5 years after fish kill, old vinegar plant is no longer polluting Jones Falls

Nearly five years after a resident reported a fish kill in the Jones Falls, a federal judge ended a consent decree governing pollution from the former Fleischmann’s Vinegar plant in North Baltimore.

U.S. Magistrate Judge J. Mark Coulson closed the book on Fleischmann’s Vinegar Co.’s consent decree in an order signed Thursday, agreeing that its operators have taken adequate steps to end acid discharges from the retired plant, which the company began to demolish last year.

Blue Water Baltimore, the environmental group whose lawsuit spurred the consent decree, cheered the decision Thursday as a victory for protection of the Jones Falls, the beleaguered stream that runs through the heart of Baltimore.

“This is a really great win,” said Alice Volpitta, Blue Water Baltimore’s watchdog for the Baltimore Harbor and its tributaries. “It’s proof that when we take the power of the law into our own hands, we can still get really good outcomes for the community and for the waterway that we’re trying to protect.”

Fleischmann’s Vinegar, owned by the Ireland-based food conglomerate Kerry Group, entered into the court-monitored cleanup plan with Blue Water Baltimore in April 2024 and agreed to a $1.3 million settlement.

Kerry Group did not respond immediately to a request for comment Thursday. Neither Blue Water Baltimore nor Chesapeake Legal Alliance, which also sued, contested the company’s request to end its consent decree.

To ensure that it was no longer polluting the stream, Fleischmann’s Vinegar and Kerry Group needed to pass six months of continuous monitoring, results that were corroborated in independent testing by Blue Water Baltimore.

Blue Water Baltimore first began looking into issues at the vinegar plant in September 2021, after a concerned resident’s report led to the discovery of more than 1,000 dead fish in the Jones Falls.

A similar fish kill happened a year later, and investigations by Blue Water Baltimore and the Maryland Department of the Environment found acetic acid, the active component of vinegar, leaking from cracks in the Fleischmann’s plant, located just north of Cold Spring Lane between Interstate 83 and the waterway.

In 2023, Blue Water Baltimore and the Chesapeake Legal Alliance sued over the discharges. MDE filed its own lawsuit soon after, resulting in a separate consent decree.

In a court filing last month, Fleischmann’s Vinegar outlined the steps it’s taken since entering the consent decree two years ago to come into compliance. Among them, the company said it has completed its settlement payments and decommissioned the old vinegar plant.

In the wake of the lawsuits, Kerry Group decided to shutter its plant, a former whiskey distillery constructed in the mid-19th century. The facility ceased operations in December 2023, and crews began work to tear it down early last year.

Today, the historic stone building is gone.

And according to a 172-page report submitted to the court by Fleischmann’s Vinegar attorneys, acid discharges have ended, too.

As part of its settlement payment, Kerry Group committed $850,000 toward environmental projects aimed at the Jones Falls’ restoration, including a wetlands observation deck, trash cleanups, removal of invasive vines and environmental education programming.

To Volpitta, this case is a testament to the power of the federal Clean Water Act to hold companies accountable. Unlike environmental cases Volpitta sees more often today, the vinegar plant wasn’t permitted to release this acid at all, even as the pollutant leached from the building’s walls.

“You typically don’t see straight up ’70s-style polluting anymore,” she said, “but this was discharging straight into the river.”