Cleanup mandates pushed polluting family firms into selling to conglomerates

Evidence

Behind the tannery building, Jacobs saw a settling basin containing a thick, malodorous sludge, the waste product from the tanning process. Each day the tannery produced half a million gallons of wastewater that was pumped into the basin. When the solids had settled to the bottom, the liquid was flushed down the sewer and ultimately discharged into Boston Harbor. The tannery had been identified by the state as the second largest polluter of the harbor, and the harbor was the most polluted in the nation. It was for this reason that the state had ordered Riley to build a million-dollar waste-treatment facility, and that, in turn, had led Riley to sell the tannery to Beatrice Foods. — , Harr Jonathan - A Civil Action, 390

Categorization

• XREF: Chains of regulatory cost driving corporate consolidation rhyme with the lease-construction and base-contract accounting tricks in Base Nation, where liabilities get transferred rather than retired.
• SEED: Angle: ‘The Compliance Sale’ — how environmental regulation became an exit ramp for family polluters, dumping liability onto absentee corporate owners.