By Kristina Peterson
Palo Alto Daily News
Copyright 2007 Palo Alto Daily News
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News
PALO ALTO, Calif. — Palo Alto announced on Friday that it had reached a settlement agreement with the company that accidentally leaked chemical fumes in the Barron Park neighborhood last year.
Under the terms of the agreement, Communications & Power Industries will have to pay $20,000 to the city to recover the cost of the investigation into the release of nitric acid in February 2006. In addition, the company has to comply with several corrective actions. In return, the city has promised it will not sue.
“CPI expressed a willingness to take appropriate actions without us needing to take court actions,” said Assistant City Attorney Donald Larkin.
The company’s spokeswoman, Amanda Mogin, said that corrective actions have already been implemented, including “technical changes with waste-handling procedures” and improvements to equipment.
“If there was a port that could be opened, procedures were put in place so it could only be opened at a certain time,” Mogin said.
And most importantly, the emergency notification system is being revamped, she said.
Mogin said the company has established “new procedures to make sure correct notifications do take place in the event of any sort of incident.”
In the Feb. 2 leak of fumes from the waste treatment system, neither the company nor the neighbors contacted the Fire Department.
The city’s investigation was “complicated due to the fact that we were not notified at the time,” Larkin said. “Once that was completed, we made requests for CPI to take corrective measures, and that was done fairly promptly.”
The Fire Department conducted a surprise visit to the company’s plant on Jan. 4 to ensure the corrections were being implemented.
“The violations the inspector observed were minor in nature,” said Palo Alto Fire Marshal Dan Firth. He said that “to my knowledge, they have all been corrected and addressed.”
Doug Moran, president of the Barron Park Association, said he was glad that the company’s mistakes had been recognized.
“I don’t know if the penalty is appropriate for the error ... all safety problems are usually a large chain of errors,” he said.
Moran said work still remained for the city and the company to create adequate notification systems “given how quickly any sort of problem can spread into the adjacent neighborhood.”
Larkin said Palo Alto “is in the process of upgrading the community alerts system.”
In October, Sheryl Contois, the Police Department’s director of technical services, said the new system would likely employ voice-over Internet protocol rather than the current telephone-based database.