Corporate Greed Case Study: Oregon Potato Company & Its Impact on Public Safety

TLDR: Oregon Potato Company, operating as FreezePack, is alleged to have released a significant quantity of ammonia, an extremely hazardous substance, from its Washington facility. Freezepack then failed to immediately notify the National Response Center, the State Emergency Response Commission, and the Local Emergency Planning Committee, as required by federal law, potentially endangering the surrounding community. For years, they also failed to provide the legally mandated written follow-up notices, only submitting them after regulatory enforcement began.

Read on to uncover the full details of these allegations and what they reveal about corporate responsibility and the systemic failures that endanger our communities.

Inside the Allegations: A Pattern of Neglect

The case against Oregon Potato Company, brought by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), is built on a foundation of five clear-cut violations of federal environmental law.

These laws, the Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act (EPCRA) and the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA), were enacted precisely to prevent the kind of information blackout that occurred here. They exist to ensure that when hazardous materials are released, the communities and first responders who stand in harm’s way are the first to know.

According to the legal settlement, Oregon Potato Company failed on every front. Freezepack had knowledge of the ammonia release, which surpassed the 100-pound reportable quantity, no later than 1:04 PM Pacific Time on August 31, 2022. Federal law requires immediate notification. Instead, Freezepack waited until 3:33 PM Pacific Time to inform the National Response Center (NRC), a delay of over two hours.

The situation was even worse at the state and local levels. Freezepack did not immediately notify either the Washington State Emergency Response Commission (SERC) or the Franklin County Emergency Management agency, the Local Emergency Planning Committee (LEPC). These are the entities directly responsible for coordinating an emergency response to protect the residents of Pasco.

The failures didn’t end with the initial alert. Following a hazardous release, companies are required to submit a written follow-up notice “as soon as practicable.” Oregon Potato Company waited until April 18, 2025—more than two and a half years after the incident—to file these crucial reports with the state and local authorities. This prolonged inaction left a significant gap in the official record, hindering any potential review or preparation for future incidents.

Regulatory Loopholes & the Crisis of Neoliberal Capitalism

The Oregon Potato Company case is a textbook example of how the principles of neoliberal capitalism—deregulation, weak enforcement, and the prioritization of corporate interests—create an environment ripe for misconduct.

For decades, a political consensus has favored dismantling the very regulatory state designed to protect the public from industrial harms. The result is a system where agencies like the EPA are often underfunded and overstretched, forced into a reactive posture of levying fines after the damage is done rather than proactively preventing it.

The laws themselves, EPCRA and CERCLA, are powerful on paper. They were born from the ashes of industrial disasters like the one in Bhopal, India, with the clear intent of ensuring communities have a right to know about the chemical dangers in their midst. However, their effectiveness hinges on robust enforcement and a corporate culture that respects the spirit, not just the letter, of the law.

In our neoliberal framework, regulations are often viewed not as a baseline for public safety but as burdensome red tape to be navigated or, if possible, ignored. The incentive structure is clear: compliance costs money and time, while non-compliance carries a risk of fines that can be calculated and, if deemed low enough, absorbed as a business expense.

When a company waits years to file required paperwork, it signals a belief that the consequences for inaction are negligible. This is not a failure of a single company, but a failure of a system that has been systematically weakened to favor corporate freedom over collective well-being.

Profit-Maximization at What Cost? A Study in Corporate Ethics

At the heart of this incident lies the relentless logic of profit maximization. In a fiercely competitive market, every operational decision is weighed against its impact on the bottom line.

Taking a production line offline, investigating a chemical leak, and engaging in transparent communication with regulatory bodies all represent potential drains on revenue and productivity. While the legal document does not detail the specific internal deliberations at Oregon Potato Company, the alleged actions are consistent with a corporate culture that prioritizes uninterrupted operations over precautionary safety measures.

The delay in reporting the ammonia release, followed by years of silence, suggests a calculation was made. The immediate cost of a shutdown and regulatory scrutiny was likely weighed against the future, uncertain risk of a penalty. This is a hallmark of late-stage capitalism: risks to public health and the environment are “externalized”—pushed onto society for others to bear—while the profits from uninterrupted production are privatized.

The final settlement of $65,000, while seemingly substantial, must be viewed in the context of a large agricultural enterprise. For a major corporation, such a figure may not be a sufficient deterrent to prevent future violations. It can be seen as a manageable operating cost, a small price to pay for years of cutting corners on compliance. True corporate accountability would require penalties that are not only punitive but structurally transformative, forcing a change in the cost-benefit analysis that led to the violation in the first place.

The Unseen Danger: Environmental & Public Health Risks

Ammonia is not a benign substance. It is designated an “extremely hazardous substance” for a reason. Inhalation can cause severe respiratory damage, and high concentrations can be fatal. When 350 pounds of it are released into the atmosphere, it poses a direct threat to anyone in its path: plant workers, nearby residents, and the local ecosystem.

By failing to immediately notify emergency responders, Oregon Potato Company gambled with the health of the Pasco community. A swift notification to the LEPC and SERC would have triggered a cascade of protective measures. Emergency personnel could have been dispatched to monitor air quality, residents could have been warned to shelter in place, and vulnerable institutions like schools and hospitals could have been alerted.

Freezepack failure stole that critical window of opportunity from the community. It substituted a transparent, legally mandated safety protocol with a wall of silence.

This case underscores a profound ethical breach. The “Community Right-to-Know” aspect of the law is not an abstract principle; it is a fundamental tool for survival in an industrial landscape. When corporations fail to uphold their end of this bargain, they are undermining the very foundation of public trust and safety. The failure to report is a failure to protect.

