Part 1 of this article told the story of Oscar Mayer & Co. sloshing sludge into Starkweather Creek, the Yahara River, and Lake Monona from its beginnings in 1919 through 1960–while the City of Madison assisted or looked the other way.
Part II tells the story of what happened from 1960 through the “Environmental Decade”—Earth Day and the 1970s—and up to 1981, when Oscar Mayer was purchased by General Foods.
(All information and quotations in the article come from written sources, but citations were removed for ease of reading. If you are interested in sources for particular points, please contact Maria Powell: mariapowell@mejo.us)
1961-1981: Oscar Mayer polluted the neighborhood and the lakes—while becoming one of the richest families in America
By Maria C. Powell, PhD
Oscar Mayer grew and profited financially in the 1950s—according to one company history, the decade was “the height of success for the Oscar Mayer plant in Madison.” [1] In 1957, following the death of Oscar F. Mayer, company headquarters moved from Chicago to Madison.
By 1960, Oscar Mayer manufacturing included producing saran packaging and “vacuum-sealed, air-tight, full-view packages” for its products. It also developed the “wiener tunnel” or “hotdog highway”—a mile-long, continuous wiener-linking process in which meat pudding was placed into cellulose casings 55 feet in length that was twisted at regular intervals to form wieners, producing 36,000 wieners an hour. In the early 60s, the company had 19 distribution centers across the country. In 1964, the company reported a record $280 million in sales; by 1968, it reached $481 million.
Fish are “frightened” to death by Oscar Mayer’s cooling water
Given this incredible growth, Oscar Mayer generated increasing amounts of sludge and wastewaters that went to city storm and sanitary sewers and then waterways. In December 1957, 13,000 game and pan fish were killed in the Yahara River by Oscar Mayer’s 85-degree coolant water that emptied into the river at Johnson Street. Similar fish kills had occurred periodically over the previous five years. District Attorney Joseph Bloodgood, handling a “’civil action’ directed at the company by the state Conservation department and water pollution commission,” said approximately 2 million gallons of over 80 degree cooling water per day went into the Yahara River at that time. The coolant water, he said, “contained no pollutional material”—the fish were killed because they “were suddenly frightened from the cold 34 degree strata below the 85-degree water above.” Fishery biologists from the university and conservation department concurred.
Negotiations between the state and Oscar Mayer ensued. In March 1958, Bloodgood said they were “still in the talking stage” and that though the company had recognized its responsibility, “perhaps they could have moved a little faster, a little sooner.” His office wanted the fish kill stopped, and technically could sue the firm for as much as $28,000 in punitive damages for the dead fish” but “he did not want to go about it in any way that would cut down the plant’s operations because of its importance to the city economy.” (emphasis added)
Oscar Mayer’s engineer said experiments by the university “proved his firm was dumping no toxic materials into the river,” and outlined six methods for cooling the water in a way that wouldn’t kill fish. One of them was to divert the water to the Burke plant (and then into Starkweather and Lake Monona), but he admitted that this would “probably only change the location of the problem.” Another was to divert the water directly into Starkweather, which would cost $60,000. Members of the Yahara Fishermen’s Club noted that “the company had been aware of the problem several years without taking action” and demanded that the problem be fixed by the next fishing season.
Oscar Mayer faces increasing waste challenges, tries more “experiments”
In the early sixties, while MMSD began selling bonds in order to fund expansion, Oscar Mayer continued to experiment—as it had since the 1930s—with various strategies to better manage its sewage, offal and effluvia onsite and at Burke, which was at this point bordered on three sides by growing neighborhoods (the Truax landfill, airport and military base were to the north).
In late summer 1962, A. Stanford Johnson, the company’s sanitary engineer, announced that it had launched a $500,000 program to reduce waste in the plant and also expand its industrial waste treatment facilities, including the creation of “a new rotary distributor at the Burke plant” and pilot plant for studying industrial waste treatment “under the same conditions as full-scale operations.” City and national officials were very interested in the pilot plant project “as a means of studying methods for increasing the efficiency of existing facilities here and in other cities.”[2]
Johnson touted the company’s proactive approach to handling its wastes. “Our waste treatment program is more than adequate for our current needs,” he said, “but we always plan ahead up to 20 years to make sure that our disposal capacity keeps pace with the growth of the Oscar Mayer plant.” The “rotary distributor” at Burke, he explained, “sprays previously treated sewage over a bed of rock to facilitate biological action” and “the capacity can be increased as the need arises.” After this treatment at Burke, the waste was sent to Nine Springs before discharge to Badfish Creek. “No sewage is pumped into any of the lakes at any time,” he assured.
Starkweather Creek is a stinking drainage ditch; Board of Health directs Oscar Mayer to stop discharging wastes to it by 1968
Oscar Mayer’s promises and assurances were more than a little disingenuous, given that Burke plant effluents, and wastes from Oscar Mayer’s experiments continued to slosh into Starkweather Creek and then Lake Monona.
