Citizen Suit Held Tyson Foods Liable for 43 Clean Water Act Violations in Carroll County

In March 1987, more than a hundred families living along Dry Creek in Carroll County, Arkansas, filed a federal citizen suit against Tyson Foods, Inc. and the City of Green Forest under Section 505 of the Clean Water Act. The plaintiffs alleged that Tyson's poultry processing plant in Green Forest had been channeling industrial wastewater into the city's publicly owned treatment works for years, and that polluted discharges from that system were reaching Dry Creek and Long Creek, both tributaries of the White River basin.

The discharge pattern traced back to at least November 1981. Tyson's plant generated large volumes of process wastewater as a byproduct of poultry slaughter and processing. That effluent flowed to the city-run facility, which received and treated the industrial loads. For the families who owned property along the affected waterways, the result was years of degraded water quality and losses tied to their land.

By the time the second amended complaint was filed in September 1988, approximately 106 Carroll County residents had joined as plaintiffs. The case proceeded to a six-week jury trial in federal court. The jury had to separate the conduct of two defendants: the industrial discharger and the municipal operator of the treatment works.

On June 19, 1989, the jury returned its verdict. It found Tyson Foods liable for 43 separate violations of the Clean Water Act committed since November 16, 1981. On the separate question of the city's role in Dry Creek discharges, the jury found in favor of Green Forest. The jury then awarded compensatory damages, including itemized real-property losses, to 40 of the named plaintiffs. Senior District Judge Oren Harris issued a written opinion on August 24, 1989, reported at 720 F. Supp. 132. Because the Act authorizes civil penalties up to $10,000 per day per violation, the court retained jurisdiction to assess statutory penalties against Tyson apart from the jury award.

Plaintiffs were represented at trial by a team of counsel that included the McMath firm. James Bruce McMath and Philip H. McMath appeared for McMath Law Firm, P.A., joined by co-counsel Samuel E. Ledbetter, then of Downing & Ledbetter and now a partner at McMath Woods, and James G. Lingle of Rogers, Arkansas.

The Eighth Circuit reviewed the judgment and, in a 1990 decision reported at 921 F.2d 1394, affirmed the case in part and reversed it in part. The published district court opinion does not specify the scope of that partial reversal.