The Tyson Foods plant in Glen Allen closed in 2023. (Photo by Chad Williams)
In the five years prior to its closing in 2023, the Tyson Foods factory in Glen Allen dumped nearly 5 million pounds of pollutants into an unnamed Hanover County creek. The pollution met federal standards. But those limits could soon change under new rules currently being considered by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
The findings come in a report released April 29 by the nonprofit Union of Concerned Scientists that looked at waste discharged at Tyson facilities across the nation from 2018 to 2022. Overall, about 371 million pounds of waste was released into waterways.
“The idea here was to look at kind of the massive hold a megacorporation like Tyson has on our food and farming system, but also its subsequent impact on the environment,” says study co-author Omanjana Goswami, an agricultural scientist.
According to the EPA, waste discharged at the Hanover County chicken processing plant in 2022 mostly consisted of suspended solids, as well as chloride, ammonia, phosphorus and zinc. These nutrients can fuel algal blooms that choke out underwater life and can harm humans and other land animals.
According to the 2022 report, Tyson treated all wastewater before it was released from the Glen Allen plant into the creek, which flows into the nearby Chickahominy River. The company in a statement says it “uses a robust management system to mitigate environmental risks and impact, and we strive to run our operations as responsible stewards of our natural resources. ... This report does not acknowledge our ongoing compliance with EPA regulations and certification by the [US] Water Alliance for our strong water management practices.”
The Glen Allen facility accounted for the bulk of the 5.2 million pounds of wastewater Tyson discharged in Virginia, according to the Concerned Scientists study. Its Eastern Shore plant in Temperanceville generated 282,644 pounds of pollutants, and 12,314 pounds came from operations in Amelia County. The Virginia totals represent 1% of the 371 million pounds of pollutants Tyson released nationally, more than half of which came from its facilities in Nebraska, Illinois and Missouri.
In recent years, the Glen Allen plant was cited just once for a violation in late 2022, related to the population of a water flea that helps scientists track effluent toxicity. But now the EPA is considering new limits on nitrogen and phosphorus releases that it says could cut wastewater discharge by 100 million pounds per year at about 850 of the nation’s 5,000 meat and poultry facilities. The Union of Concerned Scientists has testified in favor of the rules.
“The shocking thing,” says study co-author Stacy Woods, research director of the UCS food and environment program, “is that when Tyson dumped these over 370 million pounds of pollutants directly into our waterways over five years, they were pretty much following the rules. But we think that those rules definitely need to change.”
