A Leland company that spent four years secretly discharging polluted wastewater into the Cape Fear River has avoided the $500,000 fine federal prosecutors wanted, even after pleading guilty to knowingly dumping industrial chemicals into the waterway that supplies drinking water to nearly one million people. U.S. District Judge Louise Flanagan declined to impose that penalty on American Distillation Inc., instead ordering the company to submit an environmental compliance plan within 90 days and submit to years of outside oversight.
According to the News & Observer, American Distillation had faced a fine of up to $500,000 after pleading guilty to knowingly discharging pollutants into the river over four years. The company, which has used its Royster Road facility to blend industrial-grade alcohol for 34 years, now must retain an independent environmental consultant, allow questioning of its corporate officers, submit to inspections of its books and records, and provide financial information on request. If it fails to submit the plan and retain a consultant, it will face a $100,000 fine.
The facility sits west of Wilmington in Leland, just upstream of Navassa, a historically Black Gullah Geechee community of about 2,000 residents that already hosts a 250-acre EPA Superfund site left behind by the Kerr-McGee creosote wood-treating plant, which operated from 1936 to 1974, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Cape Fear River Watch Riverkeeper Kemp Burdette said the stretch of river near the facility has been abused for about 100 years, per the News & Observer's reporting, and it remains a site of active subsistence fishing where residents eat what they catch.
How the Dumping Happened
Barry White, the company's production manager, pleaded guilty to knowingly discharging a pollutant into federal waters. Between 2020 and 2024, White discharged about 2,500 gallons of polluted wastewater into a pipe leading to the Cape Fear River up to six times per year. The company had stored its byproducts in a 250,000-gallon tank, and the wastewater included isopropyl alcohol, acetone, tert-butyl hydroperoxide, and water, per the News & Observer.
Internal corporate communications cited by federal prosecutors showed American Distillation management warned employees that halting distillation operations to properly handle the chemical waste would cause severe financial harm, including potential corporate dissolution, according to a U.S. Department of Justice announcement. Federal prosecutors calculated that the company illegally discharged more than 50,000 total gallons of industrial wastewater into the river over that four-year span. Company officials had accepted more chemicals than they could safely dispose of starting in 2019, and continued to violate hazardous-waste requirements into 2026, violating hazardous-waste management and reporting rules several times over the past six years. The EPA fined American Distillation $39,500 in 2022 for related violations.
Health Risks and Regulatory Framework
Exposure to water contaminated with the chemicals does not pose an immediate danger but can cause liver and kidney damage over time, per the News & Observer. Tert-butyl alcohol, one of the primary chemical byproducts in the wastewater, is a highly flammable, colorless liquid subject to federal toxic chemical release reporting under SARA Title III, according to EPA records. American Distillation had operated under an EPA permit that set discharge limits and required monitoring and reporting, obligations prosecutors say the company repeatedly ignored.
Under the Clean Water Act, criminal violations for knowingly discharging pollutants into federal waters can carry penalties of up to $50,000 per day of violation and up to three years imprisonment for individual offenders, per the Justice Department. White was sentenced to two years probation, which includes up to eight months of home confinement. American Distillation itself was sentenced to five years probation.
Owner's Prior Conviction and Sentencing
Andrew Simmons Jr., the 83-year-old owner and sole owner of American Distillation, was sentenced to 10 months in prison and received a delay in reporting to prison until October 13, 2026, after previously being scheduled to report for that sentence. He also pleaded guilty to failing to pay 2023 income taxes and was ordered to pay more than $112,000 to the IRS.
This is not Simmons's first brush with federal environmental enforcement. Back in 2003, he pleaded guilty to environmental and tax violations involving his former firm, High Rise Services Co., after dumping waste oil into the Cape Fear River and committing tax fraud. He was sentenced to two years in prison and fined $50,000 for those violations, while High Rise Services was ordered to pay more than $1 million to the federal government.
Attorney and Community Reaction
W. Ellis Boyle, an attorney involved in the case, said the federal government is paying attention to environmental pollution, according to the News & Observer. Boyle added that the compliance plan should help ensure the company follows environmental laws moving forward.
For a community already living beside a decades-old Superfund site, the case underscores the cumulative environmental burden facing Navassa. Hoodline previously reported on industrial wastewater fights across the Cape Fear basin, and White's own guilty plea to Clean Water Act violations was detailed in Hoodline's earlier coverage of the case. The compliance plan Judge Flanagan ordered now gives federal authorities the ability to inspect the company's finances and operations for years to come.
