A former production manager at a chemical processing company in Navassa pleaded guilty earlier this week to knowingly discharging pollutants into the Cape Fear River.
Barry Darnell White, 63, purposely discharged tens of thousands of gallons of tert-butyl alcohol, or BTOH, and other pollutants directly into the river when he was employed by American Distillation Inc., according to a U.S. Attorney’s Office release.
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“Rather than dispose of hazardous pollutants legally, this Navassa industrial site hooked a hose to a quarter-million-gallon waste tank, brazenly discharging over 50,000 gallons of pollutants into the Cape Fear River over a four-year period,” U.S. Attorney Michael F. Easley, Jr. said in a release. “We won’t let corporate polluters cut corners for cash while the rest of us bear the costs. Not in North Carolina, not on the Cape Fear River, and certainly not in Navassa, where descendants of the Gullah-Geeche people have faced more than their share of environmental calamities. We’ll fight to protect our resources and our communities – until justice rolls on like a river.”
American Distillation Inc. has not been charged or admitted wrongdoing, according to the release.
The chemical processing company has been operating off the bank of the Cape Fear River in Navassa since the early 1990s. Operations include blending and marketing industrial grade ethyl alcohol and providing services such as distillation, dehydration, reaction, carbon treating, and blending various chemicals and products from partners across the country.
ADI accepts large quantities of tert-butyl alcohol, a highly flammable, colorless oily liquid with a sharp alcohol odor, from its customer base then distills the alcohol into a usable product for its customers.
As production manager, White oversaw the movement of chemicals from tank to tank and tanker trucks in and out of ADI’s facilities. He supervised a number of employees and reported directly to ADI’s corporate management, according to the release.
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Under its federally issued permit, ADI was required to properly dispose of the alcohol byproduct. But beginning in late 2019 through to early 2024, the company accepted more of that and other chemicals from its customers “than it could legally and safely process and remove,” according to the release.
“To ensure operations did not come to a halt and realize maximum profit, ADI released TBOH byproduct from Tank 14 causing it to flow into the Cape Fear River,” the release states. “ADI management had informed some of its employees that if operations came to a halt, the company would suffer serious financial harm, potentially including dissolution.”
Between 2020 and 2024, White connected a hose to a Tank 14 and released about 2,500 gallons of liquid wastewater that flowed into a pipe and drained to an outfall directly to the Cape Fear anywhere from five to six times each, according to the release.
“Our natural resources must be protected from those who blatantly disregard environmental laws by illegally discharging industrial waste into US waters,” Leslie Carroll, Assistant Special Agent in Charge of the Environmental Protection Agency’s criminal enforcement program in North Carolina stated in the release. “The defendant in this case discharged wastewater containing Tert-Butyl Alcohol and other chemicals into the Cape Fear River on multiple occasions since at least 2020. Today’s guilty plea demonstrates that EPA and its partners are committed to protecting our natural resources and the communities that rely upon them.”
