Portland, OR—A Clean Water Act enforcement suit brought by NELC ended in victory recently as the Pacific Seafood Group, the third largest seafood company in North America, agreed to be bound by a comprehensive court order that requires substantial improvements at the company’s flagship seafood processing facility in Warrenton, Ore.

The facility is located near the mouth of the Skipanon River, which drains into the Columbia River roughly 10 miles from the Pacific Ocean. On March 13, Judge Ancer L. Haggerty of the United States District Court for Oregon signed a negotiated court order, known as a consent decree, requiring the company to: implement numerous pollution reduction measures; pay $200,000 to remediate the effects of past pollution; and refrain from any further wastewater discharges into the Skipanon River.

The Warrenton facility is operated by two wholly-owned subsidiaries of Pacific Seafood that process various seafood products, including shrimp, crab, and “surimi,” a fish paste made from Pacific whiting.

For years, the facility had operated in violation of the federal Clean Water Act, discharging millions of gallons of oxygen-depleting wastewater into the tiny Skipanon. These discharges seriously impaired the health of that river and its ability to provide vital habitat for Coho salmon, Pacific lamprey, and other species of threatened fish.

NELC attorneys filed suit against the Pacific Seafood subsidiaries in July 2002, on behalf of the Oregon State Public Interest Research Group (OSPIRG) and two local residents, to bring the facility into compliance with the Clean Water Act. Rather than devote its resources to remedying the violations, the company chose instead to sink countless dollars into a lengthy court battle and a lobbying campaign to persuade the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) to ignore its violations.

These expenditures proved fruitless, as Judge Haggerty issued ruling after ruling against the company, including an injunction order in June 2005 that shut down the facility’s surimi operations until the company could divert its wastewater from the Skipanon. In September 2006, just two weeks before trial, Pacific Seafood finally agreed to settle the case on NELC’s terms.

The resulting consent decree, which will remain in effect for five years, contains numerous provisions to ensure that the company maintains sustained compliance with the law:

• Pacific Seafood must implement comprehensive best management practices (BMP) plans to reduce pollution in the facility’s wastewater; progress will be evaluated in annual, independent reports submitted to NELC and DEQ.

• The company must retain a qualified wastewater consultant to design and implement environmental compliance and pollution reduction training programs at the facility, and must incorporate them into similar programs at its other seafood processing facilities from Alaska to California.

• The company must investigate the sources of bacteria in the facility’s wastewater, and evaluate and implement procedures to reduce bacteria concentrations.

• Wastewater monitoring practices at the facility must meet specified criteria.

• After one year (during which the BMP plans and other pollution reduction measures are being implemented), the facility must achieve and maintain substantial compliance with its wastewater discharge permits or face further court order.

• For the full five years of the decree, the company must pay increasingly stiff monetary penalties for violations of discharge permits. The company must also pay $200,000 to the Skipanon River Watershed Council (a local environmental group dedicated to restoring the river’s health) for Skipanon River restoration projects. This financial sanction is in addition to the substantial profits the company lost as a result of the 2005 shutdown order and $200,000 in penalties and restoration monies that DEQ ordered the company to pay in 2005.

• The facility (which rerouted its discharge to the much larger Columbia River in 2006) will discharge no wastewater to the Skipanon River for the life of the decree.

“Some companies will only get serious about cleaning up their operations when you hit them in the pocketbook,” said NELC attorney Joe Mann. “This consent decree sends a clear message to Pacific Seafood that it does not have free license to pollute.”

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