In March, officials in Postville shut down its water treatment facility for two days as city employees worked to prevent polluted water from a meatpacking plant from entering the water supply.
Agri Star Meat and Poultry had discharged more than 250,000 gallons of untreated food processing waste — blood, chemicals and other solid materials — into the city’s wastewater system. Chris Hackman, the city’s wastewater operator for the past 25 years, said it was one of the worst incidents he could remember.
“We’ve never seen anything like that,” he said.
In majority-white Iowa, most Postville residents are people of color, with more than 40 percent identifying as Hispanic. Many work at Agri Star Meat and Poultry, the town’s largest employer.
Across the Midwest, meatpacking plants often pollute non-white communities and low-income neighborhoods, according to an Investigate Midwest analysis of two decades of U.S. Environmental Protection Agency enforcement data.
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