FACT SHEET:
Clean Air Act Settlement With Cargill, Inc.

Over the past several years, the Justice Department and EPA have taken an industry-wide approach to environmental law enforcement, by targeting industries with significant compliance problems, including those that have been major sources of air pollution. A chief component of these enforcement actions is compelling companies in violation of the law to install state-of-the-art pollution controls and to build new facilities with controls in place. Recent successes include major settlement agreements with the wood products industry, refineries, and coal utilities sectors. With today’s landmark Clean Air Act settlement with grain industry giant Cargill, Inc., 81 percent of uncontrolled ethanol production capacity-those facilities without controls already in place-will now be under federal consent decrees.

• Cargill, one of the nation’s largest producers of corn sweeteners, is also a producer of domestic vegetable oils and fuel-grade ethanol. As a result of today’s settlement agreement, Cargill will implement system-wide environmental improvements at its 27 plants nationwide. New ethanol plants are now being constructed with the required air pollution controls as a result of this initiative.
• Today’s settlement is the result of a joint federal and multi-state enforcement effort with the following states and counties signing onto the consent decree: Alabama; Georgia; Indiana; Illinois; Iowa; Missouri; Nebraska; North Carolina; North Dakota; and Ohio, as well as Polk, Iowa; Linn, Iowa; Memphis and Shelby County, Tennessee; and Montgomery County, Ohio.
• Today’s consent decree builds on past success with other members of the grain industry, including: the 2002 settlements with 12 Minnesota ethanol dry mills; the 2003 settlement with Archer Daniels Midland; a recent federal settlement with Ace Ethanol in Wisconsin; a settlement with U.S. Energy in Kansas; a settlement with Golden Triangle in Missouri; and this week’s settlement with AGP Corn Processing, Inc. in Nebraska.
• Cargill will pay $1.6 million, which will be divided between the federal government and states. Cargill will spend an estimated $130 million over a 10-year period to implement the entire injunctive relief package, which includes an estimated $60 million on capital improvements, like air pollution control equipment.
• Under the settlement, Cargill will implement broad sweeping environmental improvements at plants nationwide that will result in a reduction of at least 24,950 tons of actual air pollution a year.
  • Volatile Organic Compound (VOC’s) emissions will be reduced by 10,450 tons per year-the equivalent to taking 1.16 million cars off the road;
  • Nitrogen Oxide (NOx) emissions will be reduced by 1350 tons per year-the equivalent to taking 1.125 million cars off the road;
  • Carbon Monoxide (CO) emissions will be reduced by 10,900 tons per year-the equivalent to taking 157,797 cars off the road; and
  • Sulfur Dioxide (SO2) emissions will be reduced by 2250 tons per year (Cars are not a significant source of SO2).

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