DATE: Wednesday, August 13, 1997            TAG: 9708130006

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B8   EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: Editorial

                                            LENGTH:   50 lines

SMITHFIELD FOODS FINED $12.6 MILLION JUDGE LOWERS HAMMER

Unless it can win on appeal, Smithfield Foods Inc. will have to pay a $12.6 million federal fine for polluting the Pagan River with hog wastes.

Testimony at the recent U.S. District Court trial in Norfolk showed a company whose concern for the environment was limited. The company cut costs by leaving wastewater plants unstaffed at night and on weekends. A person named to head the wastewater plant was unlicensed to do the job. Environmental records were falsified and destroyed by a generally unsupervised employee now in prison.

``During the entire trial,'' wrote U.S. District Judge Rebecca Beach Smith, ``defendant's approach to their (wastewater discharge) permit violations was rather cavalier. They repeatedly argued there was no real harm caused by their numerous violations. . . .''

The judge disagreed. ``Most of the defendant's violations,'' she wrote, ``were both frequent and severe, and had significant impact on the environment and the public.''

The state Department of Environmental Quality, though not a defendant, surely received as black an eye from the trial as did the defendant.

The DEQ was more a partner with Smithfield Foods than a policeman, conducting only announced inspections. In 1991, under Gov. L. Douglas Wilder, the DEQ agreed to a deal that allowed the East Coast's largest pork-processing company to violate its federal water-discharge permit for phosphorus in exchange for agreeing to send its wastes to a Hampton Roads Sanitation District treatment plant as soon as possible. That date turned out to be this summer, six years later, though the delay cannot be blamed on Smithfield Foods.

That the federal Environmental Protection Agency and the judge discounted the state's arrangement with Smithfield Foods is worrisome to every company that has worked out special deals with the DEQ for solving pollution problems.

But Smithfield Foods' violations involved far more than the 5,112 days of phosphorus violations, which Smithfield Foods believed were covered by its DEQ deal. There were 459 days of ammonia violations, 200 days of Kjeldahl nitrogen violations, 72 days of fecal coliform violations, and more.

The company accounted for an average of 10 percent of freshwater flow into the Pagan River and as much as half of the freshwater flow during dry periods, so its impact on the river was considerable. The Pagan flows into the James River, which feeds ultimately into the Chesapeake Bay, which several states are cooperating to clean up.

Virginians deserve far better from the state agency charged with protecting the environment. Gubernatorial candidates must explain how they would improve the DEQ.

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