TCEQ ISSUES 7 NEW VIOLATIONS AGAINST DARLING
On Tuesday November 18th 2025, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) issued 7 new violations against the Darling Ingredients Bastrop facility and will be referring them for formal enforcement.
View the full investigation report here.
The seven violations are for:
Failure to prevent the unauthorized discharges of wastewater into or adjacent to water in the state
Creating offsite nuisance odor conditions
Caused, suffered, allowed, or permitted emissions of hydrogen sulfide ("H2S") to exceed a net ground level concentration of 0.08 parts per million ("ppm") averaged over any 30-minute period
Failure to comply with TCEQ Docket No. 2024-1857-AIR-E, Ordering Provision 2.a.i., which states "Within 30 days after the effective date of this Order: Implement measures designed to prevent ground level concentrations of H2S from exceeding 0.08 ppm averaged over any 30-minute period.
Failure to record the date and time of arrival of raw rendering material or blood arrived at the facility.
Failure to record the date and time raw rendering material or blood was dumped into rendering process.
Failure to measure liquid flow rate into the Venturi Scrubber at minimum frequency of the least once per operating day.
Failure to maintain Venturi Scrubber liquid flow rate shall be maintained at (or above) 20 gallons per minute (gpm).
A few things of note:
The previous enforcement action from 2024 against Darling measured over 5x the legal limit of H2S. This time we are at nearly 6x the legal limit. The pollution is not decreasing, its getting worse.
Its not only the air thats being polluted, Darling is now affecting our water too.
The newly installed Darling leadership has yet to fulfill their promises of improved facility management, as evidenced by the record keeping violations.
Below is a press release by Public Citizen discussing the new violations further.
