In our work with food and beverage plants, the first conversation about wastewater treatment is almost always about chemical cost vs performance. How can a facility reduce their spend on chemistry while meeting their KPIs?

But when you dig into a plant’s P&L to build the business case for a chemistry change, other areas start to stand out. Permit violations and non-compliance fees, sludge disposal, labor, production downtime, and even event equipment maintenance are all in-part tied to the chemistry program that a plant uses to treat its wastewater.

When you define cost-to-treat including these details—and can show measurable improvement in each—the case for a better chemistry program becomes much clearer.

With that in mind, I wanted to share what we’ve learned about compliance. Our team has put together a detailed report on F&B facilities by the category of products they produce, geography, and the types of violations triggering compliance costs.

Facility managers & operators will learn how their wastewater treatment stacks up.

Business leaders will learn how the details of wastewater treatment tie to the bottom line.

We’ll also share how chemistry can play a part in reducing or removing compliance issues from your plant’s P&L, and what that looks like in the facilities we’ve worked with.

Key points

• 1 in 4 facilities experienced compliance issues in the last 3 years
• 33% of violators are chronically noncompliant (8+ quarters out of 12)
• $142M in penalties were collected, with some paying as much $30M
• Understanding a facility’s compliance risk involves a complex mix of variables

Source: EPA ECHO data sets.

How often is compliance an issue?

According to EPA ECHO data, there are 9,761 food and beverage manufacturing facilities in the U.S. that hold permits under the Clean Water Act’s National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES).

25% of facilities had at least one wastewater violation in the last 12 quarters. When these violations are serious or unresolved, they can escalate into enforcement cases where the EPA or a state agency issues orders or settlements that may result in penalties.

33% of facilities with issues are chronically noncompliant, meaning they had violations in 8 or more of the last 12 quarters. The chart below shows the frequency of of noncompliance in F&B processors, grouping the number of facilities into the corresponding quarters of noncompliance.

Note: Not every F&B facility that manages wastewater will hold a discharge permit. Some are indirect dischargers, sending their treated wastewater to a municipal plant that holds a permit. These facilities cannot be included in the analysis. However, even indirect dischargers must maintain wastewater compliance within KPIs set by municipal partners. Violations incur similar compliance costs passed along from the permit holder.

Which types of producers are most often noncompliant?

We grouped producers into categories using NAICS and SIC codes to dig deeper. The chart below shows the number of facilities by category, and the frequency of violations that those facilities had in the last 12 quarters.