ConAgra Hid Sulfuric Acid From Firefighters. The Fine: $5,000.

A billion-dollar food company stored a federally regulated hazardous chemical and kept emergency responders completely in the dark for months.

Kent, Washington  |  Filed: August 20, 2025  |  EPA Region 10

If firefighters had rushed into ConAgra’s Kent, Washington facility during an emergency, they would have had no official way of knowing sulfuric acid was stored inside — because ConAgra withheld that information from them for more than three and a half months.

The Law Is Simple. ConAgra Ignored It Anyway.

The Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act (EPCRA) exists for one reason: so that the people who run toward danger know what they are running into. Under Section 312 of that law, any facility storing hazardous chemicals above a certain threshold must submit an inventory form every year by March 1 to three specific parties: the State Emergency Response Commission (SERC), the Local Emergency Planning Commission (LEPC), and the local fire department.

ConAgra’s facility at 19024 64th Avenue South, Kent, Washington stored sulfuric acid (CAS #007664-93-9) in the form of lead-acid batteries at or above the 500-pound reporting threshold. That concentration of sulfuric acid is corrosive enough to cause severe chemical burns on contact and release toxic fumes in a fire scenario. The law required ConAgra to report this by March 1, 2025.

ConAgra filed with the SERC on June 14, 2025 and with the LEPC and local fire department on June 20, 2025. That is 105 to 111 days late. For more than three months, the Kent Fire Department responded to its coverage area with incomplete information about what was inside one of its facilities.

Lead-Acid Batteries Are Not a Footnote

ConAgra’s sulfuric acid was stored in the form of lead-acid batteries, which some might picture as small car batteries and dismiss as mundane. But at or above the 500-pound federal reporting threshold, the volume of acid stored represents a serious industrial hazard. Lead-acid batteries in a fire can rupture, release hydrogen gas, and cause sulfuric acid to mist and aerosolize.

First responders entering a facility without knowing this face the risk of chemical exposure, toxic fume inhalation, and secondary explosions. EPCRA exists precisely because these scenarios happen. Congress passed the law after disasters like the 1984 Bhopal chemical leak in India killed thousands of people, including many first responders who had no warning about what they were entering.

ConAgra’s failure to file for over three months left the Kent fire department operating on incomplete hazard data for their own jurisdiction. The company corrected the violation only after the filing window had long since closed, and only after the EPA had already opened an enforcement action.

The Non-Financial Ledger: What Money Can’t Repay

Every fire call that went to ConAgra’s Kent facility between March 1, 2025 and June 20, 2025 carried an invisible risk. Firefighters, paramedics, and hazmat crews operating in that coverage area had access to incomplete emergency planning data. The local fire department had no official record of sulfuric acid on site. That is not a bureaucratic gap. That is a firefighter potentially walking into a chemical hazard without the protective equipment or tactical knowledge to handle it.

The Kent, Washington area is a working-class industrial corridor. The people staffing the fire stations that cover that zip code are not executives making decisions from boardrooms. They are hourly and salaried public servants, many of them locals, who show up when your house is on fire or your warehouse is burning. ConAgra’s inaction during those 111 days placed the physical safety of those workers below the company’s apparent administrative convenience.

The Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act is fundamentally a community protection law. It exists because communities near industrial facilities have a legal right to know what hazardous materials surround them. The LEPC, the SERC, and the local fire department are the designated guardians of that information. When ConAgra withheld the inventory form, the company did not just fail a federal regulatory checkbox. ConAgra stripped a community of its legal right to know what sat in a building in their neighborhood.

Emergency planning in America is built on the assumption that companies will follow the law and that first responders will have accurate pre-incident data. When companies break that assumption, the entire downstream system of emergency response is compromised. Incident commanders plan differently when they know sulfuric acid is present. Crews don protective gear calibrated to specific chemical hazards. Evacuation radii get drawn around the right chemical profiles. Every one of those decisions was degraded by ConAgra’s failure to file for more than three months.

Legal Receipts: Straight From The Document

“Respondent violated Section 312 of EPCRA, 42 U.S.C. § 11022, and 40 C.F.R. § 370.20 by failing to timely submit an Emergency and Hazardous Chemical Inventory Form to the State Emergency Response Commission, the Local Emergency Planning Commission, and the fire department with jurisdiction over Facility for calendar year 2024 by March 1, 2025.” — EPA Expedited Settlement Agreement, Paragraph 5

“The 2024 Emergency and Hazardous Chemical Inventories were filed with the SERC on June 14, 2025, and with the LEPC and the local fire department on June 20, 2025.” — EPA Expedited Settlement Agreement, Paragraph 5

“Facility stores Sulfuric Acid (CAS #007664-93-9), in the form of lead-acid batteries, on-site at or above the 500-pound reporting threshold.” — EPA Expedited Settlement Agreement, Paragraph 4

