The state has fined three companies for mistakes that might cause explosions
By Toby Coleman and Wade Rawlins
The News & Observer (Raleigh, North Carolina)
Copyright 2006 The News and Observer
APEX, N.C. - The fireballs that rose from the Apex hazardous-waste warehouse in October put an exclamation point on a series of dangerous handling errors at chemical depots around the state.
The people who ate and slept near North Carolina’s three most mistake-prone storehouses were never told about the mistakes. State inspectors documented them, then filed them away in the basement of a Raleigh office building.
Since 2000, regulators have repeatedly found the ingredients for explosions stacked together inside Apex and Charlotte waste warehouses. Although none resulted in a fire such as the blaze Oct. 5, they all happened down the street from homes, day-care centers and, in Apex, a church.
Go to the regulators’ file room, and a portrait of neighborhood errors emerges:
- The Ashland warehouse in Charlotte has been cited for nine storage mistakes in the past six years, state records show. A company spokesman says none endangered surrounding neighborhoods or the nearby day-care center.
- In 2001, Heritage Environmental Services was cited for seven storage and handling errors at its storehouse, which is near a West Charlotte subdivision. That led one state inspector to write that he was concerned about the company’s present operation. Heritage officials declined to comment.
- Between July 2004 and December 2005, EQ Industrial Services was cited for eight waste-handling mistakes at its Apex warehouse, which is close to about 45 townhouses, a gymnastics center and a roller hockey center. The company said the errors were easily fixed “technical violations,” but it was fined $32,000 earlier this year.
Such mistakes are outside the norm for North Carolina’s hazardous-waste storage industry, a News & Observer review of state records found. The state’s 11 storehouses usually follow strict handling procedures that require them to separate chemicals that could mix and start a fire, cause an explosion or release toxic gas.
The consequences of such mistakes can be dire. The explosion Oct. 5 in Apex might have been sparked by a reaction between incompatible wastes, investigators from the federal Chemical Safety Board say, although the fire incinerated too much evidence for them to be certain. Nobody was hurt by the blaze, but about 30 people went to the hospital for respiratory problems.
Hazardous-waste companies say the danger of another explosive storage mistake is slim because they keep waste in sealed containers and check them frequently for leaks. That limits the chance of a reaction.
Mistakes are not always the companies’ fault. Customers sometimes mislabel drums or pack incompatible wastes together.
Still, state regulators say storage mistakes might be symptoms of bigger safety problems.
“One of the first things that’s on an inspector’s mind when they go into any facility is: Do we have incompatible wastes stored together?” said Liz Cannon, chief of the state Division of Waste Management’s hazardous-waste section. “And a red flag immediately goes up when you see that.”
One day last month, Warren Gene Dellinger of Charlotte paused from mowing his lawn and pointed up the street at the Ashland warehouse. Nobody told him or his neighbors about the potentially dangerous mistakes made next door.
“I think it’s just dangerous,” said Dellinger, 68. “If they’ve been violating, then hey, why don’t [regulators] stop it?”
Too close for comfort
Companies have been shipping such hazardous wastes as paint and pesticides in and out of warehouses scattered around the state for decades.
Last year, workers in the storehouses helped move 29,607 tons of trashed medical chemicals, newspaper ink and other waste to out-of-state incinerators, landfills and recyclers.
The volatile and poisonous waste presents such a risk that the state prohibits storehouses from opening within a quarter-mile of schools, hospitals or prisons.
But Apex officials allowed a children’s gymnastics school to open next to the EQ warehouse. Granville County rezoned land across the street from Veolia Environmental Services’ warehouse in 2001 so a day care could move in.
Wayne Bulsiewicz, Veolia’s environmental health and safety manager, just shakes his head. He now has a day care out front and homes rising beyond the woods out back.
“It limits what I can do,” he said. “The state would never let me expand this facility now.”
The day care’s owner, Fil Johnson, said he is not worried. Veolia has made one handling mistake in the past six years, according to state records.
As long as the company does what it is supposed to, Johnson said, he sees “no reason for people to get up in arms about this place.”
Neighbors don’t know
From the outside, the state’s hazardous-waste storehouses look no more dangerous than any other distribution centers. But the state’s inspectors know otherwise.
