Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources
P.O. Box 7857
Madison, WI 53707-7857
JAMES E. DOYLE
ATTORNEY GENERAL
For More Information Contact:
Randy Romanski
608/266-1221
MADISON, WI – November 11, 2002
The Wisconsin Department of Justice has reached a settlement of an environmental lawsuit with Seneca Foods Corporation and four of its officials for allegedly violating state hazardous waste and hazardous substance spill laws at its canning facility in Janesville.
As part of the settlement, Seneca Foods has agreed to pay $240,000 in penalties and costs to resolve its liability for the violations. Seneca, one of the nation’s largest providers of canned and frozen vegetables, operates a canning facility in Janesville. The company has also agreed to undertake a comprehensive environmental audit of its operations and to take timely steps to ensure environmental compliance. In addition, the company has agreed to develop an environmental compliance program for its other facilities in Wisconsin located in Mayville, Cumberland, Clyman and Baraboo.
According to the Department of Justice, in early 1983, Seneca removed approximately one ton of DDT-containing pesticides from a Minnesota plant the company had closed and transported the material to its Janesville facility. The use, sale or distribution of DDT in Wisconsin has been prohibited since 1970. After the DDT had been moved to Janesville, Michael H. Haney, the president of Seneca’s Vegetable Division, Raymond E. Henschler, the director of agriculture of Seneca’s central division, and William A. Veith, a company agronomist, decided to bury the pesticides in a trench at the plant. The Department of Natural Resources (DNR) discovered the buried DDT in 1998. At DNR?s direction, Seneca removed and properly disposed of the material and took steps to clean up contaminated soils at the mill.
The company and one other official, Robert L. Henke, were later charged with unlawfully disposing of approximately two dozen broken, mercury-containing thermometers by burying them in concrete being poured for various construction projects at the plant since 1995. Waste mercury is considered a hazardous waste because it is a toxic chemical. The state alleged that the burial of the mercury-contaminated waste was a disposal of hazardous waste without a license. Seneca has since removed the concrete it believes may have contained waste thermometers and sent it to a mercury recycling operation for proper treatment and disposal.
The Department of Justice filed the lawsuit at the request of the DNR. Rock County Circuit Court Judge John W. Roethe approved the settlement this morning (Monday, November 11, 2002).
