DATE: Thursday, June 12, 1997               TAG: 9706120496

SECTION: BUSINESS                PAGE: D2   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS 

DATELINE: WASHINGTON                        LENGTH:   37 lines

MEATPACKER'S CASE ARGUED BY OFFICIALS

Virginia's top environmental official has blamed federal regulators for using a heavy-handed approach in handling pollution violations by Smithfield Foods Inc.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's lawsuit against the Virginia meatpacker may have been spawned by partisan politics, Virginia Secretary of Natural Resources Becky Norton Dunlop told a Senate committee Tuesday.

But Lois J. Schiffer, assistant U.S. attorney general, said the Justice Department's environmental section took the company to court after Virginia officials failed to stop its pollution of the Pagan River, a Chesapeake Bay tributary.

The dispute emerged in testimony before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, which conducted a hearing on federal-state relationships in enforcing environmental laws.

Dunlop said the EPA puts great emphasis on enforcement, rather than real improvement of air and water quality. ``I believe the government should be a helpful servant and not a fearful master,'' she told the panel.

But Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., said the Smithfield Foods case showed ``a willingness by Virginia to cooperate with this polluter.''

Last week, a federal judge in Norfolk ruled that Smithfield Foods can be fined under the federal Clean Water Act for 5,330 pollution violations.

U.S. District Judge Rebecca Beach Smith ruled that the company is liable for repeatedly discharging too much phosphorus into the Pagan River from 1991 to 1996, even though the state agreed to allow the discharges while Smithfield Foods improved its sewage treatment.

State officials are pursuing a separate case that accuses the company of record-keeping violations and discharging too much chlorine. KEYWORDS: LAWSUIT POLLUTION ENVIRONMENT

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