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U.S. EPA settles water violations with Seven-Up Bottling's Sacramento, Calif. facility

Release Date: 7/11/2005
Contact Information: Dean Higuchi, 808-541-2711

Company will spend $135,000 on alternative fuel vehicles

SACRAMENTO - The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency today announced that it has reached a settlement agreement with the Seven-Up Bottling Co. to resolve storm water and wastewater violations of the federal Clean Water Act at its Sacramento facility.

The settlement calls for Seven-Up to pay a $19,500 fine and perform a supplemental environmental project, or SEP, that will directly benefit the Sacramento environment. The SEP will cost approximately $135,700.

For the SEP, Seven-Up has chosen to buy alternative fuel vehicles to replace the existing fleet of gasoline vehicles and propane forklifts used at its Sacramento plant on Land Avenue. The SEP will prevent air pollution from vehicle emissions and stormwater pollution from gasoline and oil leakage. By switching to electric forklifts, Seven-Up will reduce the amount of smog-forming nitrogen oxide by 900 pounds a year in the vicinity of its Sacramento facility.

A valuable tool in the agency's enforcement program, a SEP allows a violator to perform a project that benefits the environment as part of a settlement of an enforcement action in return for reduced monetary penalty that would otherwise apply.

"The EPA is encouraged to see Seven-Up taking an innovative approach to resolving this case though environmental stewardship," said Alexis Strauss, director of the Water Division in the EPA's Pacific Southwest Regional Office in San Francisco. "This approach will have both immediate and lasting benefit to the local community and the environment."

EPA was assisted in its investigations by the Central Valley Regional Water Quality Control Board, and the Sacramento County Sanitation District.

On Dec. 5, 2003, inspectors from the EPA, the regional water quality control board and the county visited Seven-Up's bottling plant in Sacramento and discovered inadequate storm water pollution controls and storm water pollution prevention plan, which are violations of the company's stormwater discharge permit. In addition, the industrial wastewater discharged by the plant into the county's sewer system was excessively acidic.

At the time, the Seven-Up was ordered by the EPA to implement a pH compliance plan for the industrial wastewater to the county sewer systems; update its stormwater pollution prevention and monitoring programs; complete a cleanup of the property within 30 days; inspect outdoor industrial areas at regular intervals for spills and; submit inspection logs to the EPA on a quarterly basis.

The company has been cooperative in complying with the EPA's order.

For more information, visit: https://www.epa.gov/ebtpages/watestormindustrialstormwater.html


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