Starkweather deteriorated further, and city officials began discussing what to do about stormwater pollution into it and other city waters.[3] In 1961, as the city was considering covering “open stormwater ditches” in the city with concrete, an alder proposed covering Starkweather Creek as well. In 1963 the city biochemist Thayer Burnham announced a “twin education and inspection program…to prevent pollution of Madison’s lakes through its storm sewer system.” According to the State Journal, the city health department was concerned about keeping substances such as oil, grease, and cleaning solvents out of the storm sewer system, though Burnham assured that they were not harmful to the creek or fish. When “problems of this sort” were encountered, they were turned over to building inspection “which attempts to trace the substances back to their source.”
The next year, alders “decided to do battle with the ‘stinking green water’ of Starkweather Creek.” Adopting similar tactics used by lake activists decades before, one alder brought a “jar of green brackish water” from the creek to a council meeting. Another alder commented that “[t]he stench from this creek is something terrific.” The alders urged the city health department to do a study of the creek’s pollution problems.
A few days later, a citizen wrote in to the Capital Times about the state of the creek. “The filth and rubbish of all kinds that stays right in one place,” he wrote, “is something terrible to behold.” He noted that while Madison was rated as the third or fourth most beautiful place to live in the United States, “evidently they [those rating the cities] did not drive near Starkweather Creek.”
The Common Council recommended that the plan commission survey the creek to facilitate cleaning it out, and a study aided by the State Committee on Water Pollution was initiated on sources of nutrients entering the creek. With building pressure from citizens and alders, in 1964, the State Board of Health charged Oscar Mayer to “eliminate the discharge of organic wastes to Starkweather creek by July 1, 1968.”[4]
Serious and silly solutions proposed
More proposals to fix the Starkweather Creek problems were put forward. In early 1965 an alder seriously suggested that Starkweather should be flushed out with cooling water from Oscar Mayer. Oscar Mayer studied the possibility and concluded it would cost $60,000 and would not work because “the volume of water in the creek is not large enough to cool the water returned from the Mayer plant before it would enter Lake Monona.”
In 1967, the city removed 90 tons of debris from the creek. Boy Scouts did a cleanup day. Countless creek cleanups had been done for decades already—the newspapers were full of stories and photos of various groups dragging garbage and debris from the creek.
Some observant residents, having watched this sad saga play out for a long time, resorted to irony. In 1966, a Madison resident wrote this tongue-in-cheek letter to the editor to the Wisconsin State Journal with a solution—just create fish that thrive in pollution: “Sirs–Perhaps your readers would like to know about one of the latest research projects being carried out here at the University of Wisconsin. Unlike most state-financed plans, this one is designed to save the taxpayer money. For an estimated $500,000 we can do away with all of these anti-water pollution programs which will obviously cost millions. The idea is to produce a fish that will live and multiply in our polluted waters, rather than clean up our lakes and streams. By crossing a bullhead with a garfish, we already have a fish (called a bullfish, or is it a garhead) that will thrive in Badfish and Starkweather creeks. This is fine for the present, but we’ll need a fish, tougher yet, to adapt as pollution gets worse. We have borrowed a little corner of the Nine Springs treatment plant where we hope to develop a strain that will be able to utilize paper mill wastes, sewage effluent, cheese plant overflow and all the other nutrients that are increasing in our lakes and rivers. This fish will be able to point his head upstream, open and close his mouth and grow fat. Other plans are in the offing, but this should satisfy the next generation of fishermen.”
Madison officials blame Lake Monona, wind, and neighborhood lawns for “less than perfumy” Starkweather stench—and an alderman proposes “closing” the creek
As the city debated solutions, the Starkweather Creek stench grew even worse. A 1967 Capital Times story, “Creek Stench Irks Area Residents” began with a comment from a “housewife” who lived along the creek. “You’ll need a gas mask to go near it,” she warned. “Other housewives” chimed in with their complaints. “Clothes hung out on the line pick up such a smell, you have to wash them over again,” one said. “You have to breathe through your mouth around here. Some of us had a picnic last week, and we could hardly eat. The food even tasted bad.” One said her kids rarely go outside, and another added, “What’s the use of complaining. It’s been this way for years. Nobody’s going to do anything about it.”
Mayor Fesge and Dr. Charles Kincaid, Director of Public Health, explained that that the stench is caused by scum and algae that float up from Lake Monona. “If the Lake Monona shoreline could be cleaned up,” he said, “it would help the situation. Otherwise, it may be necessary to eventually close up the creek.” Madison Public Health Department’s Thayer Burnham explained further to the Wisconsin State Journal. “There’s not enough force in the stream to push the stuff back out” into the lake, he said. Kincaid attributed the “less than ‘perfumy’ situation to the swampy nature of the creek, runoff from neighborhood lawns, and of course the pesky algae…I don’t know if anything can be done effectively to solve this,” he opined. “I wish the wind was in another direction, if it came from the northeast we might not have this.”
Mayor Fesge ordered the Fire Department to flush out the “offending material” into the lake, and if that didn’t work, the city would resort to chemicals. Health officials said they were hopeful that “some day people will not have to hold their noses while enjoying parts of Madison’s lakes, but in the meantime a clothes pin will be required gear.”
Citizen accuses alderman of “haphazard thinking”—and asks him to stop polluters
In newspaper stories, Madison leaders and public health officials didn’t mention pollution from Oscar Mayer or other industries along the creek as potential pollution sources.
