KarunaNews Story

Three Rivers Waterkeeper and the nonprofit PennEnvironment reached a landmark settlement agreement with Styropek, a plastics producer, earlier this month, following a lawsuit they filed against the company in 2023 over its contamination of the Ohio River watershed. The agreement requires Styropek to pay $2.6 million to remediate its plastic pollution, and to fund clean water projects across the state. But what makes the settlement effective is not this initial penalty. It’s a requirement that Styropek must install technology to detect the release of any more plastic pellets from its facility in Monaca, Pennsylvania. If the technology finds even a single nurdle – plastic pellet – in the facility’s stormwater outfalls, the company will have to pay up. David Masur, PennEnvironment’s executive director, said the agreement should become “a model and a blueprint” for regulators and the plastics industry. “I think they’ll have a hard time saying rationally why they shouldn’t do it [monitor their nurdle pollution] after a case like this, where the regulators and the industry are saying, ‘We agree it’s possible.’”