NY man, mustard company plead guilty to polluting Souhegan River
Feb. 24—A New York man and a mustard and vinegar manufacturing company have pleaded guilty in federal court to discharging acidic water into the Souhegan River, federal officials said Monday.
Charles Santich, 59, of New York, and Old Dutch Mustard Co., Inc., doing business as Pilgrim Foods, Inc. ("Old Dutch Mustard") pleaded guilty to knowingly discharging a pollutant without a permit, Acting U.S. Attorney Jay McCormack and Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Adam Gufstafson of the Justice Department's Environment and Natural Resources Division said.
U.S. District Court Judge Landya McCafferty scheduled sentencing for June 23.
The Clean Water Act (CWA) prohibits the discharge of any pollutant into navigable waters of the United States without a National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System permit.
Federal prosecutors said Old Dutch Mustard has been subject to several enforcement actions by the EPA, the New Hampshire Department of Environmental Services (NHDES) and the New Hampshire Attorney General's Office due to a long history of CWA non-compliance dating back to the 1980s.
As a result of these actions, EPA and NHDES have required continuous monitoring of an unnamed brook that flows underneath and in front of the facility, eventually flowing into the Souhegan River — one of 19 rivers in the state designated as an important natural resource.
Charles Santich is the president and owner of Old Dutch Mustard, a New York corporation with a manufacturing facility in Greenville. The company manufactures vinegar and mustard products, which generate acidic wastewater.
In addition, stormwater flows through the property, including an outdoor area where the company stores their product in large tanks. Both the wastewater and stormwater at Old Dutch Mustard becomes acidic and is categorized as a pollutant under the CWA, and prosecutors say 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," federal prosecutors said in a statement. "Beginning 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.
"This discharge point was downstream of, and not detectible by, the continuous environmental monitoring required by the EPA and state of New Hampshire."
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