DATE: Friday, August 8, 1997                TAG: 9708080649

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY SCOTT HARPER, STAFF WRITER 
                                            LENGTH:   66 lines

MEATPACKER HOOKS INTO SEWAGE LINES, A RELIEF TO RIVER SMITHFIELD FOODS STOPS DECADES-LONG PRACTICE OF DUMPING INTO PAGAN.

After decades of dumping hog wastes into the Pagan River - a practice that sparked protests, lawsuits and ecological damage - Smithfield Foods Inc. has officially ended its controversial disposal program.

At 4 p.m. Wednesday, a month ahead of schedule, the giant meatpacker completed a long-anticipated hookup with the Hampton Roads Sanitation District. From now on, Smithfield Foods will no longer pump into the Pagan any of the 3million gallons of wastewater it generates each day.

Instead, this huge stream of soupy slurry will be sent through a 17-mile pipeline to an HRSD treatment plant in Suffolk. There, the company wastes will be neutralized with chemicals and bacteria that eat harmful pollutants, and later released into the lower James River.

``We've made the final hookup,'' Anthony Troy, an attorney for Smithfield Foods, said Thursday. ``It's done.''

The connection comes as a federal judge in Norfolk is deliberating over how much to fine the company for unlawfully polluting the Pagan River since 1991. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which sued Smithfield Foods - theEast Coast's largest pork processor - for nearly 7,000 violations of the Clean Water Act, has asked for a $20 million penalty.

The Pagan, a small Chesapeake Bay tributary, winds slowly past company slaughterhouses in the town of Smithfield. The river has been closed to shellfish harvesting for 27 years because of high levels of a waterborne bacteria known as fecal coliform, and is considered unhealthy for swimming and other human contact, according to state calculations.

During the federal trial last month against Smithfield Foods, there was considerable debate about how wounded the Pagan really is, and how long it will take the river to recover.

Scientists hired by the EPA estimated that it could take months, if not years, for the Pagan to flush itself of hog-waste contaminants.

An expert for Smithfield Foods countered that the triangle-shaped river is not in bad shape even now, and likely will show even greater improvements within weeks of the HRSD connection.

The state Health Department and the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality both will be taking water samples to gauge progress.

The final hookup actually was made Monday, said HRSD spokeswoman Kathleen Cosco. But ``minor technical problems'' delayed further flows until late Wednesday, when the first complete flows from Smithfield Foods started inching toward Suffolk through the metal pipeline.

``They're on-line now,'' Cosco said Thursday afternoon. ``Everything's fine, and we're seeing no problems.''

Smithfield Foods becomes one of HRSD's biggest customers - and biggest ratepayers. Monthly sewage bills are expected to be about $150,000, or $1.8 million a year.

The Anheuser-Busch brewery in Williamsburg is HRSD's largest customer.

The hookup was the centerpiece of a 1991 agreement between Smithfield Foods and state environmental regulators. The state agreed to relax limits on certain pollutants - most notably phosphorus, a nutrient known to harm water quality - in exchange for a company pledge to connect to HRSD when space was available.

The connection originally was expected to take place in 1994 or 1995. But contract squabbles, a fire, an archaeological dig and the discovery of buried human remains all delayed the pipeline project.

The first company slaughterhouse, the Gwaltney plant, did not come on line with HRSD until last summer.

The second slaughterhouse, the Smithfield Packing plant, was completely connected Wednesday. KEYWORDS: SMITHFIELD FOODS

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