Dive Brief:
- Safety-Kleen Inc. will pay a $90,000 penalty to resolve Clean Water Act violations alleged by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency at the company's vegetable oil terminal and packaging facility in Newark, CA, which it had acquired from Evergreen Oil in September 2013.
- Phillip Retallick, senior vice president of compliance and regulatory affairs at parent company Clean Harbors, said Safety-Kleen was in the process of bringing the facility into compliance when the EPA inspected it on Jan. 27, 2014.
- Five other companies were cited by EPA, for a total of $145,000 in fines, in hopes of supporting Spill Prevention, Control, and Countermeasure (SPCC) plans at California oil companies. The goal of the SPCC regulation is to prevent oil from reaching navigable waters and adjoining shorelines, and to contain and respond to discharges of oil.
Dive Insight:
Safety-Kleen does not necessarily concur with EPA's findings that the company failed to provide secondary containment around an oil storage area; failed to secure and control access to oil handling, processing and storage areas; failed to use safe containers and good engineering practices, including liquid level alarms, to avoid discharges; and failed to develop a complete facility response plan.
"Even though these deficiencies were historically an Evergreen matter, we did acquire the facility and as such, when we acquire a facility and take custody and control of it, we’ll do everything in our power to bring that facility back into compliance," Retallick says.
EPA's desire to keep oil from reaching shorelines and navigable waters is important. The timing of its inspection at Newark might mean that Safety-Kleen was cited for problems it didn't create. The company, however, is doing the right thing in taking steps to fix it, and the site is in full compliance.
