Eramet agrees to pay $30K Ohio EPA fine

MARIETTA - Eramet Marietta has agreed to pay a $30,000 penalty to the Ohio EPA for 2007 air pollution violations that have now been resolved.

In a September 2007 inspection, the state Environmental Protection Agency determined Eramet was violating safety requirements involving the storage of sulfur dioxide and anhydrous ammonia at the Ohio 7 facility. There were 12 violations of accidental release prevention program rules, and all but four were corrected by late 2007, said Erin Strouse, media coordinator for the Ohio EPA.

Four other violations persisted, involving a failure to maintain records for hazard assessments, failure to address hazard analysis recommendations, failure to provide refresher training and failure to implement written procedures for process equipment integrity.

The company disputed the violations but ultimately decided to pay a fine, in what's known as a resolution without an admission, said Eramet spokeswoman Joy Frank-Collins.

"This has been pending for a long time, and we thought it was time to resolve it and move forward," she said.

There was never any danger to the public due to the violations, Frank-Collins said.

"This really was a technical audit, and the issues were mainly regarding record-keeping," she said. "There wasn't something that actively happened with a substance."

Even though the violations did not include substances being released, they were still important parts of the safety process, said Strouse.

"We have rules and regulations that we expect to be followed," she said.

Two of the 2007 findings had also been found during a 2002 inspection of the Washington County site, Strouse said.

"The company did resolve those after the 2002 inspection, but it appears that a few years later some of the violations were found again," she said.

Eramet no longer stores the chemicals in question, due to the idling of the related plant operation for economic reasons, said Frank-Collins. The idling was completed in late summer, she said.

"Based on their discontinuation of certain regulated substances, they're no longer subject to some of the rules and regulations they were subject to before," said Strouse. "The matter has been resolved and discussions about whether they had violated rules are now a moot point."

The majority of the $30,000 paid by Eramet for the violation will go into the Ohio EPA's Risk Management Plan Fund. Six thousand dollars will go to the Ohio EPA's Clean Diesel School Bus Fund, which helps retrofit school buses so there are fewer particulate emissions.