Ocean Spray Is Fined $400,000 for Pollution

Ocean Spray Cranberries Inc. pleaded guilty Tuesday to 21 misdemeanor charges and was fined $400,000 for releasing highly acidic waste into municipal sewers near its fruit-processing plant in Middleboro, Mass.

Under a plea agreement with the U.S. attorney’s office in which more than 50 charges were dropped, the Plymouth, Mass-based cooperative also promised to buy the town waste water treatment equipment worth more than $100,000.

Federal officials said the case was one of the first in which a municipality damaged by pollution has been considered the victim of a crime and granted a monetary settlement.

Ocean Spray had pleaded innocent in February to six felony charges and 72 misdemeanor charges that it released cranberry peelings and acids into municipal sewers and the Nemasket River from 1983 to 1987 despite fines and reprimands from the town.

Ocean Spray had faced up to $2.1 million in fines from all the charges.

Spent $3.2 Million

“The United States was very keen on ensuring the town received a restitution payment, and a plea agreement was one way to ensure that the town recover as a result of the pollution inflicted on it,” said Assistant U.S. Atty. Richard E. Welch III.

The grower-owned cooperative earlier this month decided to switch its plea to guilty in an agreement under which the felony charges were dropped. It was the first time the federal government had charged a company with a felony under the Clean Water Act.

The act was amended in 1987 to make it a felony to knowingly discharge raw refuse into sewers. The felony violations charged against Ocean Spray all occurred after the act was amended.

Ocean Spray said in a statement that the company had spent $3.2 million to meet environmental requirements, including upgrading its industrial waste pretreatment facility and adopting measures to keep cranberries out of storm water runoff.

Ocean Spray President John S. Llewellyn Jr. said the settlement was “tough and costly but fair and a warning to all conscientious corporations of the need to comply with environmental regulations.”

The plea agreement included the provision that Ocean Spray continue the cleanup of its plant in Middleboro. The Environmental Protection Agency will monitor the cleanup.

Ocean Spray agreed to buy the town a sludge press, a piece of heavy equipment that improves the treatment process by creating cakes of sludge through removal of waste from waste water in a press. The sludge then can be shipped easily to a landfill or other disposal site.

Environmental Protection Agency Regional Administrator Michael R. Deland said the Ocean Spray case was “one of the few instances we’re aware of in which the so-called victim has received restitution from a corporation.

“The releases did result in persistent problems in the operation of the local treatment plant. The releases were serious in our mind or we not have pursued criminal indictments.”

Ocean Spray, a $781-million company, employs 400 people full time and up to 575 people part time in Middleboro, a town south of Boston.

The company was fined $200 a day by Middleboro after years of warnings that the plant was damaging the town’s waste water treatment plant or causing the town’s system to violate federal standards.