Environmental Decision Making and DDT Production at Montrose Chemical Corporation of California

In this article, we examine the decisions made by corporate executives and government officials that led to the discharge with minimal treatment of hundreds of metric tons of dichloro-diphenyl-trichloroethane (DDT) waste into the Pacific Ocean over several decades. After World War II, Montrose Chemical Corporation of California's Los Angeles plant began making the new wonder pesticide, and Montrose executives worked with local officials to develop a waste disposal system that funneled the plant's process wastes into the county sewer system and ultimately into the ocean. Faced with increasing scientific concern about pesticides and a changed political climate in the 1960s, Montrose vigorously defended DDT and relied increasingly on exports to remain profitable. Years after the plant closed, a federal suit forced Montrose and related companies to pay the costs of environmental cleanup.