## Facts

- Electronic Plating Company (EPC) and two company officials were indicted for multiple environmental offenses, including introducing contaminants into a sewage works, unauthorized hazardous-waste use, and conspiracy.
- The Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago (District) received an anonymous tip that EPC operated an underground bypass of its pretreatment facility, with a sketch indicating the bypass location.
- EPC’s designated sampling point (“station 1-A”) was located under a manhole in a pipe beneath the concrete floor of EPC’s building and was used by the District for monitoring.
- A District pollution control officer investigated at station 1-A and observed a suspicious discharge; an EPC supervisor attributed it to an employee leaving a valve open.
- On a later visit, the officer stated he needed to service sampling equipment at station 1-A but secretly installed an additional sampling probe roughly 24 feet downstream in the sewer line, closer to where EPC’s line connected to the public sewer.
- The District collected samples from the hidden probe for about two weeks without a warrant or notice to EPC; the samples indicated apparent ordinance violations.
- The State obtained a search warrant based on the probe results and proceeded with prosecution.
- Defendants moved to suppress the probe-derived evidence, asserting a reasonable expectation of privacy and a possessory interest in wastewater while still within EPC’s sewer line; the trial court granted suppression, and the State appealed.

## Issues

1. Whether EPC had a reasonable expectation of privacy in wastewater flowing through its sewer connection before entry into the public sewer system, such that covert sampling was a Fourth Amendment search.
2. Whether EPC had a sufficient possessory interest in discharged wastewater to challenge the taking of samples as a Fourth Amendment seizure.
3. Whether the sampling was otherwise valid due to regulatory/statutory monitoring authority or doctrines applicable to regulated dischargers.

## Decision

- The appellate court reversed the suppression order and remanded for further proceedings.
- The court held EPC lacked a reasonable expectation of privacy in wastewater it had irretrievably discharged into a sewer line connected to the public system.
- The court held EPC lacked a sufficient possessory interest in the discharged wastewater to support a seizure claim.
- Given the nature of the wastewater (discarded material en route to public treatment) and the regulatory context for industrial dischargers, the Fourth Amendment did not require a warrant for the covert sampling described.

## Legal Principles

- A Fourth Amendment privacy interest requires an expectation of privacy that society recognizes as reasonable; an entity generally cannot claim such an interest in material it has irreversibly discarded into a conduit leading to a public system.
- Discharged industrial wastewater committed to flow toward a public sewer system is treated like discarded refuse for Fourth Amendment purposes, not like retained private effects.
- A Fourth Amendment seizure claim depends on a cognizable possessory interest; relinquishing control over waste for disposal defeats that interest.
- Regulatory monitoring and sampling of industrial discharges, coupled with notice inherent in operating as a regulated discharger, weighs against any objectively reasonable privacy expectation in such discharges.

## Conclusion

The appellate court ruled that covert, warrantless sampling of an industrial facility’s wastewater from a sewer line carrying effluent to the public system did not violate the Fourth Amendment because the facility had neither a reasonable expectation of privacy nor a sufficient possessory interest in the discharged wastewater, and suppression of the sampling evidence was therefore improper.


People v. Electronic Plating Co., 291 Ill. App. 3d 328, 683 N.E.2d 465 (Ill. App. Ct. 1st Dist. 1997)