H & E Minutes – 3/08/10

Health & Environment Committee
Minutes – 3/8/10

Present: Bob Amundson, Bob L., Biljana Milkovska, Caroline Skinner, Elizabeth Patte, Sharon Genasci

We started off the meeting with a discussion about the Earth Day event at Food Front on April 24th from 11-4pm We planned some things for the table, reproductions of Paul Koberstein’s articles etc. volunteer shifts etc. we will leave to our April meeting.

Sharon raised the issue of more odor complaints over March 1 and 2 about the fuel smells. One neighbor moved her children out of the house. I decided to check out complainant’s addresses, and other sites to find the source of the odors. I travelled with Monica Russell, who also planned to investigate for DEQ at the same time. We found no odors at neighbor’s addresses, and then we went to the barrel yard (Meyers Containers) on St. Helens Road which one neighbor felt was the source of the odor.

We found nothing there, but the workers suggested we go to Carson Oil, located directly north of Meyers. Carson Oil provided a worker to take us round the parking lot, where the storage tanks (small, well kept) were located, and the tankers are filled there. It had no odors and was quite clean. Finally, we went to the tank farm, where Chevron, Kinder Morgan and ConocoPhillips are side by side. Some of the tanks look very old and rusty, and the odor was horrific. We agreed it was strong enough to account for odors in the neighborhood when wind blows in the right direction.

But the report from DEQ when we got back (after Monica reported our findings) was that Carson Oil needed more investigation, and perhaps, Meyers Containers, but no mention of the tank farm. (the companies’ permits are up for renewal).

I subsequently sent a complaint about this to Dick Pederson Head, DEQ, Because we were misinformed when DEQ said, no source of the odor was found. This resulted in the Examiner publishing the wrong information as well.

The oil companies permits are up for renewal, and a meeting is scheduled for March 10th to discuss the permits, and get answers from DEQ for our questions before the public hearing, which I requested.

We are still working to manually put all the odor complaints into our system, but that is progressing.

- Sharon Genasci