FOOD

J.R. Simplot Co.

Headquarters: Boise, Idaho

Revenue: $11.9 billion¹

Last summer, the E.P.A. determined that a Simplot factory was the main source of a potentially deadly amount of phosphorus dumped into the Portneuf River.

Simplot produces more than 3 billion pounds of french fries annually and supplies McDonald's with over half of its potato inventory. But some of the company's nonedible products—including phosphate, phosphorus, and nitrate compounds—have made it infamous among environmentalists. For decades, Simplot has stored the waste by-products from its Pocatello, Idaho, fertilizer factory in an unlined stockpile that has contaminated the surrounding groundwater and polluted the nearby Portneuf River with a mixture of toxins, including arsenic and nitrate. Although Simplot has worked to clean up the site, which is listed as a Superfund site, it has also continued to operate the fertilizer plant.

Not only does Simplot process the fertilizer, it also mines the phosphate ore that makes it, a practice that has contaminated southeastern Idaho with mining waste and selenium, a natural trace element that can be deadly in large quantities. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has warned of harmful air pollutants from Simplot's Superfund site. In 2004, the company's silica-sand-mining facility in Overton, Nevada, was fined $500,000 by the Environmental Protection Agency for failing to control its sulfur-dioxide emissions. The facility was required to install $2 million worth of pollution-control equipment as well.

What the company says: Simplot understands that certain groups will be upset by its phosphate mining and is working with the government to clean up its sites.

Note: ¹According to most recent annual data available.

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.