Toxic spill temporarily closes Ohio Gulch Transfer Station

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By TRAVIS PURSER
Express Staff Writer

A sign warns against dumping hazardous and liquid waste at Ohio Gulch. "People don’t realize you can’t just throw these things away like everything else," said Wood River Fire and Rescue Chief Bart Lassman.

The Ohio Gulch Transfer Station closed early on Friday after 41 cans of green toxic paint were accidentally dumped inside one of the station’s buildings. It reopened at 12:30 p.m. on Saturday.

A worker at the station was treated and released at the scene.

The paint cans were from the Webcor Thunder Springs job site along Saddle Road in Ketchum, said Fire Chief Bart Lassman of the Wood River Fire and Rescue unit.

A spokesman for San Francisco Bay Area-based Webcor, planner of the large Thunder Springs development, took responsibility for the incident.

A Webcor spokesman, John Kerley, told the Idaho Mountain Express Friday’s paint spill "was just a pure, blatant mistake, nothing malicious intended."

The Southern Idaho Solid Waste District uses the station to transfer household rubbish, construction refuse and other garbage into semi-tractor trailers before hauling the garbage to the district’s landfill in Burley.

The paint was discovered when heavy equipment operator Richard Griffis, who was working inside the building, suffered severe nausea and a headache. Griffis, concerned about a potential fire, shut down operations and called local and state emergency services.

Emergency medical technicians treated and released Griffis while Wood River Fire and Rescue hazardous materials (HAZMAT) technicians, dressed in one-piece protective suits and respirators, controlled and contained the spill.

Fire chief Lassman said the HAZMAT technicians working on the green ooze looked like "something right out of a movie." But, he added, fumes from the spill were extremely flammable and capable of causing pneumonia and cancer if inhaled.

A spark from machinery scraping against the concrete floor, or from another source, could have set off an explosion, Lassman said.

The cans contained Acrylithane C-Enamel, an industrial-strength concentrated paint that is commonly mixed with thinner and applied with a spray gun. The paint cans originated from the Webcor Thunder Springs job site north of Saddle Road in Ketchum, Lassman said.

Waste transfer station manager Daniel Krenz said the cans were delivered by Wood River Rubbish. He said the cans were hidden under rebar, plasterboard, concrete slabs, dirt and other construction demolition material inside a 30-yard container truck.

Krenz said the transfer station, which accepts only solid, non-hazardous waste, was not equipped to handle the toxic paint. He said Webcor should have sent the paint containers to a special toxic waste disposal company, such as Envirosafe, located in Mountain Home.

Envirosafe, however, probably would not have accepted the paint. General manager Mike Spomer said that because the paint contained methylamyl ketone and methylisobutyl ketone, he believed the paint would have to be incinerated, a service his company does not provide.

"To get stuff [disposed of] like that, it’s a little bit of a time-consuming process," he said. "It can be a complicated issue."

Rick Rhodes, operations manager for Residual Management, a Department of Transportation-licensed hazardous material transporter in Boise, said his company would have charged Webcor from $1,200 to $1,500 to dispose of the 41 cans.

When asked if there is a standard process for builders to dispose of unwanted hazardous paint, he said, "There is and there isn’t." His company would do a lot of research and ask a lot of questions before agreeing to take on the disposal job.

Chief Lassman said specially trained firefighters, representatives from the Burley landfill and an investigator from Idaho State Police began clean-up at 9:30 a.m. Saturday and finished around noon.

Firefighters sealed the paint cans in plastic barrels called over-pack drums, which are designed for containing hazardous materials, and sent the drums back to the Thunder Springs job site.

The state "will probably go after cost recovery on this," Lassman said, which would probably amount to several thousand dollars to be paid by the builder.

"The taxpayers should not be liable for this," he said.
"It’s the spiller’s responsibility."

Also, Lassman said state police are conducting an investigation to determine whether the incident constitutes an environmental crime.

Webcor spokesman Kerley said his company has a "very extensive safety program" and that his workers accidentally sent the paint to the transfer station.

Kerley said that Webcor was having the paint analyzed by a company in Idaho Falls, Material Testing Inspection, which hadn’t yet finished the research necessary to dispose of the paint.

Webcor deals with hazardous materials on a daily basis and at nearly every building site, Kerley said, adding that "even dry-wall is considered a hazardous material."