Citizens were not duped. Following these stories, a resident wrote an angry letter to the Capital Times, ridiculing the “haphazard thinking” of the alderman who proposed closing the creek. “Doesn’t Alderman Crary realize that Starkweather Creek itself is one of the biggest contributors to the present pollution of Lake Monona?” Why did Crary even report the Starkweather stench to public health officials “who have heard the same story for years,” he asked, adding that “both, if pressed, will admit that Starkweather carries a terrific load of industrial waste into the lake.”
He went on, ridiculing the proposed solutions. “To shut off such convenient arteries of waste disposal by closing up Starkweather Creek to Lake Monona is wishful thinking and Crary knows it,” he wrote. “He suggests the possibility of calling in the Fire Dept. to flush out the present mess in hopes the problem will disappear like a dream into Lake Monona. Such an act of shoving something you don’t want into the laps of someone else has been the main reason for the present day near destruction of much of our once beautiful waterways.”
Crary should look to the Yahara Fisherman’s Club, he proposed, which “has diligently fought the condition” of Starkweather for years, documenting “proof of deliberate dumping of industrial waste” into the creek. “So let’s get at it Alderman. You can’t close Starkweather Creek, thus half drowning your constituents each spring, but you can do a big job by fighting to put a stop to the polluters who are slowly but surely destroying not only the creek but the waters of Lake Monona as well.”
First Earth Day at Oscar Mayer: Spray chemical perfumes on the stench!
In 1967, the state Division of Resource Development, which later that year merged with the Conservation Department to form the Department of Natural Resources, ordered Oscar Mayer to put dikes around its Burke sludge lagoons and heighten irrigation fields “to prevent overflow into Starkweather Creek.” According to newspaper, Oscar Mayer did this to the Division’s satisfaction.[5]
By 1970, Oscar Mayer was the seventh-largest meat processing company in the country in terms of sales, and was well-established as a leading innovator in the meat packing and processing industry.[6]
The year 1970 also marked the beginning of the country’s “environmental decade,” with rising public concern about environmental pollution and ecological destruction. Increased awareness of these problems was prompted, in part, by Rachel Carson’s seminal book Silent Spring eight years earlier. Madison was at the epicenter of the environmental movement; many Earth Day (E-Day) presentations, marches, rallies, and much more happened all over the city in spring 1970. United States Senator Gaylord Nelson (D-Wis) was among the key political leaders who inspired the organizing.
In early April, next to an article announcing that Senator Nelson would be the headliner at the upcoming Madison E-Day rally, the Capital Times reported that Oscar Mayer would install a mile-long “deodorizing spray system” around the Burke treatment plant “in a major step aimed at reducing objectionable odors” in the neighborhood. The system would include “a network of 170 individual, atomizer-like sprayheads” that would cover the entire lagoon and filter areas with “a chemically-treated mist…designed to neutralize odors common to treatment plants.” The system, still in its development phase, would cost about $50 a day to operate.
Oscar Mayer’s sanitary engineer admitted that “we are not convinced that this system will solve the odor problem completely.” Nevertheless, he felt it would “result in improvements” and could eventually lead to “virtual elimination of odor.” Further, he assured that “the odors are not air pollutants in the usual sense and are not harmful to health.” He didn’t provide any information about the chemical makeup of the perfume mists.
According to the Wisconsin State Journal, Oscar Mayer hoped “to exchange the strong for the sweet,” which would “exchange the characteristic odor wafting off its East Side sewage treatment plant for that of new mown hay” and “lilac, cinnamon, carnation, citrus mint, and bouquet.” One odor at a time would be misted over the area, alternating each day.
Perfume doesn’t work and Oscar Mayer stench battles continue. What to do? More studies!
A few months after the perfume treatment began, the State Journal reported that Oscar Mayer was negotiating with the Madison Metropolitan Sewerage District to send its wastewater directly to the Nine Springs plant, which a company official said “would eliminate the odors which are now a problem at the Burke treatment plant…” The sewerage district said it had hired an engineering firm to study the plan, but it would take at least two or three years before the switch could be made.
Around this time, an alder called a meeting about Oscar Mayer and Burke stench and air pollution problems, and about forty residents attended. The community had also been complaining about smoke emissions from Oscar Mayer’s several coal burning boilers, and the Capital Community Citizens charged that the emissions were violating city ordinances. In May 1971, Oscar Mayer announced that it would convert one of its remaining coal burning boilers to natural gas (leaving two coal burners on the site). When a young man at the meeting suggested that the company should “use more expensive fuel to reduce air pollution,” an Oscar Mayer official said this would force the company out of business and advised the man to “go back to the University and take an economics class.” The man, in response, accused the company of being “too concerned about making profits.”
As for the effectiveness of the perfume experiments, the City Health Director Dr. C. K. Kincaid said the smell at the treatment lagoons had been “fierce” in the past, but after installation of new equipment–presumably referring to the perfume sprayers–“the fierce odor has not recurred.” But he then added that “[t]his doesn’t mean it smells good. Far from it. But I don’t think any sewage treatment can be completely odor-free.” Nevertheless, Oscar Mayer hired a consulting firm “to see if an odor-free treatment process can be found.”