In 2000, for instance, they documented a string of safety violations at the Apex warehouse that undercut workers’ safety, hampered fire protection and, in some cases, increased the chance of a violent chemical reaction. They fined EnviroChem Environmental Services, which owned the storehouse at the time, $131,000.
In 2001, EnviroChem slashed staff, cut off phone service and started shutting down the business. At times, the warehouse fire alarm didn’t work. By April 2001, state documents say, the state’s top hazardous-waste official had “growing concerns” about the mothballed warehouse.
Neighbors never knew regulators were filing away these worries in the basement of an office building in Raleigh’s Cameron Village. When Gwen Palko and her husband moved into a house a few blocks from the storehouse, no one told her about it.
“I’m surprised it hasn’t been reported somehow,” said Palko, 49.
The inspection program’s effectiveness has been hampered recently by the inability to keep competent inspectors, state officials acknowledge. Last year, three-quarters of the state inspectors left the program, which now has half the staff it had in 2000.
Inspectors pop in to each facility for surprise reviews two to six times a month -- far more than federal law requires -- to check documents and search for potential problems.
Companies did not always get fined for storing the ingredients for an explosion too close together.
In Charlotte, Ashland got nine tickets between 2000 and 2005 before it was fined for storing incompatible wastes together. EQ was warned four times between July 2004 and June 2005 about stacking incompatible wastes together and other handling mistakes.
EQ Vice President Scott Maris said most were “routine technical concerns” that “were easily and immediately remedied.” They “shine a very positive light on the level of detail” of warehouse inspections, he said, “as well as EQ North Carolina’s ability and willingness to quickly address concerns.”
Cannon, the state waste management division chief, said inspectors usually issued warnings for mistakes they could get “corrected right there on the spot.” Fines came after they spotted a troubling trend.
In Apex, EQ workers helped load a tanker in July 2005 that spewed ammonia gas a day later in Sumter, S.C. The incident was one of the reasons inspectors fined EQ $32,000 this year.
Ashland, meanwhile, was fined $12,100 after an inspector found eight 55-gallon drums of trashed acid stored with 18 drums of waste lye last December. If mixed, the chemicals could have caused an explosion, according to state records.
Ashland paid $9,800 to settle the matter.
“We’ll confess we’re not perfect,” said an Ashland spokesman, Jim Vitak. But considering the number of drums that move through the warehouse each year, he said, “we do a very good job.”
Tighter controls?
EQ exploded about 10 p.m. Oct. 5 with fireballs that shot 200 feet into the night sky.
The fire grew from a small blaze amid the chemicals in Bay No. 6, in part because the only thing separating it from drums of flammable liquid was a 6-inch curb built to contain spills. EQ had not been required to build fire walls between the storage bays or install a fire-suppression system in the warehouse.
Firefighters had no idea what to use to douse the flames because they did not know what was burning. EQ was required to keep a list of what it had in its warehouse office but did not have to keep an off-site backup.
The state’s hazardous-waste regulators have begun to wonder what more they could do to protect the public from similar massive chemical fires.
A task force appointed by Gov. Mike Easley announced draft recommendations Friday aimed at tightening security at the warehouses, increasing inspections as populations grow around them, raising public awareness and requiring companies to stash backup inventory lists off-site in case of an emergency.
Danger up the hill
From L.C. Coleman’s backyard patio in West Charlotte, it is evident why people worry about waste-warehouse catastrophes.
Heritage’s white chemical depot is just up the hill from Coleman’s red brick house. For years, it has been part of the background for family cookouts.
Coleman, 88, and his neighbors have trusted Heritage to prevent spills and other mistakes. News that investigators had cited the company repeatedly for storage errors in 2001 made Coleman reconsider his neighbor.
“Something like this,” he said, “they’ll have to find somewhere else to move.”
In Apex, Town Council members have already said that they will do everything they can to keep EQ from rebuilding. They say the warehouse no longer fits in a neighborhood of homes, a children’s gym and a church.
Linda Porter, a chemist who lives a few blocks from the warehouse, said the plant was too close to residents. Had people known it was nearby, they might have pressured EQ to move out before the storehouse exploded.
“Anybody can make a mistake,” Porter said. “But usually they don’t happen over and over again.”