Farm Animal Transparency (FAT)’s weekly Environmental Watch — a digest of environmental permits, litigation, and settlements involving companies in the meat, poultry, and seafood supply chains. Full details, classifications, and sources for every matter live on the Environmental Watch tracker.

Three items this week: a new aquaculture matter — a Clean Water Act citizen suit against Cooke Aquaculture’s Maine salmon farms that has survived a motion to dismiss; a correction on Pacific Seafood’s Oregon DEQ penalty, which FAT now understands to be under appeal; and a backfilled Texas temporary injunction in the Darling Ingredients Bastrop case. The Oklahoma poultry-litter settlement and every other tracked matter are unchanged. Details below.

New matter: Conservation Law Foundation v. Cooke Aquaculture (Maine salmon net-pen farms)

FAT is adding an aquaculture matter to the tracker. The Conservation Law Foundation (CLF) sued Cooke Aquaculture in the U.S. District Court for the District of Maine in January 2025, alleging ongoing Clean Water Act violations at Cooke’s Maine salmon net-pen sites, including a thick layer of sediment on the seafloor near net pens, reported toxic sulfide levels at multiple sites, failures to meet state monitoring requirements, exceedances of discharge limits, and the discharge of water containing blood and chemical odor after delousing. Cooke operates 24 active lease sites along Maine’s coast and, per the reporting FAT reviewed, has received six warning letters and 20 violation notices from the Maine DEP over the past decade. According to an October 2, 2026 Undercurrent News report, the court denied Cooke’s motion to dismiss but narrowed the case to five claims. FAT could not read the full article (paywalled) or the opinion, so the judge, ruling date, and the specific surviving claims are unconfirmed. Cooke denies the allegations, and the Maine Aquaculture Association has called them false and misleading — those are the parties’ positions, not independent findings. Surviving a motion to dismiss means the claims may proceed; it is not a finding of any violation. Classification: Litigation pending (allegations only). Digest-only for now; no tracker page has been created pending Dirk’s decision. Undercurrent News (Oct. 2, 2026) · Inside Climate News (Sept. 24, 2026)

Pacific Seafood: Oregon DEQ penalty reported to be under appeal

FAT previously reported that it could not confirm whether Pacific Seafood appealed Oregon DEQ’s April 2026 $3.2 million civil penalty. A June 3, 2026 report indicates the company did appeal, argued the financial burden could force it to leave Oregon after 85 years in business, and that Oregon coastal lawmakers asked DEQ in a May 20 letter to stay enforcement during the appeal; the report, citing OPB, also says DEQ scheduled a settlement meeting with the company for June 2026. FAT has not found the outcome of that meeting or any Office of Administrative Hearings record, so current status is unconfirmed. The penalty remains a DEQ assessment under appeal — not final and not an adjudicated violation — and the company’s statements are its own position. The three Clean Water Act citizen suits are unchanged (allegations only). Full tracker page → · IndexBox (June 3, 2026)

Darling Ingredients (Bastrop, TX): temporary injunction backfilled

FAT identified March 2026 reporting that the Travis County District Court entered a temporary injunction in State of Texas v. Darling Ingredients, Inc. requiring the company to self-monitor hydrogen sulfide emissions at the Bastrop rendering plant and report to TCEQ whenever levels exceed 1,000 parts per billion — well above the 80 ppb the state had sought. A hearing on a final injunction is set for July 2027. A temporary injunction is an interim order, not a finding that Darling violated the law; the state’s allegations remain unadjudicated. Full tracker page → · Community Impact (Mar. 5, 2026)

No change this week

FAT located no new developments on: the Oklahoma poultry-litter settlement (the parties’ joint request that Judge Frizzell vacate the December 2025 judgment remains pending; no ruling found — tracker); the Oakridge Dairy digestate-storage permit in Somers, Connecticut; REACH v. EPA (D.C. Cir. No. 25-5354 — the court’s docket was not directly accessible, and no oral-argument scheduling was located; tracker); United States v. Ganaderos Borges, Inc. (Puerto Rico); Waterkeeper Alliance v. EPA (tracker); the JBS Greeley air-permit suit; the Perdue AgriBusiness PFAS litigation in Salisbury, Maryland; the EPA proposed NPDES exemption for offshore seafood processors (comments close October 19); or the EPA enforcement log. All remain as previously reported — allegations only unless labeled otherwise.

FAT also reviewed its North Carolina swine-CAFO regulatory cluster. No confirmed movement on any of the six threads: DEQ’s Environmental Management Commission proposed-rules page lists no animal-waste, phosphorus, or floodplain-groundwater rulemaking; the NC Department of Justice still describes the Smithfield-funded Environmental Enhancement Grant program as paused because of ongoing litigation, with no Supreme Court disposition of the Randolph Cnty. v. Stein petition located; and no new general-permit renewal, Title VI resolution, or Align RNG permitting action was found.

Also on FAT’s watch list: Shenandoah Valley Organic (the “Farmer Focus” chicken brand) in Harrisonburg, Virginia — repeated pretreatment-permit notices of violation reported June 2026. No escalation located. Not yet a tracker matter.

Dates to watch

• Coming weeks — the N.D. Okla. district court’s ruling on the parties’ joint request to vacate the December 2025 Oklahoma judgment.
• October 19, 2026 — public comment period closes on EPA’s proposed NPDES exemption for offshore seafood processors.
• November 9, 2026 — MDE public-comment period closes on Perdue AgriBusiness’s Salisbury wastewater-permit expansion request.
• On or about January 10, 2027 — the Oklahoma settlement’s six-month vacatur window closes; without vacatur and dismissal, the settlement becomes unenforceable.
• July 2027 — final-injunction hearing in the Texas v. Darling Ingredients case.

FAT keeps the most recent six months of weekly Environmental Watch reports published. Older reports are archived and available upon request — email dirkadams@farmanimaltransparency.com. See all tracked matters at the Environmental Watch index.