Utah plant linked to Kingston polygamist group cited for dumping chemicals into Bear River tributary
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In August 2019, an anonymous tipster reported that a company located in Portage, Utah, was illegally dumping chemical waste in ponds, sewers, storm drains and on the ground and had been doing so intentionally for months.
Later that month, a team of inspectors representing the state of Utah, a local health department and a fire department entered the American Chemical facility in Box Elder County. They didn’t like what they saw at the plant that processed vegetable oils and contaminated glycerin, a type of sugar alcohol that the facility had received as a byproduct of biodiesel operations.
Inspectors found “foul smelling, dark water” in a ditch running from the facility to the Malad River which feeds the Bear River. Greasy water pooled in many parts of the facility often from overflowing containers.
“One such oily stream on the north edge of the facility had a dead female” hawk in it. Liquids on the north edge of the facility were directed through a muddy field, and then “eventually drain through an unlined ditch, under the railroad tracks, to settling/evaporation ponds located to the east.”
The state’s Department of Environmental Quality eventually fined the company $27,519 for violating the Utah Water Quality Act.
It was one of two companies that received fines for intentionally polluting storm drains and main surface waters that feed the Great Salt Lake, according to an investigation by The Utah Investigative Journalism Project.
We analyzed 174 reports of spills affecting the Bear River and Jordan River, the primary tributaries of the Great Salt Lake, from 2019 through the first half of 2024. Most spills — 150 — were accidental.
Of the 24 reports of allegedly willful polluters, only two received fines, according to documents. In the rest of the incidents or warnings, authorities determined that no action needed to be taken and educational materials were provided. Three incidents don’t appear to have been investigated at all.
American Chemical, which has now closed, was located on the site of the notorious Washakie Fuels property and has common owners — the Kingston polygamist family. Washakie Fuels went bankrupt after federal prosecutors charged it in what the U.S. Department of Justice later called a “billion-dollar biofuel tax fraud scheme.” Before that case went to trial, the company went under and some of the same owners repurposed the site into American Chemical LLC.
The state’s 2019 inspection of spills at the property revealed some common ownership between the owners of the Washakie and the new company.
The inspection report noted the Kingston polygamist family operated Washakie and that “according to the Operations Manager, the property on which the facility is located is owned by NWR, another Kingston family entity, and is leased to the facility.”
After Washakie went bankrupt, “its operation was taken over by American Chemical LLC, which is also owned by the Kingston family.” The report also found the company was processing contaminated glycerin from California biodiesel operations.
According to the inspectors, managers at American Chemical, who had previously worked for Washakie, “repeatedly accused the various other sister companies of being responsible for many of the problems on site during the inspection.”
And there were a lot of problems, according to the inspection report.
Content retrieved from: https://www.sltrib.com/news/environment/2025/06/23/utah-plant-linked-kingston/.
