Press Releases
NORTHSHORE COMPANY PLEADS GUILTY TO FEDERAL ENVIRONMENTAL OFFENSE
April 3, 2008
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
M & N FOODS, INC., a company, located in Lacombe, Louisiana, pled guilty today before Federal Judge Stanwood R. Duval, Jr. to an environmental crime for failure to file reports for over 2 years with the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality as required by its permit, announced U. S. Attorney Jim Letten today.
M & N FOODS, which manufactured spaghetti sauce and salad dressing for retail sale, admitted today that Federal and state law required it to have a permit before discharging food waste generated during the cooking process and that its LDEQ permit required that samples be taken every six months of the food-waste and that the results be sent to LDEQ in reports called Discharge Monitoring Reports (DMRs). On November 28, 2005, LDEQ inspected the Facility and determined that M & N FOODS had not sampled, analyzed, nor forwarded DMR’s to LDEQ for the monitoring periods of 2003, 2004 and the first half of 2005.
The government filed a Bill of Information charging M & N with the misdemeanor clean water act violation on April 2, 2008.
Warren Amburn, Special Agent in Charge of EPA Criminal Investigation Division's Dallas Area Office stated:
"M & N Foods tried to conceal the fact that its wastewater discharges contained pollutants that are harmful to our waters. Local governments need accurate data in order to protect citizens and the environment."
This case was investigated by the United States Environmental Protection Agency and was prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorney Dorothy Manning Taylor.
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