Pacific Seafood and Oregon regulators are locked in battle over wastewater treatment from its coastal processing plants

By GRIFFIN URIBE BROWN/The Oregonian/OregonLive

Supporting the fishing fleets that fan out to sea from the Oregon coast, there are about three dozen industrial processing businesses that clean, cut and package the products before they’re shipped to consumers around the world.

It’s not a pretty process.

One byproduct of all those fish guts and shellfish innards is wastewater packed with solids and oils, as well as possibly chemicals, bacteria and heavy metals. Whatever isn’t filtered out gets discharged back into the ocean, where it can deplete dissolved oxygen that fish and other aquatic species need to breathe, and can pose risks to public health.

Seafood processing plants have been locked in a battle with environmental regulators over water pollution, with millions of dollars in fines piling up and legal fights that have spanned years. Meanwhile, the business is consolidating and, from an employment standpoint, shrinking.

The fight pits Oregon’s environmental aspirations against one of its legacy industries — one that remains a defining part of life on the Oregon coast even as its footprint contracts.

The latest flare-up in that fight came in April, when the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality slapped Pacific Seafood, the Clackamas-based processing giant, with three fines. They included the agency’s second-largest penalty on record, and totaled $3.2 million for water violations at three plants on the Oregon coast.

Pacific Seafood and other coastal processors say it’s a case of “out-of-control” regulators promulgating wastewater standards that are nonsensical and economically unachievable, squeezing an industry already under pressure and threatening businesses and jobs.

“This fine is another example of the agency making it impossible to do business in this state at a time when the economy is in crisis and jobs are disappearing,” Pacific Seafood said in a statement after the fines were levied in April.

Environmental regulators, meanwhile, contend they are protecting Oregon’s waterways and environment. Pacific Seafood, like other major seafood processors, has been involved in litigation for water violations for years.

“Our goal is to ensure that Oregon’s bays and ocean waters are kept free of pollution that can harm fish and other aquatic life,” DEQ Director Leah Feldon said in a statement. “While we are committed to this mission, we are also dedicated to doing that work in a manner that is reasonable and practicable for all industries, including seafood processors.”

Months after those fines — including the $2.9 million fine that DEQ levied on the company’s Charleston plant — both Pacific Seafood and DEQ say they remain committed to a good-faith resolution. But there is still a wide gulf between them after years of documented pollution and an underlying dispute over the way DEQ permits the facilities.

A meeting between DEQ and Pacific Seafood on June 25 bore no public results. And while the agency did not comment on the company’s active appeals, it told The Oregonian/OregonLive that enforcement processes can take months, or even years, to conclude.

Industry pressure

Industry angst and political pressure from coastal legislators comes as Oregon’s seafood processing footprint is consolidating. The business is changing — and while the number of jobs it supports fluctuates based on the volume of seafood landed, employment has shrunk in recent years.

Several processors have recently scaled back or consolidated into a few larger facilities.

In July, Pacific Seafood and Ocean Beauty Seafoods merged distribution businesses. In 2024, Bornstein Seafoods closed its Newport operation and shifted to Astoria, which resulted in 50 layoffs.

Consolidation has similarly occurred in Oregon’s commercial fishing fleets, an industry that impacts processing, said Shaun Barrick, a regional workforce economist at the Oregon Employment Department.

Industry employment reached a 25-year low in 2024 at 950 workers. Although employment recovered slightly in 2025, it remained 12 percent below the 2019 peak, according to Employment Department data.

Mergers and acquisitions, not overregulation, are affecting the seafood processing landscape, said natural resource economist Hans Radtke of Yachats. He said technological changes and movement away from seasonal workers may result in fewer workers, but a steadier, growing industry in Oregon and nationally.

Lori Steele, the West Coast Seafood Processors Association’s executive director, disagrees, saying consolidation has been “driven largely by regulatory costs.”

While a few boutique processors have opened up and down the coast, a handful of players account for much of the industry’s output and employment today, according to the Employment Department.

Pacific Seafood is the granddaddy of them all. It controls each stage of the process, from fishing to processing to shipping. The company spans 41 facilities with over 3,000 employees in 11 states and as such, its voice has weight in the industry and in Salem.

Regulatory scrutiny

DEQ’s April fines on Pacific Seafood came in multiple parts: a nearly $3 million fine on the Charleston facility for delayed wastewater treatment installations and pollution levels, a $114,000 fine on the Brookings facility for pollution, and a $104,800 fine at the Warrenton Pacific Bio Products facility for chlorine discharge. Pacific Seafood filed an appeal.

None involved the company’s extensive operations on the Newport Bayfront.

According to DEQ, the company spent years delaying the implementation of pollution controls. Using data provided by Pacific Seafood, DEQ found that the company’s Charleston facility exceeded various pollution limits from 2023 to earlier this year.

“DEQ issued enforcement notices to three Pacific Seafood facilities after years of working with the company to achieve compliance with their existing water quality permits,” said Dylan Darling, a DEQ public affairs specialist. “Enforcement was pursued only after those efforts did not resolve the compliance issues.”

