The federal government calculated that Peshastin Hi-Up Growers deserved a fine of up to $59,114 per day ($59,114 per day is more than most American workers bring home in an entire year) for leaving a dangerous chemical safety plan expired — and then charged them $2,000 ($2,000 is what a full-time worker at $14/hour earns in roughly 9 days of work).

Anhydrous Ammonia, Expired Paperwork, and Five Years of Silence

Peshastin Hi-Up Growers operates a facility at 10225 Mill Road in Peshastin, Washington. The company stores anhydrous ammonia — a highly toxic, pressurized chemical used in refrigeration systems at food processing and fruit packing operations — in quantities that exceed the federal threshold requiring a formal Risk Management Plan.

Under Section 112(r) of the Clean Air Act and its implementing regulations, any facility storing a regulated substance above a threshold quantity must develop, maintain, and update that plan every five years. The rules exist for one reason: to ensure that if the ammonia leaks, explodes, or releases into the surrounding air, there is a current, documented plan to protect workers and the surrounding community.

Peshastin Hi-Up Growers filed their last Risk Management Plan update on March 10, 2020. The next update was due on March 10, 2025. According to the EPA’s own records, that update never came.

Five Years. No Update. No Accountability — Until a $2,000 Bill Arrived.

The EPA initiated an expedited settlement action under the Clean Air Act’s enforcement authority. The agency’s own legal framework allows fines of up to $59,114 per day of violation ($59,114 per day is more than the median American household income for nearly an entire month). If even a single day of violation were prosecuted at the maximum rate, the fine would be thirty times larger than what was actually assessed.

Instead, after “considering the factors” specified under the Clean Air Act’s penalty guidelines, the EPA agreed to a settlement of $2,000 ($2,000 is roughly the cost of one month’s groceries for a family of four). The legal document describes this as “an appropriate penalty to settle this action.”

The Non-Financial Ledger: What a Number Doesn’t Capture

Peshastin is a small town in Chelan County, Washington, nestled in a river valley in the eastern foothills of the Cascades. It is agricultural country. The people who live and work there are farmworkers, orchard hands, packers, and the families of all of the above. They are exactly the kind of community that Risk Management Plan requirements were written to protect.

Anhydrous ammonia is no abstract chemical. At high concentrations, it causes severe burns to skin, eyes, and the respiratory tract. It can be lethal. Releases can travel quickly and silently across a surrounding community before anyone has time to evacuate. The entire purpose of the federal RMP requirement is to ensure that when something goes wrong, the surrounding community and first responders know what they’re dealing with, in real time, with updated information.

For at least part of the five-year window between March 2020 and March 2025, the facility’s RMP was either out of date, expired, or simply unfiled. That means emergency planners, local firefighters, and county health officials may have been working from stale data about chemical quantities, process hazards, worst-case release scenarios, and emergency response procedures. In an emergency, five-year-old data is not a plan. It is a liability.

The workers who pack fruit at Peshastin Hi-Up Growers did not receive a fine. They did not receive a negotiated settlement. They received five years of working in a facility where the documented chemical emergency plan had not been refreshed as required. They had no ability to audit that compliance. They had no seat at the table when the EPA and the company’s General Manager, Shawn Cox, negotiated a $2,000 ($2,000 is roughly what someone earning minimum wage brings home in one paycheck) resolution to close the matter out. The settlement was filed, the fine was paid, and the facility’s employees will never read this document unless they go looking for it.

Straight From the Document: What the EPA Actually Wrote

“Respondent failed to submit an updated RMP to EPA at least once every five years as required by § 68.190(a) and (b)(1).”

EPA Expedited Settlement Agreement, CAA-10-2025-0134 — Paragraph 10

“Under Section 113(d)(1) of the CAA, 42 U.S.C. § 7413(d)(1), and 40 C.F.R. Part 19, the EPA may assess a civil penalty of not more than $59,114 per day of violation.”

EPA Expedited Settlement Agreement, CAA-10-2025-0134 — Paragraph 11

“After considering these factors, the EPA has determined and Respondent agrees that an appropriate penalty to settle this action is $2,000.”

