United States v. Old Dutch Mustard Company, Inc., d/b/a Pilgrim Foods Company, et al.

On April 10, 2026, a court sentenced Old Dutch Mustard Company, Inc., d/b/a Pilgrim Foods Company (Old Dutch), and company owner and president Charles Santich after a two-day sentencing hearing. Santich will serve 18 months’ incarceration, followed by one year of supervised release, and pay a $250,000 fine. The company will pay a $1.5 million fine and establish environmental compliance and ethics programs.

The defendants previously pleaded guilty to violating the Clean Water Act (CWA) (33 U.S.C. §§ 1311(a), 1319(c)(2)(A)). 

Due to a long history of CWA non-compliance beginning in the 1980s, Old Dutch Mustard has been subject to several enforcement actions by the U.S. EPA, the New Hampshire Department of Environmental Services (“NH DES”), and the New Hampshire Attorney General’s Office. As a result of these actions, EPA and NH DES have required continuous monitoring of an Unnamed Stream that flows underneath and in front of the facility, eventually flowing into the Souhegan River. Santich and his company sought to purposefully evade this monitoring.

Old Dutch manufactured vinegar and mustard products, generating acidic wastewater during the process. Much of this wastewater consisted of spilled or leaked vinegar, or discarded vinegar that did not meet specifications. Old Dutch did not have a permit to discharge process wastewater. Instead, it stored this wastewater in tanks, and a trucking company hauled one or two truckloads off-site daily to the Rochester Publicly Owned Treatment Works (POTW). Old Dutch paid the trucking company for transporting each load. A second wastewater stream consisted of stormwater that became acidic after flowing through areas of the facility (especially the tank farm) where vinegar had spilled. Old Dutch also paid the trucking company to haul this acidic stormwater to the POTW.

Santich reduced costs by ordering workers to discharge some of the wastewater to a manmade ditch formed by an abandoned railroad bed at the top of a hill behind the facility, from which the wastewater would flow into the Souhegan River. In May 2017, Santich hired an excavation company to extend an underground pipe to the top of the hill behind the facility. He then directed an employee to repeatedly pump wastewater through the underground pipe to the abandoned railroad bed. Once the process wastewater or contaminated stormwater discharged at the top of the hill, it flowed to the river. Old Dutch did not have an NPDES or any other permit to discharge pollutants into the river.

In March 2021, Santich directed the same excavation company to install a sump at the corner of the tank farm area to collect the acidic stormwater and pump it directly up the hill through the buried pipe. In late 2022, Santich hired the excavation company to clean out the undergrowth in the manmade ditch at the top of the hill and line it with riprap to better facilitate the flow of wastewater to the river.

On August 2, 2023, EPA agents executed a search warrant at the Old Dutch facility and witnessed this illegal activity. Agents observed liquid that smelled like vinegar discharging from the end of the underground pipe into the riprap-lined ditch. The wastewater discharge had a pH of 3.6. The agents then conducted a dye test starting at the sump outside the corner of the tank farm area. The dye discharged from the underground pipe at the top of the hill and flowed along the riprap-lined drainage ditch and down to the river.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Criminal Investigation Division conducted the investigation, with assistance from the New Hampshire Department of Environmental Services.