Cargill

Headquarters: Minneapolis
Revenue: $88.3 billion

A Cargill plant in Virginia has been overwhelming wastewater-treatment facilities, causing the dumping of toxic substances into the North Fork Shenandoah River.

Cargill's corn-processing plants have been significant sources of carbon monoxide, volatile organic compounds (which can cause cancer), and smog. The company is now working to comply with a settlement it entered into with the E.P.A. and the Justice Department in 2005 that requires it to spend an estimated $130 million to clean up its plants. Cargill has spent most of the past decade battling lawsuits over the dumping of residue from salt production into a holding pond in a wildlife preserve near San Francisco Bay. Last spring, a U.S. appeals court overturned previous rulings against Cargill on a technicality, saying that the polluted pond isn't covered by the federal Clean Water Act because it doesn't seep into navigable waterways. Last summer, the E.P.A. determined that a former Cargill plant in Grand Island, Nebraska, had contaminated the community's groundwater and said it would take up to 30 years to eliminate the contamination.

What the company says: Cargill says it has consistently tried to act in an environmentally responsible way and that private wastewater-treatment plants are to blame for discharges into Virginia's North Fork Shenandoah River.

CARS

Ford Motor
Headquarters: Dearborn, Michigan
Revenue: $172.5 billion

Ford has contributed waste to 40 Superfund sites.

Ford set out to be a leader in greening the auto industry, becoming the first U.S. carmaker to offer a hybrid S.U.V., with its 2004 Escape. The company also recently announced a more fuel-efficient car engine. But the automaker had the second-worst fleetwide gas-mileage rating in both 2006 and 2007, according to the E.P.A. And in 2006, Ford withdrew its guarantee that it would manufacture a quarter of a million hybrid vehicles annually by 2010, opting instead to explore alternative energy sources. Ford recently created the world's largest living-grass rooftop on its Dearborn plant, but the lawn crowns a factory that produces one of the least fuel-efficient vehicles on the market, the F-150. Ford cleaned up its 500-acre Superfund site in Upper Ringwood, New Jersey, in 1994, but the E.P.A. relisted it in 2006—the only time the agency has relisted a site—when tests found that paint sludge still contaminated the area.

 What the company says: Ford says it takes its environmental responsibilities seriously and is committed to creating a better and more sustainable world, whether by increasing fuel efficiency or working closely with local and state authorities on Superfund site cleanups.