“Respondent: (a) admits that EPA has jurisdiction over Respondent and Respondent’s conduct as alleged above; (b) neither admits nor denies the factual allegations contained in this Agreement; (c) consents to the assessment of this penalty and any conditions stated in this Agreement; and (d) waives any right to contest the allegations above.” — EPA Expedited Settlement Agreement, Paragraph 11

“Upon the effective date of this Agreement and subsequent payment of the Assessed Penalty as set forth in Paragraph 6 Respondent shall be resolved of liability for Federal civil penalties for the violation(s) and facts alleged herein.” — EPA Expedited Settlement Agreement, Paragraph 13

Societal Impact Mapping

Public Health: First Responders as the Acceptable Risk

Sulfuric acid exposure causes severe chemical burns to skin, eyes, and respiratory tissue. In a fire or rupture scenario involving lead-acid batteries at industrial scale, the hazard escalates rapidly. Aerosolized sulfuric acid can cause pulmonary edema, permanent lung damage, and death. Hydrogen gas, a byproduct of battery failure under heat, is explosive. Firefighters entering an environment with these hazards without prior knowledge cannot take the protective measures that would mitigate their risk of serious injury.

For 111 days, the firefighters covering ConAgra’s Kent facility had no official record of these hazards through the EPCRA reporting system. The LEPC and SERC, the two bodies specifically charged with coordinating regional emergency response to chemical incidents, were equally uninformed. This gap in the emergency planning data chain is precisely the scenario EPCRA was designed to prevent.

The public health stakes extend beyond the facility walls. Kent, Washington is a densely populated industrial and residential city in the Green River Valley. A chemical incident at an unreported hazardous materials site does not stay contained to the facility. Neighbors, passersby, and bystanders within the exposure radius are all affected by a response that lacks accurate chemical information. ConAgra’s failure to file created a community-wide blind spot in emergency preparedness for an entire calendar year’s worth of chemical inventory data.

Economic Inequality: A Fine That Insults the Concept of Accountability

ConAgra Brands, the parent company, reported net revenues of approximately $12.05 billion (more than the combined annual income of 180,000 average American workers) in its fiscal year 2024. The $5,000 (enough to cover roughly one month of groceries for a family of four for about 8 years, or one month’s rent for a single worker in Kent, WA) fine levied against this subsidiary represents a payment so trivially small relative to corporate revenues that it functions as a receipt, not a deterrent.

If ConAgra’s parent company earned its revenue uniformly across every second of the fiscal year, the company would gross approximately $5,000 in about 13 seconds. The fine for leaving first responders uninformed about stored sulfuric acid for 111 days cost ConAgra roughly 13 seconds of revenue. The mathematical relationship between corporate profit and regulatory penalty in this case is so extreme that calling it a “fine” dignifies it beyond what the number warrants.

The workers at the Kent facility and the firefighters in its coverage area are, by the economic standards of their region, working-class people. The Kent, WA median household income sits well below the national median for comparable metro areas. The people placed at risk by ConAgra’s noncompliance are people for whom $5,000 represents weeks or months of income. The people who decided to file 111 days late will never feel $5,000 leave their personal accounts.

The Cost of a Life: What The Math Actually Says

What Now? Eyes Open, Pressure On.

The People Who Signed This Document

The settlement was approved by Edward J. Kowalski, Director of the Enforcement and Compliance Assurance Division, EPA Region 10. The final order was signed by Richard Mednick, Regional Judicial Officer, EPA Region 10. The document was served on Nabil Challa, Plant Manager at ConAgra Foods Packaged Foods LLC, Kent, Washington.

The Watchlist: Who Should Be Pressing Harder

• EPA Region 10 Enforcement Division: Track their enforcement actions and fine levels for industrial facilities in the Pacific Northwest.
• Washington State Emergency Response Commission (SERC): Demand public disclosure of all late-filed Tier II hazardous chemical inventories in the state.
• Kent Local Emergency Planning Commission (LEPC): Request the full inventory of facilities in Kent that store hazardous chemicals above federal thresholds.
• Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA): The same facility that withheld chemical data from fire departments should be on OSHA’s radar for worker chemical safety compliance.
• Congress: EPCRA’s civil penalty cap for these violations is part of why fines like $5,000 (enough to cover roughly 6 weeks of groceries for a family of four) are even possible. Push your representatives to modernize penalty structures so fines scale to corporate revenue.

What You Can Actually Do Right Now

File a public records request with your own Local Emergency Planning Commission. Ask what hazardous chemicals are stored in your neighborhood, and whether every facility filed its Tier II form on time this year. Support your local fire department’s hazmat training funds. Connect with environmental justice organizations in your region fighting for stronger EPCRA enforcement. The law already gives communities the right to know. Make corporations prove they followed it.