Sanger company trashes local wastewater plant as City Hall ignores problems | Opinion

Most people expect the businesses in their town to be responsible and operate the right way. Likewise, citizens expect their city government to keep them safe and provide quality services.

Sanger’s major employer, Pitman Farms, failed the first test when it came to its dirty waste discharge into Sanger’s sewer system. Sanger city government also gets an F grade when it comes to assuring proper use of its industrial wastewater plant and protecting public well-being.

Both the company and the city victimized the residents of Sanger, who had to unfairly endure years of horrible smells from the treatment plant due to grossly improper discharges by Pitman Farms. Needless to say, there is abundant blame to go around for this literal mess.

Bee staff writer Melissa Montalvo investigated wastewater discharged by Pitman into the city’s sewer system since the early 2000s. She learned that rivers of chicken heads, feathers and feet, oils and grease were sent from the poultry plant to the city’s waste system. That’s because the family-owned business did not do any pretreatment of its waste stream. This nasty discharge flowed from Pitman’s plant for years.

For its part, Sanger officials ignored Pitman’s discharging, then dragged their feet when it came to holding the company accountable for the problems its discharge was creating at the city-run treatment plant. Putting it bluntly, Sanger officials proved incompetent to the task of regulating a major business in the city.

As of this past spring, Sanger had spent $1 million to clean a digester unit that filters industrial wastewater. Also included in this work were other repairs to the plant. Another $1.6 million was allocated by the City Council in April for additional repair work to the plant. It is unclear how much Sanger’s 26,000 residents will pay through their utility bills.

How did this sorry situation develop? Montalvo’s story explains how it happened.

Dirty wastewater discharge

The odor of rotten eggs, poop and raw sewage permeated Sanger due to the wastewater sent by Pitman Farms to the treatment plant. The smell forced residents to close their home windows; even their car interiors would take in the scent. The smell would get worse from August to October, as Pitman Farms ramped up turkey production for the coming Thanksgiving season.

The odor problem loomed over the city for nearly a decade. Today most of the bad smell is gone, but only because city officials began cracking down on Pitman Farms last year.

Montalvo learned that, for two decades, Sanger officials did not fully enforce a state-required wastewater pretreatment program for companies like Pitman Farms. Pretreatment removes pollutants from a discharge stream before it is flushed into the city’s sewer system. Missteps and delays continued:

• Fast forward to 2017. The Sanger City Council approved an industrial pretreatment program. But it did not get implemented until seven years later, and only after state officials sent a notice of violation to the city.

• City records show that from July 2022 through January 2023, Pitman Farms sent processing water into the sewer with a concentration of fats, oils and grease that was over the city’s 100 milligrams per liter limit. Pitman Farms only met that limit in four of the 30 weeks tested.

• One reason pretreatment enforcement did not start in 2017 is due to how the city manager then was embroiled in getting Pitman Farms to pay for water it had used above permitted limits. Pitman Farms eventually agreed to a $1 million settlement.

David Pitman, one of the owners of the poultry company, told the Sanger public works director in a 2023 email that the company was looking at purchasing pretreatment equipment. “This is difficult. The monthly chemical cost and cost to haul the sludge always is VERY costly,” Pitman wrote.

Later in 2023 the state received an anonymous complaint from a Sanger resident about the odors. The city got a notice outlining 100 violations at the domestic and industrial wastewater plants. This spurred city officials to take a tougher line on Pitman Farms’ discharge, telling the company Sanger could no longer “accommodate Pitman Farms’ untreated effluent.”

But the damage had already been done. A 2023 study found the industrial wastewater treatment plant needed $12 million in repairs and maintenance.

Nathan Olson became Sanger’s city manager in February 2024. He is now working closely with state officials to get the plant into compliance.

Pitman Farms’ obligation

A few conclusions can be drawn from Sanger’s sorry tale:

• Private enterprise has no right to shirk its responsibilities to the law and to the community where it is located. The cost of compliance is no excuse. Those who cannot meet the requirements must face fines and even closure orders to get compliance.
• If small cities lack the technical expertise to manage complicated matters like waste streams, those staffs must reach out to larger agencies or the state for advice and help.
• Elected officials must have the courage to tell major local employers to shape up when community health is at stake. Those politicians must assure accountability, no matter the risk to their electoral future.

No one wants to live in a city ruined by the constant smell of rotten eggs or poop. Sanger stands as a lesson for the neighboring cities in Fresno County. May they avoid a similar crisis.

This story was originally published August 26, 2025 at 5:30 AM.