on the cover / By HSU Investigative Reporting students

Meltdown

Anhydrous ammonia leaks have occurred throughout the country.

In Riverview, Fla., in 2005, three teens drilled into an exposed pipe that carried anhydrous ammonia to local farms. The teens had heard rumors of money being buried in the pipe. One of the teens reached the center of the pipe. A gas cloud knocked him out. Doctors treated him for second-degree burns to his neck and groin. Firefighters ordered the evacuation of 3,000 residents while they sprayed water into the air to try to dissipate the gas.

In Morro Bay, in 2001, a 300-gallon tank of anhydrous ammonia was punctured. The chemical leaked, and 3,500 residents in the surrounding area had to evacuate.

And in Orrtanna, Penn., back in 1993, a cold storage worker died from ammonia exposure when a valve leaked anhydrous ammonia into the facility. Sixteen years later, ex-police chief Billy Sanders still remembers. During the rescue attempt, he said, ammonia vapors burned four firefighters who responded to the call, sending them to the emergency room. The men had duct-taped their sleeves to their gloves, he said, but ammonia had burned them through tiny gaps in the tape. The worker who died turned out to be a volunteer firefighter. “We had a slim hope it wasn’t him but we pretty much knew it was,” he said. “He was a good man, a family man. Probably the best type you could ask for.”

There have been multiple leaks of ammonia from Eureka Ice over the past two decades. In March 1994, a pipe leaked 764 lbs. of anhydrous ammonia over an hour and a half. In 2002, a man walking his dog along Waterfront Ave. identified a sharp odor and called Eureka fire department. When firefighters arrived on the scene they traced it to an ammonia leak at Eureka Ice and blocked off the road.

In Jan. 2003, an engineer on duty noticed a strong ammonia odor and found a leak. And in July 2008, inspectors from both the U.S. EPA and the Humboldt County Health and Human Services Dept. found ammonia leaking from a valve flange and had to leave the area.

Eureka Ice had undergone annual environmental inspections for years. Inspectors repeatedly issued citations for failing to clearly label containers of hazardous waste and sometimes for having no labels on those containers at all. On multiple occasions, the company had also been cited for improperly dumping ammonia. In 1997, it had been caught disposing ammonia through an outside floor drain, in violation of the municipal code. And last year, after the county and EPA ordered Eureka Ice to shut down pending a seismic assessment, wastewater management workers doing routine inspection at a lift station on Waterfront Drive were overwhelmed with ammonia fumes. Justin Boyes, the wastewater pretreatment coordinator for the city, found that workers at Eureka Ice had been pouring an ammonia solution down the drain.

The city fined the plant $10,000 for that last incident, which Eureka Ice paid. Boyes said the business did hold an emergency permit allowing them to mix half the solution with water before pouring it down the drain. But this wasn’t an emergency, and Eureka Ice did not properly dilute the mixture.

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