Company volunteers to clean up Sweet Home dumps
Saturday, November 28, 2009 10:06 PM PST
SWEET HOME (AP) — Weyerhaeuser volunteered to clean up two massive illegal industrial garbage dumps in Sweet Home.
The lumber and wood products producer generated the waste at Albany and Springfield cardboard plants now owned by International Paper and paid Eugene businessman Dan Desler to transport it to licensed landfills.
Instead, Desler dumped the garbage on Sweet Home properties he controls.
Weyerhaeuser’s cleanup ‘‘removes the waste from the sites, but Desler’s still liable for the penalty,’’ said Regina Cutler, an environmental law specialist with the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality in Portland, referring to the $192,343 in fines the DEQ levied last December against Desler, his now-defunct companies and his nonprofit foundation.
‘‘But we were really thrilled these companies stepped up,’’ she said of Weyerhaeuser and the companies doing the cleanup work — Lane Forest Products and Sweet Home Sanitation.
The sites contain so much garbage that the cleanup will take about four months, even with trucks hauling 30 loads per day to a Corvallis landfill, The Register-Guard newspaper reported. Desler, 65, said last spring he regarded the waste as ‘‘inventory’’ that could be sold for heating fuel or for animal bedding for the dairy industry. The DEQ, however, said it’s garbage that poses numerous environmental problems.
In levying the fines, the DEQ ordered Desler to haul the waste to the landfill where it was originally supposed to go. But Desler neither paid the fines nor removed the waste.
‘‘Weyerhaeuser has been huge in stepping up when they really didn’t have to,’’ said Oren Posner, owner of Lane Forest Products. ‘‘They already paid (Desler) to do this correctly once, and they got screwed.’’
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, meanwhile, has finished cleaning up an asbestos-contaminated former mill site in Sweet Home that’s owned by Desler’s nonprofit foundation. The agency used about $1.1 million of federal Superfund money, which it hopes to recoup from Desler, said Judy Smith, an EPA spokeswoman.
Desler was arrested in May after a months-long investigation by the Oregon State Police and the EPA. He was charged with felony and misdemeanor counts of unlawful air pollution and reckless endangerment of a contractor. The charges stemmed from Desler doing demolition work at the Sweet Home mill site with a contractor, despite Desler allegedly knowing the site contained asbestos. The case is being held over in Linn County Circuit Court as the sides negotiate, Desler’s attorney, Michael Vergamini, told The Register-Guard.
Information from: The Register-Guard, http://www.registerguard.com
