Pennsylvania beer company Yuengling has agreed to install new pollution control measures at two breweries and pay a $2.8 million fine to settle a dispute with the federal government.
Regulators accused Yuengling of violating the Clear Water Act by dumping too much industrial waste into a municipal wastewater treatment facility.
{mosads}According to the Justice Department, Yuengling violated proper Clean Water Act permitting 141 times between 2008 and 2015 by dumping too much waste into the treatment plant.
“Yuengling is responsible for serious violations of its Clean Water Act pretreatment discharge limits, posing a potential risk to the Schuylkill River which provides drinking water to 1.5 million people,” Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regional administrator Shawn Garvin said in a statement.
As part of a settlement with the EPA and the Justice Department, Youngling said it would spend $7 million to improve environmental systems at two breweries near Pottsville, Pa. It will also pay a $2.8 million penalty.
A Yuengling executive told Lehigh Valley Live on Thursday that the company has already completed the environmental upgrades by building a wastewater treatment facility of its own. The facility started operating in March, an official told the paper, and the company is currently in compliance with the Clean Water Act.
The executive said the waste it discharged wasn’t dangerous to the public and contained mostly organic materials involved in the brewing process. The company blamed the dumping on higher-than-normal demand for its beer.
“We struggled at that point because we were producing a lot of beer out of an old plant with no treatment facility,” Wendy Yuengling, the company’s chief administrative officer, told the paper. “We were only in 18 states and we knew we’d continue to grow.”