
DATE: Tuesday, March 25, 1997               TAG: 9703250287

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY SCOTT HARPER, STAFF WRITER 

                                            LENGTH:   78 lines

VA. DETAILS SUIT AGAINST SMITHFIELD< AN ATTORNEY FOR THE MEATPACKING GIANT SAYS THE DOCUMENT OFFERS FEW SURPRISES.

Virginia detailed its civil lawsuit against Smithfield Foods Inc. on Monday, charging the meatpacking giant with dozens of pollution violations as well as not training its environmental staff or keeping adequate records.

In a 30-page document called a ``bill of particulars,'' filed in Isle of Wight County Circuit Court, state Attorney General James S. Gilmore III cited 72 examples of how Smithfield Foods allegedly violated its state environmental permit.

Most of the alleged violations occurred since 1991 and center on missing records and illegal discharges of hog wastes into the Pagan River, a Chesapeake Bay tributary.

A former Smithfield Foods employee, Terry L. Rettig, is serving a 30-month sentence in prison for falsifying and destroying some of those records, which state inspectors rely on in determining whether pollution violations have taken place.

Gilmore also charged Monday that for almost 11 years, beginning in 1986, Smithfield Foods did not maintain ``an adequate operating staff which is duly qualified to carry out the functions'' of running a wastewater treatment plant.

``We believe the evidence at trial will show major problems at Smithfield's plant,'' on the banks of the Pagan in the town of Smithfield, Gilmore said in a statement.

``If Smithfield has saved money by failing to comply with its permit, and we believe it has, our goal will be to recover that money in civil penalties, together with any amount the court finds is necessary to deter future violations.''

Anthony Troy, an attorney for Smithfield Foods, the largest pork processor on the East Coast, said the court document offered few surprises - other than a misstatement that his client violated its permit in August 1997.

``I was surprised to see they had us failing to do things in the

future,'' Troy said. ``I didn't know they had that power of prognostication.''

Virginia law allows a defendant to request a bill of particulars, which Smithfield Foods did. When the case goes to trial - no date has been set as yet, but one is expected by this summer - the state can pursue only the violations alleged in the document.

Smithfield Foods also faces a civil lawsuit by the U.S. Justice Department, which is seeking as much as $150 million in penalties for some 5,000 alleged pollution violations since 1991. That case will be heard in federal court in Norfolk.

A focus of the state's case will be on chlorine, a toxic chemical used to disinfect bacteria in hog wastes. Sometimes, too much chlorine can be injected into the stream of wastes coming from company slaughterhouses.

The state alleges that company staff often failed to report chlorine levels; from January 1994 to June 1995, in fact, reports were almost never made. When staff did file a report, excessive amounts of chlorine often were seen entering the Pagan, according to court documents.

That version of events seems to support the claims of another former Smithfield employee, Shannon Williams, a wastewater operator from November 1994 to February 1995. Williams has charged that during that period, chlorine levels were at times falsified on reports or not measured at all for lack of equipment.

The company has called Williams a disgruntled employee whose charges were investigated internally but never confirmed. The state, however, is conducting its own criminal investigation into Williams' claims and other documents related to chlorine reporting, sources have confirmed. ILLUSTRATION: Color photo

Attorney General James S. Gilmore

The claim: Attorney General James S. Gilmore III cited 72 examples

of how the state says meatpacker Smithfield Foods broke the law.

Most of the violations, he said, involved poor record-keeping and

illegal discharges of hog wastes into a tributary of the Chesapeake

Bay. The state also says Smithfield didn't keep a staff qualified to

run a wastewater treatment plant, and it says the staff often failed

to report levels of chlorine - a toxic chemical used excessively by

the company. KEYWORDS: SMITHFIELD LAWSUIT