Washington, Kaiser settle over PCBs
Kaiser Aluminum & Chemical Corp. has settled a dispute with the state over a $40,000 fine for discharging 1,000 times more hazardous PCBs than usual into the Spokane River for four days in 2003.
The Washington Department of Ecology hit Kaiser with the civil penalty in November 2004. It was the maximum fine Ecology could levy for the high PCB discharges at Kaiser’s Trentwood rolling mill. Ecology officials said the releases greatly exceeded water-quality limits set to protect human health and were equivalent to 30 years’ worth of Kaiser’s normal PCB releases into the river.
Kaiser didn’t report the 2003 releases for several months after they occurred, a violation of state and federal reporting laws, according to a March 2004 Ecology inspection report obtained by the newspaper under the Open Public Records Act.
Kaiser appealed the Ecology fine to the Pollution Control Hearings Board in Olympia, which ordered the aluminum company and Ecology to work out a settlement. The legal settlement, announced Monday, calls for Kaiser to contribute $30,000 for new groundwater monitoring wells in the Spokane Valley-Rathdrum Prairie aquifer near the Trentwood plant, with the remaining $10,000 to go to other Ecology programs statewide.
Kaiser “isn’t paying any less. But now we can put the bulk of the penalty funds into work that’s helpful in our watershed,” said Ecology spokeswoman Jani Gilbert.
Kaiser is “pleased to have reached an amicable conclusion to this matter as a means of demonstrating the company’s commitment to operating responsibly and continuing to enhance our environmental performance,” the company said in a statement.
There was additional fallout from the big 2003 PCB spill.
Local environmental groups complained last summer that Kaiser’s leaking PCBs are also endangering the aquifer, the sole source of Spokane’s drinking water which flows beneath the Trentwood plant before it discharges into the river. Ecology has not acted quickly or assertively enough to curb Kaiser’s pollution problems, they said.
“We request that Ecology fully exercise its civil and criminal enforcement authority to punish past practices and take immediate action to ensure that the pollution is halted,” said attorney Rachael Paschal Osborn of the Sierra Club in a June 2004 letter to Ecology.
Ecology studies in 2003 and 2004 confirmed the ongoing presence of PCBs in ground water at Trentwood. The PCBs were detected in several million gallons of oil floating on top of the aquifer. Kaiser has spent over $20 million in an effort to reduce the PCBs, but hasn’t eliminated them.
Since 1994, in a voluntary cleanup plan negotiated with the state, Kaiser has used a “pump and treat” system to prevent the contaminated water from migrating off-site and to recover petroleum in the water. It has also installed a filtration system to remove PCBs from wastewater. Last November, Ecology issued an order requiring the company to determine where the PCBs are coming from and stop the releases. Kaiser was also ordered to improve its system for timely reporting of PCB monitoring results and step up monitoring if PCB levels rise again.
A report on Kaiser’s cleanup progress is due to Ecology by Nov. 1, Gilbert said
Also last year, a federal grand jury in Spokane issued subpoenas to Kaiser officials as part of an investigation of whether Kaiser engaged in any criminal violations by deliberately discharging the PCBs into the river and not immediately reporting the releases.
Company officials were required to produce “Any and all documents … relating in any way to a PCB discharge, spill, release, clean up, or other problem” at Kaiser’s Trentwood rolling mill, according to the March 30, 2004, subpoena. No criminal indictments against Kaiser over the PCB pollution were returned, said Kaiser spokeswoman Sara Jones.
While the federal subpoenas were being issued, Kaiser lawyers in Houston were moving to resolve the PCB issue, which complicates Kaiser’s eventual emergence from its February 2002 Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Kaiser reached a settlement in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in 2003 that keeps it on the hook for $74 million in groundwater cleanup costs at Trentwood and the shuttered Mead smelter.
On April 4, 2003, the lawyers fired off a memo warning Trentwood workers of an investigation by “one or more law enforcement agencies.” The memo from Edward F. Houff, Kaiser’s general counsel, advises staff to consult a company lawyer before talking to outside investigators.
“Additionally, the Company, through counsel, will be conducting a confidential and privileged internal investigation into various issues related to the Company’s compliance with state and federal environmental laws,” Houff’s memo says.
Last month, the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Delaware approved Kaiser’s disclosure statement for its bankruptcy reorganization plan. If the plan gets final approval at a hearing in early January, the company could emerge from Chapter 11 by the end of January or early February 2006, Jones said.
This year, Kaiser and Ecology signed a new cleanup plan for the Trentwood site.
In addition, tons of PCBs released from Kaiser and other facilities along the river have lodged behind Upriver Dam. Avista and Kaiser have settled with Ecology and that cleanup will start next summer. Plans call for the sediments to be capped with a charcoal-like substance that absorbs and stabilizes PCBs, Gilbert said.
Historic sources of PCBs include Kaiser, the Spokane Industrial Park, Inland Empire Paper Co. and the Liberty Lake and Spokane wastewater treatment plants.
PCBs are manufactured chemical compounds that were once used in industry. They are carcinogens that build up in the fatty tissues of the human body and in fish tissue. The federal government banned commercial production of PCBs in 1979.
Because of the PCB pollution in the Spokane River and the presence of heavy metals from Idaho mining, the state advises that no fish be eaten that are caught between Upriver Dam and the Idaho border. Fishermen by law must release any game fish caught in that stretch of the river.