Comment by Animats

Yes. It's a miserable business. Look at the pictures from the inspection of a plating plant. Everything near the process is corroded and covered with crud. Such plants have to be regulated and inspected, to prevent them from becoming a hazard both to the neighborhood and downstream.

Plants which do chemistry on an industrial scale tend to need their own waste processing, which gets the waste products down to a reasonably neutral form. Regulation is needed to prevent dumping it unprocessed. That's what the EPA really does.