(In 2018, some older residents we talked to in the Truax neighborhood—who played near the Burke treatment plant area as children in the 1960s and ’70s—shared memories of the disgusting smells, perfume experiments, and “grease balls” floating from the sewage effluent ditch.)
Odor abatement efforts fail (again)
In 1971, Oscar Mayer’s Madison plant was the company’s headquarters and also its largest facility. It went public that year.[7] Clearly the company was doing very well.
It was also producing more sewage sludge and other wastes than ever. The odors from the Burke plant apparently continued largely unabated despite the chemical spraying and other odor control efforts. In March 1971, the State Justice Department recommended that the DNR order Oscar Mayer “to take immediate steps toward odor abatement on Madison’s East Side”—to eliminate odors by the fall of the year. The public intervener from the Department suggested that a dome be placed over the wastewater filter beds, but Oscar Mayer “balked” at the expense. DNR also recommended that Oscar Mayer submit a report within six months on whether it would be feasible to send its wastes directly to the Nine Springs plant.
Neighbors complained to city officials about how stench from Burke affected their property values. Early the following year, Oscar Mayer announced that it would spend $440,000 on a new wastewater filtering treatment system on factory grounds that would dewater sludge, producing a dry, compressed cake that would go to landfills or to “a compost manufacturing company.” The company would also install a new trickle bed filtering system at Burke that it claimed would “eliminate practically all odors.” The “expanded spray system for neutralizing odors” (the perfume misting system), company officials said, had already reduced odors over the past year.
Four years after the Department of Justice’s order to abate odors—and over fifty years since neighbors began complaining about horrific odors from the Burke plant– it was clear that none of the many odor abatement strategies attempted at the Burke plant worked very well. A 1975 article in the Wisconsin State Journal reported that “attempts by the company to control odors…have failed or have been only partially successful.” The dewatering system reduced odors by 50 per cent, Oscar Mayer’s public relations person said, “but how does someone know when they’re smelling only half the bad odors they smelled before?”
So Oscar Mayer was considering investing a million dollars in yet another wastewater treatment system “that will be odorless to its neighbors on the city’s northeast side” and was undergoing an eight month, $25,000 pilot study of the system, called “Bio-Surf,” at the factory. If the system was effective, it would replace the Burke plant.
Oscar Mayer’s wastes pollute the whole Rock River watershed, not just Starkweather
Many decades after heated public debates began about the effects of Madison’s sewage on downstream lakes, and over a decade since most of the city’s sewage was diverted to the Nine Springs sewage plant, Oscar Mayer’s sewage and other wastes were still having significant impacts on all the Yahara Lakes and further downstream into the Rock River watershed.
In 1970, The Capital Times published a piece by a UW group called Engineers and Scientists for Social Responsibility titled “City, Area Sewage Exacts Heavy Toll on Rock River Drainage Basin. It included a large photo of Starkweather Creek with caption: “Starkweather Creek, which flows into Lake Monona on the East Side near Olbrich Park, shows signs of being unbalanced. The probable polluter is Oscar Mayer and Company, which has received a federal grant for a study of the problem.”[8] In 1971 a front page story appeared in the Cap Times—“Oscar Mayer Blamed for Sewage in Lakes.”
Residents of the lower lakes, as they had for decades, blamed Madison for pollution discharged from the Nine Springs plant into Badfish Creek, which flowed into the Rock River. “There is evidence of physical, chemical, and biological deterioration of the creek in our county since Madison started discharging effluent from its plant into it,” the Rock County environmental protection administrator said. Badfish Creek, downstream residents said, was “once a trout stream” but now “is badly polluted as a result” of the sewerage district’s pollution. DNR asked the sewerage district to remove nitrogen and phosphorus from effluents, but the district would be allowed to continue to discharge effluent into Badfish Creek.
“Bureaucratic buckpassing” as Oscar Mayer’s sewage poses “potential ecological disaster”
While downstream neighbors complained about the Nine Springs plant’s discharges into Badfish Creek and the Rock River, Oscar Mayer wanted to send all of its sewage to Nine Springs. Its sewage was clearly overwhelming city sewage systems. Raw and partially-treated sewage from the company was overflowing from a manhole in front of Oscar Mayer, then flowing into storm drains leading to the Yahara River. Waste water, the Cap Times reported, also “squeezes out of another manhole, south of the Burke Treatment Plant…and if the pressure is great enough, it blows the manhole right off” and then flows to a storm sewer into Starkweather Creek.
Waste water “squeezes out of another manhole…and if the pressure is great enough, it blows the manhole right off” and then flows to a storm sewer into Starkweather Creek.
