Tekni-Plex Ran an Unlicensed Pesticide Operation and Paid $1,000 to Make It Go Away

EvilCorporations.com • FIFRA-10-2025-0079 • 7 min read

The Non-Financial Ledger: What $1,000 Cannot Account For

There is a town in central Washington called Yakima. It sits in an agricultural valley where the Columbia River system feeds orchards and farmland for hundreds of miles. The people who live there, who farm there, who send their kids to school there, had no idea that a company called Tekni-Plex was running a registered pesticide-producing facility at 1728 Presson Place. They still do not know what was being made inside that facility. They do not know if the pesticides produced there ended up in their fields, their water, or the air their children breathe. They were not told. They were not asked. The law that was supposed to make this information available to federal regulators was simply ignored.

That law exists for a reason. Pesticides are not ordinary industrial products. They are designed, at a chemical level, to kill living things. The reporting requirement Tekni-Plex violated is the mechanism that lets the federal government track what is being made, where it is going, and whether the people nearest to a production facility are being put at risk. When that report does not get filed, the pipeline of public accountability goes dark. Regulators cannot do their jobs. Communities cannot ask questions. Downwind and downstream neighbors have no way to know what they are being exposed to.

Tekni-Plex did not miss this deadline because of a paperwork error deep in a bureaucratic stack. The company has a Production Manager in Yakima, Mauro Gonzalez, whose name and title appear on the final settlement agreement. Someone at the facility knew what was being produced. Someone made the decision, whether by action or by neglect, not to file. And when the EPA eventually caught it, the resolution required no confession, no public accounting, and no disclosure of what was actually inside that building. The penalty was one thousand dollars. Tekni-Plex’s corporate headquarters sits in a $3,000-per-month suite at 460 East Swedesford Road in Wayne, Pennsylvania. One thousand dollars is an afterthought.

The people of Yakima got nothing. No explanation. No disclosure of what pesticides were manufactured. No assurance that future years will be different. Just a final order, signed by a federal judge, quietly filed with a regional hearing clerk, and closed.

Legal Receipts: What the Documents Actually Say

Every quote below is pulled verbatim from Docket No. FIFRA-10-2025-0079. Nothing has been paraphrased. Read carefully, because the legal language is doing a lot of work to protect the company while appearing to hold it accountable.

Societal Impact Mapping

Public Health

The core danger in this case is not what we know; it is what we were deliberately kept from knowing. When a pesticide producer goes dark on its annual reporting obligation, the public health system loses its ability to track exposure risks in the surrounding community.

• The Yakima Valley is one of Washington State’s most intensive agricultural regions. Farmworkers, many of them seasonal laborers, work in proximity to pesticide production and application sites. The reporting Tekni-Plex skipped is a foundational piece of the data chain that tracks cumulative pesticide exposure in communities like this one.
• The 2024 annual report was required to disclose not just what was produced but what was sold and distributed during the year. Without that data, there is no way to know whether any pesticides manufactured at the Yakima facility reached residential areas, drinking water sources, or food crops.
• The settlement closes the case on the reporting violation but contains no requirement for Tekni-Plex to retroactively disclose what it produced in 2024. That information remains absent from the public record.
• Yakima County has documented elevated rates of pesticide-related health concerns among agricultural workers over multiple years. Adding an unreported pesticide producer to that environment, even temporarily, compounds an already stressed public health picture.

Economic Inequality

A $1,000 fine does not function as a deterrent. It functions as a licensing fee for non-compliance, and only the smallest businesses would feel it at all.

• Tekni-Plex operates out of a Suite 3000 corporate office in Wayne, Pennsylvania. The company produces specialty materials and packaging sold to major consumer goods manufacturers. A $1,000 penalty is, in economic terms, noise on their books.
• If an individual worker in Yakima failed to submit a required government form and got caught, they would face fines, penalties, or legal consequences that represent a meaningful portion of their income. A corporation operating an unlicensed pesticide production site gets a bill smaller than a month’s parking.
• The EPA’s expedited settlement program, which produced this outcome, was designed for administrative efficiency. Its effect is to create a two-tier enforcement system: fast, cheap resolution for corporations that can afford to simply pay, and far more prolonged proceedings for anyone without legal infrastructure to navigate a consent agreement in weeks.
• The settlement explicitly states the fine is not tax-deductible (Paragraph 13). That is the one financial consequence with any teeth, and it still amounts to a rounding error for a company of this size.

The “Cost of a Life” Metric

What Now? Who Is Responsible and What You Can Do

This case is closed on paper. The people accountable for it remain in their positions, and the regulatory system that produced a $1,000 outcome is unchanged.

The Named Parties

• Mauro Gonzalez, Production Manager, Tekni-Plex Yakima Facility: Signed the settlement agreement on April 30, 2025 on behalf of Tekni-Plex Inc. His name and title appear on the Certificate of Service as “Plant Manager (Yakima).”
• Edward J. Kowalski, Director, Enforcement and Compliance Assurance Division, EPA Region 10: Approved the settlement on behalf of the EPA on May 6, 2025.
• Richard Mednick, Regional Judicial Officer, EPA Region 10: Signed the Final Order on May 7, 2025, formally closing the case.
• Martin Lovato, Enforcement Case Officer, EPA Region 10: Named as the recipient of all compliance documentation; the case officer who managed this proceeding.
• Tekni-Plex Inc. Corporate Leadership: [REDACTED – Not in Source]. The settlement agreement identifies no corporate officers above the production manager level. The Wayne, Pennsylvania headquarters signed off through Gonzalez.

Watchlist: Regulatory Bodies With Ongoing Authority

• EPA Region 10 (Seattle, WA): Retains authority to pursue future violations by Tekni-Plex under FIFRA and any other federal statute. The settlement explicitly preserves this right. Contact: epa.gov/aboutepa/epa-region-10-pacific-northwest.
• EPA Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance (OECA): The national body that sets enforcement policy for FIFRA Section 7(c) violations, including the expedited settlement program that produced this $1,000 outcome. Their policy decisions set the penalty ceiling.
• Washington State Department of Agriculture (WSDA): State-level regulator with jurisdiction over pesticide sales, use, and production within Washington. The Yakima facility operates in its jurisdiction.
• Washington State Department of Health: Tracks pesticide-related illness and exposure in Washington communities, including Yakima County agricultural workers.

What Grassroots Action Looks Like Here

• File a FOIA request with EPA Region 10: Request all records related to Establishment No. 61718-WA-1, including any prior annual reports, inspection records, and correspondence. You have a legal right to this information under the Freedom of Information Act. Start at foia.epa.gov.
• Contact the Yakima Valley Farm Workers Clinic: This community health organization serves agricultural workers in the Yakima region and tracks pesticide exposure data. Sharing this story with them directly supports their advocacy and public health monitoring work.
• Submit public comments demanding higher FIFRA Section 7(c) penalties: The EPA’s Enforcement Response Policy for FIFRA Section 7(c) violations was last updated in May 2010. Write to OECA and EPA Region 10 demanding the penalty schedule be updated to reflect actual deterrence, not administrative convenience.
• Connect with Yakima-area environmental justice organizations: Groups like Familias Unidas por la Justicia and the Community to Community Development network organize in the Yakima agricultural corridor on exactly these issues. Bring this document to them.
• Share the source document: The settlement agreement is a public federal record. Sharing it with local journalists, community groups, and elected officials in Yakima County is a direct act of accountability that costs nothing and has real impact.