Owner of Old Dutch Mustard Co. pleads guilty to knowingly polluting New Hampshire river
A New York man and Old Dutch Mustard Co., a mustard and vinegar manufacturing business, pleaded guilty in federal court to knowingly polluting a New Hampshire river, the U.S. Attorney said Monday.
Charles Santich, 59, of New York, and Old Dutch Mustard Co. Inc. doing business as Pilgrim Foods Inc., pleaded guilty to knowingly discharging a pollutant -- acidic water into the Souhegan River -- without a permit, Acting U.S. Attorney Jay McCormack said in a statement.
Santich is the president and owner of Old Dutch Mustard, a New York corporation with a manufacturing facility in Greenville, New Hampshire.
U.S. District Court Judge Landya McCafferty scheduled sentencing for June 23.
The federal Clean Water Act prohibits the discharge of any pollutant into navigable waters of the United States without a National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System permit.
Old Dutch Mustard Co. has 'a long history' of not complying with the federal law dating back to the 1980s, prosecutors said.
The business has been subject to several enforcement actions by the Environmental Protection Agency, the New Hampshire Department of Environmental Services and the New Hampshire Attorney General's Office, McCormack said.
As a result of these actions, the EPA and the state Department of Environmental Services 'have required continuous monitoring of an Unnamed Brook that flows underneath and in front of the facility, eventually flowing into the Souhegan River,' McCormack said.
The Souhegan River is one of 19 rivers in New Hampshire rivers that the state has designated as an important natural resource.
Old Dutch Mustard Co. manufactures vinegar and mustard products, which generates acidic wastewater, prosecutors said.
'Stormwater flows through the property, including an outdoor area where the company stores their product in large tanks,' McCormack said. 'Both the wastewater and stormwater at Old Dutch Mustard becomes acidic and is categorized as a pollutant under the CWA, and Old Dutch Mustard did not have the necessary permit to discharge the acidic wastewater or stormwater into the environment.'
Instead, Old Dutch was required to store the polluted water in tanks and pay a trucking company to haul all the wastewater off-site to a publicly owned treatment plant, prosecutors said.
Starting in the spring of 2015, Santich hired an excavation company to bury a pipe from the Old Dutch Mustard facility to discharge the acidic wastewater and stormwater in the general direction of the Souhegan River along an abandoned railroad bed, prosecutors said.
This discharge point was downstream of, and not detectible by, the continuous environmental monitoring required by the EPA and the state of New Hampshire.
'Santich directed Old Dutch Mustard employees to repeatedly pump acidic wastewater and stormwater through the underground pipe to the abandoned railroad bed. Santich also directed employees not to tell anyone about the pipe,' McCormack said in his statement.
In May 2023, state environmental inspectors 'discovered wastewater from the facility, with low pH and smelling of vinegar, flowing from a manmade ditch at the top of the hill on the Old Dutch Mustard property into the Souhegan River,' McCormack said.
In August 2023, EPA agents executed a search warrant at the Old Dutch Mustard facility and saw liquid that smelled like vinegar discharging from the end of the underground pipe into the ditch, prosecutors said.
The wastewater discharge had a low pH of 3.6. The agents then conducted a dye test.
'The dye discharged from the underground pipe at the top of the hill and flowed along the drainage ditch and down to the river,' McCormack said.
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