City engineers knew about the problem as early as 1967, and had suggested steps to correct it, but action had been “forestalled by bureaucratic buckpassing.” A “City Hall source” was quoted: “Everyone has known about this for some time, and everyone expected someone else to do something about it.” The city asked Oscar Mayer to lessen the amount of wastewater it sent to the sewage system, but company officials felt the burden should be on the city, since the system served other parts of the Northeast side.[9]
Following the Capital Times expose, an alderman said he would ask the Madison Rivers and Lakes Commission to conduct “a full-scale investigation” into the sewage overflow problem, which he called “a potential ecological disaster.” The investigation would aim to make sure all necessary actions are taken at once to provide relief to the Burke outfall, “to find out why the problem reached the crisis stage without remedial action on the part of city, Madison Metropolitan Sewerage District or Oscar Mayer authorities,” and to implement programs to prevent it from happening again. “The Madison lakes system can ill afford abuses of this nature,” the alder said.
Madison city engineer Donald Theobald admitted that the sewage from the Burke outfall had occasionally overflowed for several years, but that the problem had become more severe recently, with overflows occurring several times a week. However, he said, the wastes were diluted by the time they reached the waterways, and “there isn’t really a great health problem being created. It’s the nutrients that are primarily my concern.” He blamed the problem on recent north side developments and “increased operations at Oscar Mayer.” The city and MMSD were building another sewer line to serve the area, which would be completed by the end of the year.[10]
Sewer rate battles as city grows
In the early 1970s, the DNR recommended expansion at the Nine Springs Sewage Plant within two years to deal with the city’s growth, which would increase residents’ sewer rates by two to three times. MMSD said this cost could increase even more if the state required them to remove phosphorus and nitrogen—and if Oscar Mayer decided to send its raw sewage there without first pre-treating it at Burke, which would require a bigger Nine Springs expansion.[11]
Battles ensued about who would pay for the sewer plant expansions, and how much. In 1973, Alderman Thomas Parker introduced a proposal to exempt Oscar Mayer from the revised sewer rates. The Capital Times reported that “the company, in Parker’s 17th District, reportedly has been lobbying heavily against the rate changes, which would end the present discount enjoyed by high-volume users and charge them the same rate as homeowners pay.” The company had asked Parker to introduce the proposal, which would base rates on how much sewage a customer generates and would not apply to pre-treated industrial wastes.
Parker, arguing on behalf of Oscar Mayer, said Oscar Mayer’s wastes, because they are pre-treated at Burke, need “minimal” treatment at MMSD. “I think we have to give support to the businesses that are within the city. Oscar Mayer is the largest employer in Madison and has done an exceptionally good job with trying to be a good neighbor. If we and the people of Madison want this type of industry to stay here, then I think we have to look their way somewhat and try to help them as much as we can,” he told the Capital Times.
Oscar Mayer uses a “subtle form of blackmail” to lobby for lower sewer rates
Oscar Mayer’s regional manager, meanwhile, sent a letter to the Madison Rivers and Lakes Commission, arguing that the proposed rates would double the company’s sewer costs by 1976. The new rate structure “would result in our paying what we consider excessive charges for wastewater treatment, would substantially increase our cost of doing business in Madison, and would put us at a disadvantage in competition with meat processors in other cities,” he wrote.
One alderman, a Rivers and Lakes Commission member who had played a leading role in developing the new rate structure, called Oscar Mayer’s letter “a subtle form of blackmail.” The new structure, he said, “will make the rates equitable for everyone concerned and stop the spiraling increases that have faced the taxpayer year after year.” He pointed out that Oscar Mayer’s ongoing lobbying was unique, noting that it was “the only one large user” that “has seen fit to continually lobby and attempt to thwart the intention of this proposal.” Homeowners, he said, had already been paying “more than their share” for sewage treatment “to make up for underpayment by high volume producers” and if Oscar Mayer’s proposal was accepted, “it would raise the average homeowner’s bill at least 25 per cent over what would otherwise be needed.”
About a month later, the Board of Estimates recommended a new sewer charge that would reduce sewage rates for Oscar Mayer, at that point “the city’s highest volume effluent producer,” by giving the company a special discount” for pre-treating its wastes at Burke. This deal would save Oscar Mayer about $90,0000 per year, but meant that residential customers would pay more.
Oscar Mayer filed a complaint to the Public Service Commission (PSC) for this “flat” sewage rate structure, which would keep their rates as low as possible. It’s unclear what happened in the next four years, but in 1977 the State Journal reported that the Public Service Commission (PSC) ruled in favor of Oscar Mayer.
Creation of EPA in 1970 led to ramping up of local, state environmental regulations
After the U.S. EPA was created in 1970, several new and ramped-up water quality regulations were created, including the 1972 Water Pollution Control Act, which directed the EPA to set up a broad program to eliminate water pollution. Among the “interim goals” of the Clean Water Act were to have “fishable and swimmable” waters by 1983 and to eliminate all discharges of pollutants to navigable waters by 1985.
To meet these goals, the 1972 Act prompted the creation of National Pollution Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permits. In 1974, Wisconsin also published Chapter NR 283, administrative rules that gave the DNR authority to administer the NPDES program through the Wisconsin Pollution Discharge Elimination System (WPDES). Two of the three goals outlined in NR 283 were the same as the interim goals of the Clean Water Act; the third was specific to Wisconsin: “It is also the policy of the state of Wisconsin that the discharge of toxic pollutants in toxic amounts be prohibited.”
