Times News Global | The owner of a mustard and vinegar manufacturing company has been sentenced to 18 months in federal prison for knowingly polluting the Souhegan River in New Hampshire.
Charles Santich, 60, of New York, received his sentence in federal court. Santich, president and owner of Old Dutch Mustard Co., which operates as Pilgrim Foods Inc., was ordered by U.S. District Court Judge Landya McCafferty to also pay a $250,000 fine and serve one year of supervised release.
His company faces a $1.5 million fine and must establish environmental compliance and ethics programmes. Both Santich and the company pleaded guilty in February 2025 to knowingly discharging a pollutant without a permit in violation of the federal Clean Water Act.
The case is said to reveal a deliberate effort to bypass legal requirements. Old Dutch Mustard, with a manufacturing facility in Greenville, New Hampshire, produces vinegar and mustard products that generate acidic wastewater. Under the law, the company was required to store this polluted water in tanks and pay for off-site treatment. Instead, prosecutors detailed a plan that began as early as spring 2015.
Santich hired an excavation company to bury a pipe running from the facility along an abandoned railroad bed, directing acidic wastewater and stormwater toward the Souhegan River. The discharge point was strategically placed downstream from continuous environmental monitoring required due to the company’s history of Clean Water Act violations dating to the 1980s. In May 2017, he expanded the operation, extending the underground pipe several hundred feet to a hilltop and constructing a drainage ditch to flow directly into the river.
For years, Santich directed employees to pump wastewater through the pipe, threatening to fire those who refused. He even instructed the excavation contractor to alter proposals to remove references to the illegal infrastructure. The scheme unraveled in May 2023 when state inspectors discovered low-pH wastewater smelling of vinegar flowing into the river. Santich falsely claimed it was residue from a failed mustard seed planting attempt, a lie he later had employees repeat to investigators.
The environmental impact has been significant. An EPA toxicologist testified that the discharges likely contributed to conditions resulting in a mercury fish consumption advisory in the area. The court found that prior pollution from Old Dutch caused fish kills in the 1990s, and Santich’s continued discharges prevented the recovery of acid-sensitive fish and aquatic life.
The case was investigated by the EPA’s Criminal Investigation Division, with assistance from the New Hampshire Department of Environmental Services and the New Hampshire Attorney General’s Office.
