on the cover / By HSU Investigative Reporting students

Meltdown

“An evacuation plan isn’t part of it,” he said. “It’s a prevention program to prevent releases.”

Eureka Ice was supposed to have a series of checks and balances in place, as well as an emergency response system for notifying fire and other public safety agencies in the event of a release.

But the plant had been cited repeatedly over the years for having open containers of hazardous materials that were poorly labeled or had no labels at all. And it was cited repeatedly for failing to properly train its workers to handle dangerous chemicals. The July 2008 joint inspection found a preventive maintenance program to be “inadequate to non-existent.”

Not far from where Jenny Graham lives is the office of Humboldt Baykeeper, a nonprofit organization whose mission is the protection of coastal waters. Director Pete Nichols worries that too little is still known about Eureka Ice, particularly since the plant’s workers were caught dumping ammonia down the drain.

“Dumping into the sewer is not only illegal but it ends up in the bay,” he said. “The District Attorney should have taken more action. A lot was swept under the rug about the sewer drain dumping. Having those kinds of operations in a community could potentially be dangerous and should be prioritized. The leak could have impacted air quality and human health. It was one of those incidents where you wonder: How much more of these types of incidents are happening without us knowing about it?”

Nichols said he tried to get information about the ammonia leak discovered during the 2008 joint inspection, but the Department of Environmental Services refused to talk to him about the case. “They said they would get back to us,” he said. “If they do have any information, though, they have not shared it with us.”

District Attorney Paul Gallegos said he first learned that ammonia had been dumped down the drain through Nichols. But he believes that county environmental services was on top of the situation. “We have agencies that work to monitor these people and their violations,” he said. “The information I have is that they are fairly successful in doing so. We’re reliant on those agencies to do their job and forward relevant information to us, and certainly not to forward inappropriate information.”

He said his office would have stepped in if he had received evidence of illegal activities or harm to the public. “If I had reliable, admissible evidence that dumping from Eureka Ice that went into the bay or that it had harmed people — and I am not saying it hasn’t happened — I would be very interested in assessing what consequence to apply,” he said.

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