Charles Santich, 60, was sentenced Friday in federal court to 18 months in prison for knowingly polluting the Souhegan River, capping a case that prosecutors said involved years of evading environmental rules at a New Hampshire mustard plant.
U.S. District Court Judge Landya McCafferty also ordered Santich to serve one year of supervised release and pay a $250,000 fine. Old Dutch Mustard Co., the Greenville, N.H., business where Santich worked, was ordered to pay a $1.5 million fine and establish environmental compliance and ethics programs.
The sentence lands after Santich and the company pleaded guilty in February 2025 to knowingly discharging a pollutant without a permit. Court documents said Old Dutch Mustard Co. had a long history of not complying with the Clean Water Act, beginning in the 1980s, and that state and federal officials had required continuous monitoring of a stream flowing under the facility.
That monitoring became central to the case. Prosecutors said Santich and the company tried to intentionally evade it, and Erin Creegan said Santich lied to state and federal authorities while purposefully building the illegal infrastructure needed to pump manufacturing waste into New Hampshire’s waterways. She said he pushed employees to help him violate the law and added that a criminal sanction was necessary after years of deliberate misconduct and deceit.
Investigators said Santich told employees to pump acidic wastewater and stormwater through an underground pipe leading to the Souhegan River, and employees said he would fire them if they did not follow his orders. Creegan also said he hid the crime by submitting false documents to federal regulators and obstructing the Environmental Protection Agency’s efforts to get data about how he disposed of wastewater.
The pollution was not invisible for long. State inspectors found wastewater from the facility that smelled of vinegar flowing into the Souhegan River in May 2023, and Santich told them the smell came from a failed attempt to plant mustard seed. In August 2023, inspectors using a search warrant found his secret discharge pipe.
The case mattered beyond the factory gate because an EPA toxicologist testified that the pollution likely contributed to a mercury fish consumption advisory, raising concerns for people who eat from or recreate on the river. New Hampshire Attorney General John Formella said the conduct showed a deliberate effort to violate environmental laws and evade detection, putting one of the state’s valued waterways at risk, and said his office would keep pursuing actions to protect river water quality.
Santich’s sentence closes one chapter, but it leaves behind a stark finding: the contamination was not a mistake or a paperwork lapse, but an intentional scheme carried out over years and designed to stay hidden.