EPA Expedited Settlement Agreement, CAA-10-2025-0134 — Paragraph 14

“Respondent neither admits nor denies the specific factual allegations contained in this ESA.”

EPA Expedited Settlement Agreement, CAA-10-2025-0134 — Paragraph 13

“Respondent expressly waives any affirmative defenses and the right to contest the allegations contained in this ESA and to appeal the Final Order.”

EPA Expedited Settlement Agreement, CAA-10-2025-0134 — Paragraph 24

Who Actually Bears the Risk When Safety Plans Go Stale

Public Health: The Community That Didn’t Get a Vote

Anhydrous ammonia is classified as an “extremely hazardous substance” under federal emergency planning law for a reason. A sudden, uncontrolled release from a refrigeration system can blanket a surrounding area with a toxic cloud within minutes. EPA’s RMP program exists to ensure that local emergency planners have current, accurate worst-case scenario data so that community evacuation and shelter-in-place protocols are actually actionable.

The entire gap period — from when the plan was last updated in March 2020 to when the violation was resolved in July 2025 — represents over five years during which the plan was either exactly at the edge of its required update window or past it. Local emergency responders in Chelan County operate with information provided through the RMP program. Stale information from a facility handling dangerous quantities of anhydrous ammonia is a public health risk that no settlement fine retroactively erases.

The workers inside the facility face the most direct exposure risk. Agricultural and food-processing workers in rural Washington are disproportionately Latino, and many are migrant or seasonal workers with limited access to legal resources or the ability to challenge unsafe conditions. The $2,000 ($2,000 is the equivalent of roughly two car payments) fine communicates a clear message to these workers: the regulatory system priced their safety at less than the cost of a traffic ticket for each day of the violation.

Economic Inequality: One Set of Rules for Big Polluters, Another for Everyone Else

The EPA’s expedited settlement program is designed to resolve smaller, technical violations quickly and efficiently. That rationale makes sense for minor administrative paperwork. But an expired Risk Management Plan covering a threshold quantity of a chemical capable of mass casualties occupies a different category of risk entirely.

The legal maximum was $59,114 per day ($59,114 per day is more than the annual salary of many farm workers in Washington State). The actual fine was $2,000 total ($2,000 total is roughly what a Chelan County farmworker earns in two weeks). That discrepancy is not a technicality. It is a structural feature of how environmental enforcement works in the United States: the penalty must be painful enough to create a deterrent, or it functions as a license fee for non-compliance.

When a fine costs less than the administrative overhead of filing the paperwork properly, the fine is not a deterrent. It is a cost of doing business. And when that business handles chemicals that can kill, the people absorbing the unpriced risk are workers and neighbors — people who had no say in the settlement and will receive none of the $2,000.

The “Cost of a Life” Metric

What Now: Who to Watch, Who to Contact, What to Demand

Named Parties in This Settlement

• Shawn Cox, General Manager, Peshastin Hi-Up Growers — signed the settlement on behalf of the company on July 18, 2025.
• Edward J. Kowalski, Director, Enforcement and Compliance Assurance Division, EPA Region 10 — signed the settlement on behalf of the EPA on July 21, 2025.

Regulatory Watchlist

• EPA Region 10 (Pacific Northwest) — the office responsible for enforcing Clean Air Act RMP requirements across Washington State. Contact them to request enforcement transparency reports.
• EPA Office of Emergency Management (RMP Program) — oversees the national Risk Management Plan database. You can look up any facility’s filed RMP at EPA’s RMP*Info database.
• Washington State Department of Ecology — the state-level environmental agency that can pursue parallel enforcement actions independent of federal settlements.
• Chelan County Emergency Management — the local body responsible for community hazmat response planning. They rely on current RMP data to protect your community.
• Washington State Department of Labor and Industries — the state agency with authority over worker safety at Washington facilities handling hazardous chemicals.

The Ground-Level Response

If you live or work in Chelan County, you have the right to know what chemicals are stored at facilities near you and whether their safety plans are current. Request that information from Chelan County Emergency Management through your Local Emergency Planning Committee (LEPC). Connect with Washington farmworker advocacy organizations — groups like Familias Unidas por la Justicia have built real power through collective action where regulatory agencies have failed. Share this document. The system only changes when enough people understand how it actually works.