Clean Air Violators Find Low Fees Mean Business-as-Usual

Tuesday, November 8, 2011

by Robert McClure & Elizabeth Stiffler, NW NEWS NETWORK of KUOW, November 7, 2011

Air pollution The list of facilities that have ended up on the wrong side of Clean Air Act enforcement efforts in the Pacific Northwest is a long one. Dozens of firms are classified as “high priority violators,” often because the potential for affecting public health is high. Following are snapshots of a few of the Northwest facilities regulated under the Clean Air Act. A full listing of enforcement actions is available through the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Environmental Compliance History Online database.

Shell Oil: Shell’s refinery has escaped the intense publicity directed at its neighboring refinery in Anacortes, Wash., Tesoro, where a massive blast killed seven workers in 2010. But Shell’s fines for environmental infractions actually outstrip Tesoro’s, with Shell’s $291,000 in fines in five years numbering it as the No. 2-most-fined Clean Air Act violator in the Northwest. Shell also faced 16 notices of violation and 15 formal enforcement actions in that period. EPA has classified the Shell refinery as a “high priority violator” at least since the end of 2008, the ECHO database shows. The EPA data indicates the agency stepped in several times when state efforts did not work – which is the way the system is supposed to work. Jody Barnett, external affairs coordinator at the Shell refinery, did not return three telephone messages requesting comment .

LaFarge North America: This cement plant on the south side of Seattle showed repeated violations of emissions limits for soot and sulfur dioxide from 2006 to 2010. Early in 2010 the company agreed to pay a $5 million penalty to the federal government and 13 states covering transgressions at 13 of its cement plants. The $218,300 in fines in the last five years as a result of problems at the Seattle plant ranks the facility as sixth-most-fined among Northwest Clean Air Act violators; its 75 citations rank it third in the Northwest for violations. The plant on the west side of the Duwamish River has been less active since the heart of the operation, a cement kiln, was mothballed just over a year ago because of market conditions and regulatory concerns, the West Seattle Herald reported. Jonathan Hall, manager of the plant, told InvestigateWest LaFarge should get credit for settling the case, even as other cement companies continue to argue with regulators: “LaFarge was early to the table in this issue. … We argued what we thought was the fair position and in the end we settled on something in between” what the company wanted and what EPA sought.

JELD-WEN, Oregon: JELD-WEN’s wood window and door manufacturing0 plant on the north side of Klamath Falls, Oregon, is classified by EPA as a “High Priority Violator.” According to records maintained by EPA and Oregon’s Department of Environmental Quality, the plant has racked up six formal enforcement actions in the past five years. The company is contesting two further citations, which is why JELD-WEN has the dubious distinction of being the only Oregon firm currently on EPA’s enforcement “Watch List” for companies regulated under the Clean Air Act. However, Oregon DEQ Environmental Law Specialist Jenny Root noted in an email that there is no “ongoing violation” of air pollution limits as far as the agency is aware. The most serious unresolved allegation is that JELD-WEN failed to discover and fix a malfunctioning smokestack monitor at the Klamath Falls plant in 2008. The alleged oversight meant excess particulate emissions spewed from a boiler at a wood drying kiln on 116 days before the issue was addressed. Pollution from fine particulates is a serious problem in the Klamath Falls area. It is why the American Lung Association gave Klamath County an “F” grade for dirty air in its 2011 State of the Air report. But the JELD-WEN story also illustrates how industrial pollution plays a relatively small role in fouling the region’s air compared to other sources. According to a 2009 Oregon DEQ emissions inventory, JELD-WEN accounted for 2 percent of the particulate pollution in Klamath County on a bad winter day. Wood stoves and outdoor burning were the primary causes of unhealthy air in the basin, together accounting for 75 percent of the problem. With the acquiescence of the government, JELD-WEN redirected some of the fines it has been ordered to pay. To mitigate a citation lodged in 2007, the company contributed $11,600 to the Klamath Falls school district to retrofit school buses with filters that reduce diesel and other particulate emissions. In 2010 and 2011, JELD-WEN contributed a combined $8,320 to the South Central Economic Development District woodstove rebate program to fund incentives for individuals to remove old, inefficient woodstoves and upgrade to EPA-certified heating alternatives.

JELD-WEN, Washington: This facility on the Yakama Indian Reservation reduced its toxic emissions over the last decade but still ran afoul of regulators and became the fifth-most-fined Clean Air Act violator in the region at $212,500 for failing to obtain proper permits to modify the facility, EPA and court records indicate. The company settled the allegations in March of this year in a consent decree filed in federal court in southern Oregon that also handled allegations about Jeld-Wen plants in Iowa, West Virginia and North Carolina.

Chemco: This Ferndale, Wash., manufacturer of fire-retardant chemicals used to treat wood got into trouble because of a consultant’s error, which the firm reported to the Northwest Clean Air Agency, said CEO Fred Amundson. It was a pretty big mistake. [Read rest of story]

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