That year, water quality standards for Wisconsin rivers and lakes were approved by the EPA to complement other provisions of the new federal-state water pollution control program, which included limits for industrial and municipal waste discharges into navigable waters–for dissolved oxygen, bacteria, temperature, relative acidity, and “other characteristics in bodies of water classified as public water supplies, trout streams and recreational waters.” In addition, the standards required that “where possible, all Wisconsin waters be raised to a level of quality good enough for safe recreation and the propagation of fish and other wildlife.”
In addition to passing the Clean Water and Clean Air Acts in the early 1970s, Congress passed the Safe Drinking Water Act in 1974 and the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) in 1976, which gave EPA authority to require reporting, record-keeping, testing requirements, and restrictions related to chemical substances. The Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) was passed in 1976 and the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act (CERCLA, commonly known as “Superfund”) in 1980. The goals of RCRA and CERCLA were to require responsible parties to investigate, clean up, and properly dispose of hazardous substances.
City of Madison General Ordinance on Water Pollution Control
The City of Madison also developed local water quality regulations in the 1970s. On June 4, 1975, a public notice of Madison General Ordinance (MGO) 7.46 (Water Pollution Control) appeared in the Wisconsin State Journal. “This Ordinance is designed to prevent polluting or spilled material from reaching lakes or streams where it can create a hazard to health, a nuisance or produce ecological damage and to assess responsibility and costs of clean up to the responsible party.” “It shall be unlawful for any person, firm or corporation to release, discharge, or permit the escape of domestic sewage, industrial wastes or any potential polluting substances into the waters of Lakes Mendota, Monona, Wingra or any part of Lake Waubesa adjacent to the boundaries of the City of Madison, or into any stream within the jurisdiction of the City of Madison, or into any street, sewer, ditch or drainage way leading into any lake or stream, or to permit the same to be so discharged to the ground surface.” (emphasis added)
Potentially polluting substances included, but were “not limited to” fuel oil, gasoline, solvents, industrial liquids or fluids, milk, grease trap and septic tank wastes, sewage sludge, sanitary sewer wastes, storm sewer catch-basin wastes, oil or petroleum wastes. Responsible parties who discharged such spill material, the ordinance said, “shall immediately clean up any such spilled material to prevent its becoming a hazard to health or safety or directly or indirectly causing the pollution to the lakes and streams under the jurisdiction of the City of Madison.”
Spills were to be immediately reported to the Madison Police Department, which would direct reports to the proper agency, and the responsible party (or parties) would be held financially responsible for the cost of cleanup. Enforcement was up to the Director of Public Health (or his/her designee) and the penalty could be up to $500 a day for failure to comply, with each day of violation a separate offense.[12]
Oscar Mayer studied ways to reduce wastes–but ultimately concluded that it was too expensive
Given these environmental regulatory developments, Oscar Mayer was under increasing pressure from local, state and federal regulators to reduce the amounts of pollutants it discharged to the sewage plant and into waterways.
In this context, two Oscar Mayer engineers and two University of Wisconsin engineers collaborated on a project to assess and reduce pollutants in company’s wastewater, and in December 1976 they published a paper that they had presented at the “Proceedings of the Seventh National Symposium on Food Processing Wastes,” in Atlanta Georgia, sponsored by the U.S. EPA. At the conference, EPA informed food processing industries that they would need to “develop cost effective waste management systems” to comply with 1983 water quality requirements.[13]
“The Madison plant includes a modern meat processing plant, spice processing, and plastic film production areas as well as a hog kill rated at 1,000 head/hour and an 80 head/hour beef kill…”
Oscar Mayer’s 1976 proceedings paper described the processes at the factory at that time: “The Madison plant includes a modern meat processing plant, spice processing, and plastic film production areas as well as a hog kill rated at 1,000 head/hour and an 80 head/hour beef kill… Seventy-five percent of the water used is from the Company’s own wells. Wastewater at this plant is segregated. Clear water drainage from roofs and parking lots, water used for cooling plastic extruders, etc., is discharged to the city storm sewers. Sanitary sewage discharges directly to the Madison Sewerage System. Manure water (wastewater from the stockyards, stomach dumper, dehairing machine, and scald tank) is screened to remove the large solids, settled to remove grit, and pumped to an Oscar Mayer & Co. operated wastewater treatment site for biological treatment. The plant greasewater system collects the wastewater from all of the floor drains and processes throughout the entire plant. Greasewater is separately treated by settling and dissolved air flotation, and is then combined with the manure water for biological treatment (two stage trickling filter). The effluent from biological treatment is discharged to a Madison Metropolitan Sewerage District interceptor sewer. Sludge is dewatered by vacuum filter.”
The “Oscar Mayer & Co. operated wastewater treatment site for biological treatment” referred to in the paper was the Burke sewage plant. In sum, “manure water,” “greasewater” and “wastewater from all of the floor drains and processes throughout the entire plant” went to the Burke treatment site, which sent its effluents to the Nine Springs plant. Overflow from the Burke plant also went to Starkweather Creek via a ditch—and presumably, as it had been for decades already, at least some waste sludge was still spread onto land around the plant, right next to Starkweather Creek.