The bulk of the Charleston fine was attributed to the “economic benefit” the company gained over its competitors by not installing equipment, according to DEQ.

Allegations of environmental violations against Pacific Seafood are not exclusive to DEQ. In recent years, groups like the Center for Food Safety, Northwest Environmental Defense Center and Wild Fish Conservancy have sued Pacific Seafood over pollution and Clean Water Act violations.

Oregon law requires permits for any discharge of wastewater to state waters or the ground. But some seafood processors claim DEQ’s permitting process is “arbitrary” and takes too long. They say state requirements are unreasonable and potentially technologically impossible.

In 2020, DEQ updated its permitting process for seafood processors, allowing individual facility permits instead of permitting facilities under a standardized state permit. Many large processors opted for the facility-specific option.

Pacific Seafood applied for a new permit in 2021 for its Charleston plant. But the facility is currently still operating on the general permit issued in 2006 and, as of the beginning of the year, was in violation of it.

DEQ officials acknowledge that the permitting process is complex. It requires extensive evaluation that can take several years to complete. In the meantime, the agency expects processors to comply with current permits as they await new ones.

Pacific Seafood claims DEQ’s byzantine process puts it in an untenable position. The agency is actively writing a new permit for the company, which could take years. The company could invest in new treatment systems but argues it would be throwing money away if that equipment does not meet the requirements under the new permit.

“The concern was not about avoiding regulation,” said Amy Wentworth, Pacific Seafood’s director of environmental health and safety. “Rather, it was that the proposed limits are unachievable, appear to require treatment capabilities that currently do not exist for seafood processors, and have not been imposed on the industry by any other state.”

Although it is difficult to determine how Oregon regulation compares to other states, many water standards across the United States are derived from the federal Clean Water Act, which regulates various pollutants.

DEQ and Pacific Seafood have gone back and forth on wastewater treatment at the Charleston plant since a mutual agreement in 2017. The company said it invested in systems to improve wastewater quality and sanitization throughout that process.

Other seafood processors have been slapped with wastewater fines, too. Da Yang Seafood, based in Astoria, was most recently hit with two $150,000 fines, one in 2024 and another in 2021, for “discharging wastewater without a permit.” Bornstein Seafoods was fined $32,000 in 2022 for exceeding permitted limits.

Neither Bornstein Seafoods nor Da Yang Seafood responded to a request for comment, but the executive director of the Astoria-Warrenton Area Chamber of Commerce, David Reid, said chamber members have told him DEQ’s permitting process is “prohibitively expensive, uncertain, and often unrealistic.”

DEQ doesn’t mandate specific technology for plants, said Alan Ismond, a chemical engineer who founded AquaTerra Consultants, which helps seafood processors like Da Yang Seafood with equipment and compliance. Instead, it places restrictions on emissions or discharge, then lets the plant figure out how to comply.

Because of the vagueness, “nobody can tell you how to comply with the permit technologically,” he said.

Steele, with the processors association, said DEQ’s current permits require seafood processors to output cleaner water than they receive from municipalities. Meeting those standards requires installing expensive systems to filter out chemicals and heavy metals, which she said cost between $3 and $5 million “at a minimum.”

“We have spent years as an industry trying to work with DEQ to figure out how to create a viable permit, where we can actually have limits that are achievable with available technology,” Steele said.

DEQ argues that limits on heavy metals, which can occur naturally in some fish and shellfish, are not new or specific to seafood processors, and Oregon’s water quality standards include criteria for certain metals. Whether a permit includes limits for a particular metal depends on the specific facility, Darling said.

Uncertain future

Steele frames the permitting dispute as existential for the industry.

“We’re either going to need cooperation from DEQ and an understanding that we are in this together,” she said, “or we’re going to have to get out of Oregon.”

Pacific Seafood has used its stature and political action committee to advocate for legislation that addresses wastewater permit compliance. In 2025, the Oregon Legislature passed a bill allowing wastewater to mix with surrounding water before bacteria levels are measured.

After the fines, legislators in the bipartisan Coastal Caucus, including Sen. Dick Anderson, R-Lincoln City and David Gomberg, D-Otis, came to the company’s defense.

“We are also concerned by the broader regulatory framework under which this enforcement action is occurring,” the caucus wrote in a letter to DEQ, in which it claimed the agency’s water standards are more stringent than drinking water benchmarks.

“Our economy, particularly in rural and coastal communities, cannot afford further job loss or disruption,” they added.

DEQ said its limits and technology requirements are based on national standards in place since the 1970s. The state, Darling said, is not treating Pacific Seafood differently than other processors.

“DEQ is confident that compliance is achievable,” Darling said. “Other seafood processing facilities, including Pacific Seafood, have successfully implemented treatment and operational improvements necessary to meet federal and state water quality requirements while continuing to operate successfully.”

• Griffin Brown is a reporter at The Oregonian/OregonLive and can be reached at [email protected]