The fine Darling International Inc. has agreed to pay is the largest ever assessed for environmental violations in Minnesota, eclipsing the previous record fine of $2 million, says David Lillehaug, the U.S. Attorney for Minnesota. It is also the largest environmental fine ever collected in the five-state region governed by the Chicago office of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Lillehaug says.
The company is expected to formally enter its plea before a federal judge in early January, ending a federal criminal probe into the operations of Darling's Blue Earth rendering plant ("Darling, you smell," December 12). The company must still resolve a civil complaint being pursued by the EPA.
"The company has admitted that there was wrongdoing, they have disciplined the employees they felt were responsible, and they're putting their money where their mouth is," Lillehaug says.
Dennis Longmire, Darling's chief executive officer and chairman of the board, says the company has spent $1.5 million improving the plant in response to concerns about pollution. "It's an embarrassment for the company, and we've done everything we can to make sure this problem is corrected and will not reoccur," Longmire says.
The rendering company, which reported $128 million in sales during the first nine months of 1996, first found itself in hot water with Minnesota environmental regulators more than four years ago.
Employees at the company's Blue Earth plant complained to state regulators that animal carcasses, untreated wastes, blood, and solvents were being dumped into a stream near the plant.
Hazardous chemicals were used to wash company trucks over a drainpipe that also led directly into the stream, the employees claimed. When state regulators used dye to follow water through the plant's drainage system, they found pipes carrying wastes that bypassed the plant's water treatment system and dumped directly into the stream.
The stream, in turn, fed the pollution into the Blue Earth River, a stretch of which is now all but dead, according to a Minnesota conservation officer.
"You can walk 30 miles along the Blue Earth's banks and find no living vegetation, except for a few carp and rough fish," Eric Lysne of the Minnesota Division of Natural Resources told the Dallas Observer last month.
The plant is located in prime farm country about nine miles north of the Iowa-Minnesota border, near the town of Blue Earth. Pollution and odors from the plant have long been a sore spot for the 4,000 residents of the small community.
Minnesota regulators cited the plant for 11 violations in 1993, which the company denied or disagreed with at the time. Ultimately, state regulators turned the case over to federal authorities for prosecution, and Lillehaug's office indicted the company for environmental crimes.
The indictments accused the company of discharging ammonia into the stream at levels higher than those allowed by the plant's permit. Longmire says the company never dumped animal carcasses or blood into the stream, as employees had claimed.
"There was excess ammonia above and beyond the permitted level," Longmire says. "There was never animal carcasses or animal parts or anything of that nature."
Darling fired the plant's general manager and two other managers in response to the allegations, and Lillehaug credits new company management for working to resolve the lingering environmental concerns.
"I've been pretty impressed with the company's attitude in the last eight months," Lillehaug says. "They uncovered some of the wrongdoing themselves, and they brought it to us. The final negotiation on the plea was conducted by me personally with Dennis Longmire. I was quite impressed with his approach and attitude."
In the four years since the allegations first surfaced, Lillehaug says, Darling has fixed many of the plant's problems and apparently is no longer pumping pollution into the Blue Earth River.
"Every indication that we've gotten is that the plant has been substantially upgraded over the past few years," Lillehaug says.
That does not mean, however, that the Blue Earth River has overcome the devastation for which the rendering plant is believed largely responsible.
According to conservation officer Lysne, the river should be "teeming with life--turtles, clams, minnows." Instead, the stretch downstream from the plant remains badly damaged.
The river is surrounded by farmland, and some of the problems stem from agricultural runoff such as pesticides, Lillehaug says.
Part of the fine Darling has agreed to pay will be used to find some way to heal the environmental wounds, he says. Under the terms of the company's plea, he stated, $1 million of the $4 million fine will be set aside to "find some way to reduce the pollution of the Blue Earth River."
Most of the remaining $3 million will go into the federal government's compensation fund for crime victims, Lillehaug says, although some of the money may be used to settle the EPA's civil claims against the company.
With the settlement, Darling International apparently met its goal of disposing of the criminal charges by year's end. According to the company's September filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Darling wanted an end to the lingering allegations.
In addition to the record fine, Lillehaug says he insisted on a guilty plea on the criminal charges, rather than allowing Darling to plead no contest to the felonies.
"Our demand was for guilty pleas," Lillehaug says. "This was a very important case for us.
