Hulton VanTassel’s Three Rivers Waterkeeper settles landmark plastic pollution lawsuit
Tiny plastic pellets on a beach in Sri Lanka. Photo: Sören Funk / Unsplash
The following is an excerpt from the original Grist piece “This Pennsylvania settlement could set the standard for preventing tiny plastic pellet pollution”.
“When Heather Hulton VanTassel went looking for plastic pellets in the Ohio River in 2021, she was simply trying to establish a baseline level of contamination. A new plastics facility was being constructed nearby, and she wanted to be able to compare the prevalence of pellets — known as “nurdles” — before and after it went into operation. The “before” number would probably be low, she thought.
What she and her co-workers found, however, exceeded her expectations. “We were really shocked at the numbers we were seeing,” she told Grist.”
…“That finding became the catalyst for a legal battle that has just reached its conclusion. Three Rivers Waterkeeper and the nonprofit PennEnvironment reached a landmark settlement agreement with Styropek earlier this month, following a lawsuit they filed against the company in 2023 over its contamination of the Ohio River watershed.
The agreement, which also resolves a violation notice from the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection, requires Styropek to pay $2.6 million to remediate its plastic pollution, and to fund clean water projects across the state. But what makes the settlement effective, according to the plaintiffs, is not this initial penalty. It’s a requirement that Styropek must install technology to detect the release of any more plastic pellets from its facility in Monaca, Pennsylvania. If the technology finds even a single nurdle in the facility’s stormwater outfalls, the company will have to pay up.”