The conference paper included tables outlining the large amounts of solids, total volatile solids, suspended solids, grease, nitrogen, and BOD (biological oxygen demand) discharged via the wastewater pipes to Burke and/or the Nine Springs treatment plant. Various adjustments were made to find ways to reduce the amounts of wastes produced, but given limitations of the old plant’s physical capacities, and the amount of labor needed to change processes, the engineers concluded that it would be too expensive: “There is no argument that there is a need in the meat packing industry to conserve water and reduce pollutional loadings in wastewater…It is important that any changes which are made to reduce water use or pollutional loading be done without increasing human labor. At the present time, it is less expensive to pay the extra surcharge cost for over a ton of BOD rather than add one man day of labor to a process.”
Oscar Mayer was doing financially better than ever, but suddenly ended hog slaughter
Early in 1977, Oscar G. Mayer, the 62-year old grandson of the company’s founder, announced his retirement (though he would stay on the Oscar Mayer board). At that time, Oscar Mayer reported the highest first quarter income in the company’s history, and the company’s CEO P. Goff Beach said it was due in part to an ample supply of hogs and substantial increase in sales of processed meats.
Later that year, surprisingly, Oscar Mayer announced that it would end its hog slaughtering operations (dairy cow slaughtering would continue). State Agriculture Secretary Gary Rohde explained in the Wisconsin State Journal that the company made the decision because of “the declining supply of hogs in Wisconsin—in addition to the costs of new slaughtering facilities and environmental pollution.” He raised concerns about job losses (200 jobs would be cut) and effects on local hog farmers. A local farmer added that “he believed the Oscar Mayer decision also came because the plant was surrounded by the city and the company would continue to be plagued by odor and other problems.”[14]
In February 1978, a long Wisconsin State Journal article about planned changes at Oscar Mayer said in addition to shutting down the daily slaughter of 7,000 hogs, the company was looking for other places to site a new meat-packing plant, and would further diversity into food-related manufacturing. Contradicting company statements in 1977, the new president said “It’s common in business to end things not going well and to add things that are productive”—and closing the hog slaughter operation would improve the company’s efficiency and productivity in other areas. Meat would be shipped by train and truck from the company’s Iowa and Illinois plants to Oscar Mayer to be made into meat products.
Challenges meeting new regulations, Oscar Mayer stops using Burke plant
Tellingly, however, the paper also reported that “Besides the decline in hog numbers, company officials cite the obsolete Madison slaughter plant and tougher pollution and odor-control standards as reasons for closing down the operation.” An article later that year, similarly, cited “increasing difficulty of coping with environmental, odor, and energy problems” as reasons. “Phasing out the hog slaughtering operations,” the State Journal also reported, “will reduce the amount of waste water sent to the company’s sewage treatment plant and decrease the odor problem in the area surrounding the plant.”
Though it’s unclear, evidence suggests that the DNR asked that the Burke plant be shut down around this time.[15] Presumably following from this request, the company stopped using the Burke plant in 1978, after which it performed secondary treatment at the site before sending wastes to the Nine Springs plant.
Oscar Mayer was facing other environmental challenges in addition to the sewage disposal problems. It produced nearly all of its own energy onsite (burning coal and natural gas) and was facing increasing regulatory scrutiny about its air pollution levels. After Madison’s eastside was deemed in non-attainment for sulfur dioxide and particulates, DNR and the Dane County Regional Planning Commission began monitoring Oscar Mayer’s air emissions as part of a study to help meet federal air quality standards by 1983. Oscar Mayer’s regional manager told the State Journal that the company would fight–“to the bitter end”– DNR’s charges that it was responsible for the non-attainment findings.
The End of an Era: General Foods purchases Oscar Mayer
In 1981, the Wisconsin State Journal announced that negotiations were pending to sell Oscar Mayer to General Foods Corp of White Plains, New York for $464 million dollars—one of the largest (if not the largest) single acquisitions for General Foods since that corporation’s founding in 1920. At that time, Oscar Mayer was the country’s third largest food company and its largest producer of lunch meats. It was the top private employer in the Madison area. The Madison plant had grown to nearly two million square feet in size and, the company claimed, was the largest single-site meat processing plant in the world.
The reasons for the sale were unclear—and apparently took many employees and investors by surprise. Some speculated that a worker strike in 1979 caused a rift in the Mayer family, while others thought maybe “the company had simply become too large for one family to manage.”
It’s not clear whether or not Oscar Mayer’s challenges dealing with sewage wastes and increasingly stringent environmental regulations influenced its decision to sell. Either way, local news about the sale didn’t mention the company’s environmental challenges. It was described as a “win-win” or “friendly acquisition.” Oscar Mayer’s vice president said “we feel no desire to sell the business…we are under no compulsion to sell. But General Foods is an excellent company. We feel they have a lot to offer us, and we think we have a lot to offer them.” A New York City brokerage firm analyst cited by the State Journal shared a slightly different take: “Oscar Mayer had run out of steam recently and their business had plateaued. What they needed was more money and marketing know-how, both of which General Foods can provide.” Oscar Mayer stocks zoomed upwards after the announcement of the sale, which was finalized a few months later.
In 1983, the Oscar Mayer family, worth $200 million, was listed among the top 400 richest families in the country in the Forbes Magazine rankings.
