Every year, stricter wastewater restrictions push processors to advance their wastewater-treatment systems. While permit limits are driven at a federal level, processors deal with them in their local municipalities.
“We are going to constantly be underneath the permitting of the municipalities that we operate our businesses in — their wastewater facilities are not growing at the same rate [by] which the communities are,” says Gerald Lessard, vice president and chief operating officer of West Liberty Foods in West Liberty, Iowa. “As they continue to add residential property or commercial properties in these municipalities, they are going to be looking at the existing businesses as a means to limit the amount of expansion that they are going to have to invest in for their own wastewater-treatment facilities.”