As oil gushes into the Gulf of Mexico — and BP promises to pay all legitimate claims for the damage it has caused — this is a good moment to look at business pollution in Clark County.
Companies have left local port districts to spend at least $111 million cleaning up pollution, and taxpayers are footing most of that bill.
Pacific Wood Treating Co. employed hundreds of people in Ridgefield beginning in 1963. But when it went bankrupt and shut down 30 years later, the pollution it left behind soon overshadowed its former role as an economic engine. Cancer-causing chemicals had soaked into the ground, and a plume of contaminants spread next door to the Ridgefield National Wildlife Refuge.
Today that pollution is largely controlled, but there is still work to do. By the time the clean-up is complete, taxpayers will have contributed $68 million to $70 million, said Laurie Olin, operations director at the Port of Ridgefield. The port owns the land, and will ultimately pay for about a third of the cleanup, with other government programs paying for the rest.
“The unfortunate outcome of corporate ‘personhood’ is that it limits liability to corporations,” said Ralph Bloemers, a Portland-based environmental lawyer at the Crag Law Center. If a company goes out of business before cleaning up after itself, the public foots the bill.
Most of the time that doesn’t happen. But companies do often go to great lengths to avoid paying for costly cleanups.
Port of Vancouver
Though the Port of Vancouver’s mission is to foster trade and economic development, it has pushed companies to pay their fair share at four sites it now owns.
It has recovered $23 million from polluters, sometimes by going after their insurance companies, said Patty Boyden, the port’s director of environmental services. But that’s out of roughly $43 million to $46 million it will have spent to clean up after companies such as Carborundum, Fort Vancouver Plywood, Automotive Services Inc. and Brazier Forest Industries.
Boyden is quick to point out that the port is not bearing the full uncompensated cost of cleanups — the state has chipped in about $13 million. And there’s a chance that the port still will recover more. At the moment, however, it looks as though taxpayers could contribute as much as $22 million to these local corporate cleanups.
The port has learned from past experience. It would not complete its recent purchase of Alcoa and Evergreen Aluminum property until the land had a clean bill of health from the state, and its tenants now must prove that they have enough insurance to clean up from any pollution they make.
As a country, however, we don’t appear to have learned from the past, according to Chris Winter, another Crag Law Center attorney.
“Legally, we’re not in any better position than we were 20 or 40 years ago,” Winter said. “All of the same legal issues come up, and companies are making arguments against the constitutionality of the laws that do exist.”
Courtney Sherwood is The Columbian’s business and features editor. Reach her at 360-735-4561 or courtney.sherwood@columbian.com.