(c) 2021 Maria C. Powell
TO BE CONTINUED…
What did Oscar Mayer & Company leave behind?
By 1981, when it sold out to General Foods, Oscar Mayer & Company had discharged not only fertilizing sewage wastes, but countless pounds of persistent toxic chemicals, including pesticides, PCBs, chlorinated and fluorinated compounds into Starkweather Creek, Lake Monona and through all the Yahara Lakes. Some of these wastes were spread at the Burke property on Madison’s north side. What did the powers-that-be do about this? Did our regulations fix it? Was the community aware of the pollution all around and beneath them?
See Part III… (coming soon)
Back to Part 1
[1] By 1954, about one third of Madison’s industrial workforce was employed by Oscar Mayer, which amounted to about 4,000 people. In 1950, the “Slice-Pak” was introduced, which is still used today and known as “Serve ‘n Seal.” This was the industry’s first vacuum-sealed package for meat products. In 1967, the company developed a rigid form of the “Serv ‘N Seal” package for luncheon meats and larger quantities of select meats for easier refrigerator storage. (Winterhalter, 2019)
[2] In 1966 (according to a 1996 Wisconsin State Journal article), Oscar G. Mayer Jr. was elected chairman of Scientific Protein Laboratories in Waunakee “to manufacture pharmaceutical and chemical products from byproducts of processing operations.” This may have been related to efforts to reduce animal wastes from the factory’s processes. Another article says SPL was created in 1976; it’s not clear which one is correct.
[3] Around this time, the city began making plans to develop the Worthington neighborhood along the creek.
[4] The Truax military base also continued to cause Starkweather creek pollution. In 1967, the Madison Police traced an old slick to Truax Field that stretched all the way to Milwaukee Street and “saturated the feathers of a number of wild ducks that make their home on the creek.” Apparently about 2,500 gallons of fuel oil leaked from a tank doing repair of an oil burner at the base. City biochemist Thayer Burnham with the City Health Department said “little or none of the oil got into Lake Monona…the biggest share of the oil was caught in the Truax drainage system and in vegetation along the creek to the north.”
[5] The WDNR was created through the 1967 merger of two Wisconsin state agencies: The Conservation Department and The Department of Resource Development. This merger was designed to reduce the number of agencies and streamline operations. The governor at the time was Warren P. Knowles.See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wisconsin_Department_of_Natural_Resources
[6] The company also employed 10,800 people nationwide and operated seven major plants and 36 distribution centers.
[7] Oscar Mayer had other plants located in Davenport, Iowa; Los Angeles; Philadelphia; Perry, Iowa; Beardstown, Illinois; and Nashville. By the end of the decade, Oscar Mayer had acquired Clausen Pickle Company, Louis Rich, Inc., and Chef’s Pantry, Inc., in an effort to diversify its product lineup (Winterhalter, 2019).
[8] The article referred to a 1962-1963 Rock River Drainage Basin Report that led to pollution abatement orders to Oscar Mayer in 1964, that it said it had complied with. Another survey had been done in 1969, but had not been published yet
[9] Another problem was that the city had encouraged industrial and commercial development at Truax Field, which a 1967 engineering report warned would “increase the problem now existing on the Burke outfall.” A city insider said “There is a big bombshell here. It is the implicit suggestion that building should be held up until we get some relief in the sewer situation. But I doubt that you’ll get anyone willing to recommend publicly that development of the Truax Air Park be delayed.”
[10] Opponents of the new sewer line argued that it would attract development and urban sprawl. Theobald said “You have to weight the increase in urban sprawl against the benefits of keeping effluent out of the Yahara River and the lakes.”
[11] The DNR also asked MMSD to stop storing its sludge at lagoons near Nine Springs Creek, after sludge dikes broke in 1970, releasing ammonia-rich effluent into waterways and causing a huge fish kill. The DNR wanted the district to explore other options of sewage disposal, but which option was best would depend on whether or not MMSD continued to accept pre-treated Oscar Mayer wastes.
[12] MGO 7.46 still exists but was slightly revised in 1998. Among other changes, the fines were increased to “not less than fifty dollars ($50) no more than two thousand dollars ($2000)” for each day of violation. An ordinance, MGO 7.47, “Regulations of Discharge of Non-Stormwater” was also created in 1998 to specific effluent quality requirements.
[13] The Clean Water Act called for waste dischargers to install the “best practicable” treatment equipment of 1977, including secondary or two-state, treatment for community sewage and “best available” equipment by 1983, with the goal of “zero-discharge” of objectionable fluids by 1984.
[14] Oscar Mayer also had to find a new place to put its garbage because in 1977 the city’s Sycamore landfill, where it sent some of its trash, was “virtually overflowing” and couldn’t take any more garbage. A new county landfill was planned in Verona, but was facing some community opposition and a lawsuit so Oscar Mayer had to find an alternate site until that was resolved.
[15] An agenda item on a May 1977 Madison Metropolitan Sewerage District Commission agenda said “An Oscar Mayer & Co letter to the Wisconsin DNR in regard to the cessation of use of the Burke Plant and the construction of a secondary treatment plant on their lands was read.”
