Prosecutors dropped trespassing charges against four activists arrested while blocking the entrances of the New Jersey offices of a plastic company with a record of pollution violations.

The municipal prosecutor in Livingston, New Jersey, moved to dismiss the charges after the group had prepared to argue that environmental and public health concerns about Formosa’s facilities justified their actions, the group’s lawyers announced Tuesday.

Formosa has a long history of air and water pollution violations at its two plastics production facilities in Point Comfort, Texas, and Baton Rouge. The company also operated a PVC plant in Delaware City, Delaware, that closed in 2018. Activists recently accused Formosa of hundreds of new violations of a Clean Water Act settlement it agreed to in 2019 over discharging plastic pellets into Lavaca Bay in Texas.

Diane Wilson, the Texas activist behind the Clean Water Act settlement, was one of the four who had their charges dropped. Others were Paula Rogovin with Food and Water Watch in New Jersey, recently retired Texas Campaign for the Environment (TCE) executive director Robin Schneider, and Matthew Kennedy, TCE’s petrochemical campaign coordinator.

“This dismissal is just another win against Formosa Plastics and the damage they continue to do to Texas’s environment and fishing communities,” said Wilson, a former shrimper.