By Bruce Anderson – Anderson Valley Advertiser, April 12, 1989
The Fort Bragg City Council spent the first twenty minutes of its Monday night meeting listening to representatives of various public safety agencies deny jurisdictional responsibility for investigating health hazards on Georgia-Pacific’s private property. Jerry Davis, representing Mendocino County’s Department of Health, said, “We are the administering agency in this case, but our responsibility didn’t apply here.” Davis’ disclaimer caused many people in the large audience to groan audibly.
Fort Bragg’s mayor, Alden Thurman, twice tried to have the meeting adjourned, the first time after hearing only the third speaker complain of both Georgia-Pacific and public irresponsibility in handling a February PCB spill. “We’ve heard enough,” declared the mayor. Thurman had opened the meeting by appealing to the worried assembly to come up with solutions, implying that there was, in fact, a major problem with safety at Georgia-Pacific’s large Fort Bragg mill complex.
At the Mayor’s premature announcement of “We’ve heard enough,” several members of the audience, including workers directly affected by the February 11th capacitor explosion, ignored the mayor and began speaking, as did residents of the Fort Bragg area concerned about reports that PCB-contaminated clean-up materials were burned in the mill’s huge boiler. Anna Marie Stenberg of Fort Bragg insisted such materials were burned in the boiler and the PCBs rained down on Fort Bragg in the form of dioxins. At least three G-P mill workers have confirmed Ms. Stenberg’s suspicions.
Ron Atkinson was one of the mill workers hit by the PCB-laden liquid from the exploding capacitor February 11th. He told the City Council that mill electricians had warned plant supervisors an hour before the capacitor burst that it was ready to explode. Plant supervisors ignored the warning. An hour later when it did burst, Atkinson and Frankie Murray were at work beneath it. Murray happened to be looking upwards at the capacitor as it burst. He got a mouthful of the PCB-laden oil and was drenched in it. Atkinson, standing next to Murray, avoided swallowing any of the fluid, but his clothing and boots were splattered.
Murray checked into the hospital later in the day, concerned that he’d been poisoned, since the leaking capacitor displayed a warning sign that it contained PCBs. The hospital was told by Georgia-Pacific that the spill was “mineral oil,” harmless stuff, and that Mr. Murray needn’t worry that he’d possibly ingested a lethal dose of hazardous liquid. Murray’s stomach was not pumped.
An outraged Atkinson, appearing at the Council meeting on his evening lunch break, promised, “If it turns out that my son or my wife has any kind of problem from this, I’ll kill the people responsible!” Atkinson went on to describe the spill clean-up process, during which he says he and four other men threw contaminated materials directly onto the mill’s conveyor belt to be burnt in the mill’s power-generating boiler.
At one point in the proceedings, Mayor Thurman fatuously reassured G-P employee, Treva VandenBosch, who was also exposed to the leaking capacitor, “It might not be as bad as you all think. Don’t we all have little accidents around the house and think they are bigger than they are?” The Mayor’s general performance at the meeting caused more than one resident to vow to unseat him in the next election. “We’re here to talk about a rather large catastrophe with unknown effects and here’s the Mayor chuckling about stubbed toes,” fumed an exasperated citizen.
The most revealing remarks of the evening came from an unexpected source. Don Perry, Georgia-Pacific’s public relations man assured the mostly disbelieving crowd, “We’re very concerned that people think we’re not taking the accident seriously. We’re studying ways to get the remaining PCB capacitors out, but we’d have to shut the entire mill down to do it. The whole problem stemmed from us not knowing PCBs were involved.” As mill-workers looked at each other in stunned disbelief—the capacitor was clearly labeled as containing PCBs—Lotte Moise of Fort Bragg rose to confirm the grim fact that G-P not only lied about the nature of the spill at the time of the accident, but continues to lie about its knowledge of the ongoing hazards posed by the remaining capacitors to both workers and the larger community. Mrs. Moise called Perry’s attention to an Environmental Protection Agency study of two years ago where G-P was required to register the capacitors containing PCBs at its Fort Bragg mill. Perry admitted he knew of the EPA list, a direct contradiction of his and G-P’s previous announcements at the time of the spill that it was nothing but harmless mineral oil.[1]
G-P has for years used their power-generating boiler as an all-purpose disposal, when the law limits their power-generating facility to burn only hog fuel (wood debris), chips and, in emergencies, oil purchased from a constant source of supply.
The County’s interim air quality monitor, Philip Towle, told the AVA that “G-P may have thought they could use their steam boiler as an incinerator. They can’t and I think they know that now.” Towle also pointed out that even if clean-up materials saturated with PCBs had been burned, which he admits now seems likely, the intense heat of the boiler may have destroyed, rather than converted, the PCBs to dioxins. Towle confirmed that he remains interested in talking to any G-P workers who have direct knowledge of PCB clean-up materials being thrown onto the conveyor belt feeding the mill’s boiler. “If one good thing comes out of all this, I’d like people to understand I’ll do what can, but I’m by myself here [Ukiah] and I’ve got the whole County to cover.”
An even better thing has already happened: The Fort Bragg City Council promised at the close of the meeting to convene a public safety hearing. They will post the date and time of the meeting at City Hall and announce it in the Fort Bragg Advocate. An ad hoc committee of concerned Fort Bragg citizens promises tosubmit expert testimony at the meeting regarding PCBs and dioxin poisoning.[2]
Footnote:
[1] Harry Blythe reported in the May 25, 1989 issue of the Mendocino Commentary, “On Monday, May 15, the EPA made an unannounced visit to Georgia-Pacific headquarters in Fort Bragg as a follow-up to the recent PCB spill. Apparently the visit was because the EPA was not satisfied with the documentation it had received as to just what was done or not done with regard to the cleanup operation. I let a week pass, and then called G-P this past Monday, May 22, to see if there would be any sort of press release as to the EPA visit. I spoke to Don Perry, who first denied the visit, then admitted that the EPA had spent time at the mill, and finally said that he didn’t know why the follow-up call was necessary. He further stated that there would not be any press release, as the results of the EPA’s last visit were still not available. All in all, Mr. Perry seemed nervous and obviously under orders not to give out any information. Certainly, G-P owes the public an explanation, but I certainly did not get one. So maybe you should call Don Perry … I mean, the EPA would not come to Fort Bragg again without cause.”
[2] As a result of the workers’ protests and the outrage by the residents of Fort Bragg, G-P did finally replace the PCB laden capacitors. See “Georgia-Pacific Removes Remaining PCB Cooled Capacitors from Fort Bragg Mill”, by Ron Wataaja, and “Dioxin Test Results May Take Weeks”, North Coast News, March 4, 1989.