The owner of a New Hampshire mustard company has been sentenced to prison for orchestrating a years-long scheme to send polluted water from his facility into a nearby river.
Charles Santich, owner of the Old Dutch Mustard Company, was given an 18-month prison sentence while his company is being forced to pay $1.5 million for violating the Clean Water Act.
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The Greenville, New Hampshire facility, which makes Old Dutch brand vinegar and mustard products, generates acidic wastewater and stormwater. Without the necessary permit to discharge the polluted water, Old Dutch was required to store it in tanks and have a trucking company haul it away.
Instead, Santich in 2015 hired an excavation company to bury a pipe from the Old Dutch Mustard facility to discharge the acidic water in the general direction of the Souhegan River near an abandoned railroad bed. He made sure the discharge point was downstream of continuous environmental monitoring required by the EPA and state of New Hampshire, according to a Justice Department complaint.
Santich seemingly relished defying EPA rules and forced his employees to repeatedly pump acidic water toward the river while warning them not to tell anyone about the pipe.
The scheme continued until 2023 when state inspectors found wastewater with low pH and a vinegary smell flowing from a manmade ditch at the top of the hill on the Old Dutch Mustard property.
According to WCAX, Santich was submitting false documents to cover up his mustard mayhem that the court found caused environmental harm, possibly including a mercury fish consumption advisory in the area.
The enforcement action comes after decades of Clean Water Act non-compliance at Old Dutch. Frankly, the whole thing stinks. But it’s good to see the law finally "ketchup" with this polluter.
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