Community Impact: Pasco’s Right-to-Know Denied

The alleged failures of Oregon Potato Company were not committed in a vacuum; they had a direct impact on the safety and security of the people of Pasco, Washington.

The Franklin County Emergency Management agency is specifically designated as the Local Emergency Planning Committee (LEPC) for this area. It is a body created for the express purpose of using information about hazardous materials to develop a comprehensive emergency plan for the community it serves.

When a company fails to report a hazardous release, it effectively gags the community’s first line of defense. It cripples the LEPC’s ability to act, to warn, and to protect.

For over two and a half years, the full, legally required details of the ammonia release were absent from the records of the very people tasked with planning for such events. This prolonged silence created a dangerous blind spot, undermining the preparedness of an entire community and treating its residents as collateral concerns in the pursuit of business continuity.

The PR Machine: Settlement Without Admission

In a classic move of corporate damage control, Oregon Potato Company agreed to the settlement while employing a tactic that shields it from true accountability. Freezepack explicitly “neither admits nor denies the specific factual allegations” contained in the consent agreement. This legal maneuver is a cornerstone of corporate public relations and risk management in the face of regulatory action.

By avoiding an admission of guilt, Freezepack can pay the fine and make the problem go away without ever having to publicly concede that it endangered a community.

It allows them to frame the $65,000 penalty not as a punishment for wrongdoing, but as the cost of resolving a disputed claim. This strategy effectively neutralizes the narrative, preventing the EPA’s detailed allegations from being cemented as undisputed facts in the public mind and limiting Freezepack’s liability in any potential future civil lawsuits. It is accountability in name only.

How Capitalism Exploits Delay: The Strategic Use of Time

This case is yet another illustration of how, in our capitalist system, time itself can be weaponized to a corporation’s advantage. The ammonia release occurred on August 31, 2022. Yet, the follow-up notices—critical documents for understanding the scope and nature of the event—were not submitted to state and local authorities until April 18, 2025. This is a strategic delay of 960 days.

During this period, Freezepack operated without the full weight of its regulatory non-compliance on the public record. For a system that prizes speed and efficiency in production, the legal and bureaucratic process moves at a glacial pace.

This inertia benefits the corporation, pushing accountability so far into the future that by the time a penalty is levied, the incident is a distant memory for the public. The harm of the non-disclosure persists, while the consequences for the corporation are postponed and minimized.

Corporate Accountability Fails the Public

The final outcome of this case serves as a powerful critique of the limits of corporate accountability in America. Despite five distinct violations of federal law designed to protect communities from hazardous chemicals, the resolution feels profoundly inadequate. Freezepack pays a fine of $65,000—a sum that, for a major agricultural producer, may be little more than a rounding error in an annual budget.

Crucially, the settlement assigns no liability to any individual executive or manager. Decisions were made by people, yet the consequences are borne by an abstract corporate entity. This is a fundamental failure of the justice system, allowing the architects of corporate policy to remain shielded from personal responsibility.

The agreement notes that as of May 2025, Freezepack had “corrected the violation(s),” but this correction only came after years of non-compliance and under the pressure of an EPA enforcement action. This is reactive compliance, undertaken only when caught.

This Is the System Working as Intended

It is tempting to view the Oregon Potato Company case as an aberration, a failure of an otherwise functional system. But that would be a misreading of the evidence. This is a story of a system that worked exactly as it was designed to under the logic of neoliberal capitalism.

When profit is structurally prioritized over public safety, when regulations are weakened, when enforcement is reactive, and when penalties are treated as a cost of doing business, such incidents are not accidental—they are inevitable.

The system does not fail when a community is endangered by a secret chemical release; it succeeds in its primary goal of protecting the flow of capital. The failures alleged here are a predictable, logical outcome of a framework that socializes risk while privatizing reward.

Conclusion: A Calculated Risk, A Community’s Price

The case of Oregon Potato Company is a story about a calculated risk, where the health and safety of a community were weighed against the procedural burdens of environmental law. For over two hours, and then for over two and a half years, Freezepack chose a path of non-compliance, leaving the people of Pasco, Washington, and their first responders in the dark.

The final settlement closes the legal chapter on this incident, but it leaves the larger questions unanswered. How many other silent releases occur? How many communities are unknowingly at risk? This case reveals the deep cracks in our regulatory foundation, a system that struggles to hold corporations to their most basic obligation: to not endanger the public. It demonstrates that without fierce oversight and penalties that truly punish, the laws designed to protect us are merely suggestions, and our safety becomes secondary to the pursuit of profit.

Frivolous or Serious Lawsuit?

This was an unequivocally serious legal action.

The enforcement was initiated by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency based on multiple, documented failures to comply with federal public safety statutes.

The core of the case involves the release of an “extremely hazardous substance” in an amount significantly exceeding the legal reportable quantity, followed by a failure to provide the immediate, life-saving notifications required by law. These are violations that cut to the heart of the Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act.

The federal government’s pursuit of this case, culminating in a Consent Agreement and a financial penalty, affirms the legitimacy of the grievance and the real-world risk posed by Freezepack’s actions.

You can read this EPA filing on the EPA’s website: https://yosemite.epa.gov/OA/RHC/EPAAdmin.nsf/Filings/1186DC231DA3F7F385258C8F006F0A54/$File/CAFO%20OR%20Potato%20Co%20dba%20FreezePack%20EPCRA%2010%202025%200077.pdf