Aerial of the Pentagon, the Department of Defense headquarters in Arlington, Virginia. (Photo: Pentagon building via Shutterstock)
Advocacy group Environment America has “crunched the numbers” in an effort to reveal who the largest polluters of American waterways are. The culprits that crack the top-15 list may very well surprise you.
If you ask people on the street who America’s biggest water polluter is, for many, oil Goliaths like Exxon or Chevron might be first to come to mind – but not by a long shot would either of those be the correct answer.
AK Steel Holding Corp took the slimy grimy first-place prize, with transnational mega meat marketer Tyson Foods coming in a very close second. Two oil companies, Phillips 66 and ExxonMobil, did make the top-15 – but only in 13th and 15th places respectively.
Interestingly, nearly half the entities on the list were food and meat producers, but it’s the third-place finisher that’s been raising some eyebrows as well.
According to the analysis, the US government, and specifically the Department of Defense (DOD), is the third largest water polluter in America, having dumped some 63,335,653 pounds of poison into waterways from 2010-2014.
The data was compiled using numbers from the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Toxic Release Inventory (TRI) program. According to EPA’s website, “TRI tracks the management of certain toxic chemicals that may pose a threat to human health and the environment. US facilities in different industry sectors must report annually how much of each chemical is released to the environment.”
Environment America Analysis of EPA Toxic Inventory Release Program.