in those areas of greatest
industry concentration.
“Slaughterhouses are some of the country’s biggest polluters,” said
Tarah Heinzen, Senior Attorney with Food & Water Watch. “We will not let EPA continue to let the meat industry off the hook for polluting our waterways.”
According to a 2018 report by the Environmental Integrity Project,
“Water Pollution from Slaughterhouses,”the
most technologically advanced plants are the best performing plants,
releasing far less pollution than the rest of the industry. Technology
to dramatically reduce pollution from the industry clearly exists, but
because of outdated guidelines, EPA and state agencies continue to set
permit limits that allow slaughterhouses to discharge far too much water
pollution. Meanwhile
,
60 of the 98 plants reviewed by EIP release their wastewater to rivers,
streams, and other waterways that are impaired because of the main
pollutants found in slaughterhouse wastewater. In 2016, Environment America found that the
processing
plants of just a few large agribusiness companies discharged more than
250 million pounds of toxic pollution into America’s waterwaysover a 5-year period.
“The pace and size of today’s slaughterhouses create an extremely
dangerous environment, in which animals suffer and toxic waste spews
into our waterways,” said
Animal Legal Defense Fund Executive Director Stephen Wells.
“This contaminates water for wildlife and surrounding communities at
unprecedented rates. The government must do its job to protect people,
animals, and the environment — and stop serving corporate interests at
our expense.”
The Environmental Integrity Project and Earthjustice are filing
today’s notice on behalf of Waterkeeper Alliance, Environment America,
Center for Biological Diversity, Waterkeepers Chesapeake, Animal Legal
Defense Fund, and Food & Water Watch.
To view the notice letter, visit:
Slaughterhouse ELG and Pretreatment Guidelines Deadline Suit NOI
Slaughterhouse ELG NOI Press Release FINAL
Additional media contacts:
Alejandro Dávila Fragoso, Earthjustice, (202) 745-5229 or adavila@earthjustice.org
Darcey Rakestraw, Food & Water Watch, (202) 683-2467 or drakestraw@fwwatch.org
Maia Raposo, Waterkeeper Alliance, (212) 747-0622 x116 or mraposo@waterkeeper.org
Natalia Lima, Animal Legal Defense Fund, (201) 679-7088 or nlima@aldf.org
Hannah Connor, Center for Biological Diversity, (202) 681-1676 or hconnor@biologicaldiversity.org
John Rumpler, Environment America (617) 747-4306 or jrumpler@environmentamerica.org
