Lawsuits against Greenville chemical company raise environmental issues

Platte Chemical in Greenville is the defendant in a long-standing environmental lawsuit.

When Platte Chemical bought the Thompson-Hayward plant in Greenville in the early 1980’s, not a lot of people noticed. But as they expanded their operations, complaints began to pour in. In 2002, a number of Greenville residents who live near the plant filed a lawsuit. Seven years later, a trial is still far away. MPB’s Cari Gervin reports.

This is the way James Johnson remembers it.

“The fish were running up on the bank trying to get out of the water. I don’t know whether it was burning them or just what it was doing to ‘em, but they was running slap up the bank, trying to get out of it. And then they turned belly up in the ditch and in the bayou too, dead.”

Johnson is standing in his yard on Old Leland Road in Greenville. He points to a muddy drainage ditch that runs the length of his acreage. This is where the fish kill happened, he says, in March of 2001. Johnson gestures at his backyard, and the smokestack rising above it in the distance – the smokestack, he says, that is responsible. Platte Chemical.

Platte Chemical formulates insecticides, herbicides and fungicides for agricultural use. It was owned by corporate giant ConAgra for years and, just recently, it was sold to the Canadian company Agrium.

It was a leak from a caustic tank at Platte that caused the fish kill. Two months after that, police evacuated James Johnson and his neighbors from their homes due to a chemical reaction gone wrong. Since he bought his house in 1985, he says, there have been dead leaves and dead birds, horrible smells, unexplained rashes and incessant sinus problems.

In 2002, many residents filed four concurrent lawsuits against Platte. Again, James Johnson:

“It’s a pretty place out here. Was. And it’s still pretty to an extent. But it has no value because of Platte Chemical.”

But Leon Lohman begs to differ. Lohman is the plant manager at Platte, and he says that the plant has done nothing wrong. Yes, there was the fish kill, but that was the only truly severe incident, he says.

“We have had our issues with Department of Environmental Quality. We’ve owned up to them. We’re working with them, you know, to rectify the problems. We want to be a responsible steward of both health, safety and environmental affairs.”

It should be noted here that Lohman has only been the plant manager since January. When asked about the evacuation, for instance, he said he hadn’t known it had happened. He would not comment directly on the lawsuits. Attempts to speak with Platte’s legal team were directed back to Lohman.

But Platte has had its issues with the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality, or DEQ. In the past few years, there have been multiple incidences where the levels of zinc in the plant’s outfall have been higher than is permitted. Zinc can be toxic to aquatic life, especially in the soft water of the Delta.

Last summer the DEQ found traces of several herbicides and insecticides on blighted leaves on Old Leland Road. It fined Platte $500,000, but Platte refused to admit any wrongdoing.

Chris Wells, a lawyer at DEQ, explains: “Platte’s position was that the vegetation was distressed not because of herbicide but because of flooding. And it was plausible. Just as it’s plausible that the wind picked up herbicide dust at the plant and blew it across and stunted the growth of the trees.”

Then, last month, lawyers for the plaintiffs discovered a 2004 study that found DDT and Dieldrin, both long-banned, in the soil and groundwater on site at Platte. The study was conducted by a prospective buyer of the plant - that deal did not materialize.

“Platte has never handled any of those.” Platte manager Leon Lohman says the chemicals are in the soil from use in the 1950s and 60s, and, in any case, there is no way it could affect the city of Greenville’s water supply.

But residents like James Johnson says the years of exposure to the chemicals in the air, ground and water has taken an unimaginable toll.

“My first grandchild died stillborn, and it was all deformed. And we lay that on Platte.”

After seven years, the lawsuits are still in the discovery phase. No settlement offer has ever been made. For MPB News, I’m Cari Gervin in Oxford.