UPDATE MAY 5 2025 – Eleven months later and still no record of a follow-up visit. But we did find a “Stormwater Certificate of Coverage” dated June 27, 2024, issued by the NC Dept. of Environmental Quality just 16 days after an NCDEQ inspector reported several noncompliance issues, including an EXPIRED PERMIT.
Hood Container, formerly called Highland Container, is a corrugated cardboard packaging manufacturer owned by Mississippi-based Hood Industries. It operates on a 7-acre site on Main Street in the middle of Jamestown.
The June 27 2024 “Certificate of Coverage” states that Hood Container is “authorized to discharge stormwater” into DEEP RIVER (WSIV-CA*), primary drinking water supply source for Randleman Lake and reservoir. The red notes are ours:
In her August 1 cover letter to Hood, the inspector omits mention of the “expired permit,” which suggests this one-page “Certificate of Coverage” is the only “permit” that Hood Container is required to hold in order to discharge industrial waste to Deep River.
She asks Hood Container to “please note” they are “asked” to “update permit information, create and maintain a Stormwater Pollution Prevention Plan, and begin analytical and qualitative monitoring” at each water outfall. [Scroll down to the “Original Post” section to view the August 1 letter and June 1 inspection report]
A similar thing happened with the handling of the Alberdingk Boley spills: The onsite NCDEQ inspectors documented serious fails that directly impacted our drinking water supply streams and groundwater. The incidents were rewritten in a kinder, gentler tone. Alberdingk Boley received a small fine, and no one was held accountable for the lack of public notification to local residents about the 16,000+ gallons of milky substance that was spilled into Bull Run: NOT the City of High Point (which has pretreatment reporting authority over Alberdingk Boley), NOT the City of Greensboro (in whose city Alberdingk Boley’s front CURB is addressed), NOT the Town of Jamestown (in whose town the entire Alberdingk campus, tanks and emission pipes sit), NOT the Guilford County Health Department, and NOT Alberdingk Boley. The City of High Point didn’t report the 2022 spill in its 2022 pretreatment enforcement report.
UPDATE DECEMBER 10, 2024 – Nothing has been uploaded to the public records database since the June 2024 inspection that found Hood Container to be in noncompliance. The NCDEQ inspector, Tamara Eplin, said a follow-up inspection would be made at Highland/Hood Container some time after September 17, 2024.
In May, 2023, the NCDEQ granted Hood Container’s request to get rid of its AIR QUALITY PERMIT. Even though we can see something coming out of those pipes every time we cross the railroad tracks at Oakdale Road. An employee there told the NCDEQ it was just “steam.”
ORIGINAL POST
HOOD CONTAINER, formerly Highland Container, is a corrugated cardboard packaging manufacturer on 7 acres, on Main Street, in the middle of town. It’s been there a long time. Most Jamestowners know it by its former name, Highland Container.
All of Hood Container’s information in the EPA’s ECHO database is outdated, the address is wrong, the name is wrong, and the NPDES Stormwater permit is for the wrong industry (apparel piecing/cutting instead of corrugated cardboard manufacturing), so a Jamestown resident brought it to the attention of the EPA using this LINK.
The EPA notified the NCDEQ, someone was sent to take a look, and they found: the Stormwater (NPDES) permit is expired, the name of the company is out of date, no monitoring of water discharge is taking place, and they’re operating without a STORMWATER POLLUTION PREVENTION PLAN:
Here’s the August 1, 2024 cover letter transmitting the June inspection report:
Here’s why this is important.
HOOD/Highland Container discharges to a little tributary to Deep River. Here are a few pages from site assessments conducted there in the early 1990s (there’s not much on file after that):
Interesting comments in here, too:
More history: At some point Highland merged with Union Camp, but it’s been operating in that location on Main Street for decades. Here’s a 450-page file site inspection and groundwater assessment conducted in 1991-1992 when it was Union Camp:
This “Remember When” from the News & Record notes William Ragsdale Jr.’s election as president of Highland Container in 1944. The property that sits between Hood Container and Deep River is owned by the Ragsdales.
