CLEVELAND, Ohio — In a shocking revelation that tarnishes its wholesome image, Campbell’s Soup has admitted to over 5,400 violations of the Clean Water Act at its canning plant along the Maumee River, which flows directly into Lake Erie.
The Today in Ohio podcast tore into the scandal, calling out not only Campbell’s misconduct but a broader culture of corporate pollution.
“Yeah, this is kind of a shocker, right? You think of Campbell’s as ‘Mm, mm, good’ and very wholesome — not a giant water polluter,” said Laura Johnston on the podcast. “But this admission came in a joint filing for two lawsuits… the company admitted to violating the Clean Water Act at least 5,400 times between April 2018 and December of 2024.”
What makes this particularly alarming is that these aren’t historical offenses but recent and ongoing pollution. Campbell’s violations include dumping phosphorus, ammonia, E. Coli bacteria, oil and grease into the Maumee River, which is already the number one contributor to harmful algal blooms in Lake Erie.
Podcast host Leila Atassi framed the Campbell’s case as part of a systemic problem: “This isn’t just about this one factory or even one company. It’s this pattern we’ve seen over and over, where billion-dollar corporations treat fines and lawsuits like it’s just the cost of doing business.”
The podcasters pointed out the stark contrast between Campbell’s pollution and the pressure put on farmers to reduce agricultural runoff.
“We’ve always pointed at the farmers. We have this whole H2Ohio plan that gives incentives to farmers to clean up,” Johnston explained. “But here’s a company that is a very Americana brand — known for being very family friendly — and very recently, even while we’re bugging farmers, it’s just been dumping heedlessly into the lake.”
Johnston emphasized that the public ultimately bears the burden of corporate pollution: “I feel so strongly that everybody ends up paying for pollution. It ends up coming out of our taxes. It ends up coming out of our health… But the companies should be the ones paying for it on the front end to clean it up so that we don’t get sick and we don’t pollute our environment.”
Despite admitting to thousands of violations, it remains unclear what penalties the company will face or what remediation they’ll be required to perform. Campbell’s has even claimed that their dumping didn’t impact water health — a claim Johnston flatly rejected.
She explained how phosphorus leads to harmful algal blooms, creating what she described as a “green, toxic soup” in the western basin of Lake Erie.
“You don’t want to think about your tomato soup causing that kind of problem,” she said.
Atassi closed the discussion with a stark assessment of what’s at stake: “I hope that these penalties, whatever they end up being, hurt (Campbell’s) enough to change behavior. Otherwise, the system is broken.”
Listen to the entire discussion here.
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