Stella-Jones, a Canadian wood products company, recently pleaded guilty to exceeding legal limits of pentachlorophenol in water discharged from its plant near Sheridan, Oregon. The chemical is used to protect wood from insects and fungi and poses a number of health concerns, including an increased risk of cancer.
According to a recent investigation from the journalism nonprofit InvestigateWest, regulators have known about Stella-Jones’s history of pollution for years. On Sept. 8, after InvestigateWest reported on this issue, the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality issued a $1 million civil penalty against Stella-Jones for “numerous violations of environmental regulations” at their wood treatment facility.
Kaylee Tornay is a reporter for InvestigateWest. Aspen Ford is a reporter and the Roy W. Howard Fellow at the outlet. They join us with more details on their reporting. Ruth Hyde, DEQ’s Western Region Administrator, also joins us to explain the agency’s response to Stella-Jones’s release of contaminated stormwater into the South Yamhill River.
Editor’s note: The description of this conversation has been updated to include the announcement on Sept. 8 of DEQ’s $1 million civil penalty issued against Stella-Jones.
Note: The following transcript was transcribed digitally and validated for accuracy, readability and formatting by an OPB volunteer.
Dave Miller: From the Gert Boyle Studio at OPB, this is Think Out Loud. I’m Dave Miller. The Canadian wood products company Stella-Jones recently pled guilty to exceeding legal limits of pentachlorophenol in water discharged from its plant near Sheridan in Yamhill County. The chemical is used to protect wood from insects and other pests. It also poses a number of serious health concerns. According to a recent investigation by the journalism nonprofit InvestigateWest, regulators have known about Stella-Jones’ history of pollution for years. But the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality only leveled civil penalties against the company today, after the InvestigateWest article came out.
We will hear from a DEQ official in just a few minutes, but we start with the InvestigateWest reporters Kaylee Tornay and Aspen Ford. Welcome to the show.
Kaylee Tornay: Thanks for having us.
Miller: Kaylee, first, to set this up, can you tell us just a little bit about the South Yamhill River?
Tornay: Yes, the South Yamhill River is a tributary of the Willamette. It flows into the Willamette around Dayton. It is home to a number of important species, including steelhead trout. and threatened coho salmon and Pacific lamprey. It also serves as a drinking water source for around 6,000 or so residents in the city of Sheridan.
Miller: Aspen, Stella-Jones is the focus of this article, but they are not the first wood treatment facility on the property. Can you just give us a sense for the history of this site?
Aspen Ford: Starting in 1946, the site opened with a company called Taylor Lumber and Treating, and they operated the site as a sawmill. Twenty years later, they expanded operations to wood treatment. And that company was subject to over a dozen inspections and cleanup actions from the EPA, starting in 1988. The site became a superfund in 2001. And cleanup for that took close to 10 years and millions of dollars. Another company bought the site in 2001, called Pacific Wood Preserving. And then in 2013, McFarland Cascade, which is a subsidiary of Stella-Jones, purchased the site and has owned it ever since.
Miller: Kaylee, what started happening when Stella-Jones took over the site?
Tornay: It started having issues with pentachlorophenol within just a couple of years of owning the site. The company has a state-issued permit to release stormwater, which is a mixture of rainfall and some other water sources related to operations onsite. It has a permit to release treated stormwater into the South Yamhill, so the chemicals don’t impair water quality in the river.
There’s a period from 2015 into 2018 where DEQ flagged some excessive pollution in that water and ordered the company to take steps to stop it from continuing. It also fined the company around $16,000. Stella-Jones didn’t have any more issues with that sort of pollution for a few years after that, until 2022 when this new slew of violations began, involving pentachlorophenol in the stormwater again, as well as a bunch of chemical spills and cleanup issues.
Miller: What can you tell us about this chemical: pentachlorophenol?
Tornay: As you mentioned, it’s used to protect these wood products from insects, fungus and rot. It’s listed as a likely carcinogen, meaning there’s evidence of a link to increased cancer risk, and that’s what studies have established. Use of it at this site has been regulated by that discharge permit, as we mentioned, and actually it was banned from use at the site for about a decade, while that cleanup was happening.
Then Pacific Wood Preserving came to the EPA and DEQ, and said that they needed to use the chemical. The chemical that they were using was no longer available and regulators decided to allow that company to use it again in 2011. Now it’s in what’s called a “phased ban,” where even wood treaters aren’t allowed to buy more of the chemical and they have to stop using it entirely no later than February of 2027.
Miller: Aspen, what are the most serious violations Stella-Jones has racked up in recent years?
Ford: Over the past four winters, Stella-Jones has repeatedly violated its legally permitted limits of pentachlorophenol in its stormwater discharge. At times, this has been up to 15 times greater than what is permitted and this has happened dozens of times. Between December 2022 and December 2024, the company reported 17 different spills on site, but even in those reports, sometimes Stella-Jones failed to report them in a timely manner or they reported inaccurate amounts. Even then, we also know that there have been even more spills that have gone unreported altogether.
Miller: How did DEQ handle those violations over the last few years?
Ford: From what we’ve seen, DEQ would refer these violations to another internal department that is responsible for enforcement, so they work out how much the company should be penalized for these violations. They’ve also ordered Stella-Jones to take other steps to end this pollution, not all of which appeared to have worked, based on the ongoing violations that we found.
The permit that the company holds that allows it to discharge this water into the river is a powerful tool regulators can use to compel a company to make changes and stop polluting. But DEQ has not revoked or modified Stella-Jones’ permit, even though the company has violated that permit almost 90 times, we found.
Miller: Kaylee, how common is it for a DEQ to send pre-enforcement notices without – until today – actual enforcement? We’ll hear more about this, but a civil penalty announced this morning of over a million dollars?
Tornay: Every situation is unique, but environmental advocates who we spoke with seemed both dismayed by what was going on and not entirely surprised. The lack of action that actually could stop the pollution from continuing over so many years, while keeping the extent of that pollution so quiet from residents was a point of outrage for quite a few of the folks that we spoke to. Though we also looked at a case in Eugene involving a different polluting wood treater. Action in that case took a smaller amount of time, just a couple of years, and involved a much more comprehensive study of the impacts to human health compared to what we’re seeing with Stella-Jones.
Miller: Kaylee, how do residents you talk to feel about this right now?
Tornay: They’re not happy, I would say, the folks that we’ve spoken with. Before our reporting, many didn’t know much at all about what was going on, even though some of them have asked city officials or DEQ for information. We reported the stories of two different residents who contacted DEQ asking for information about what was going on in the South Yamhill, one of whom was a man who was concerned about what he was observing, [which] was the disappearance of crayfish downriver from Stella-Jones. And the responses that those folks got from DEQ didn’t include any information about the chronic spills, the stormwater pollution happening at the site.
As we see today with DEQ’s announcement about this very large penalty, enforcement actions help get the word out about this type of pollution. So the years that the agency took to issue any enforcement also had this effect of keeping the pollution pretty hidden from many residents.
DEQ has told us that they kept all those who “need to know,” was the language used, informed about the situation, such as city of Sheridan officials and Confederated Tribes of Grande Ronde, as well as some of Stella-Jones’ immediate neighbors about some sampling around pentachlorophenol and its byproducts in the area. But people still have questions about the impacts to the river and their drinking water, and more testing is likely needed to provide answers.
Miller: And Aspen, just briefly, we’ve been talking there about the civil side, but what’s the criminal case?
Ford: Last month, Stella-Jones pleaded guilty to 10 criminal charges of unlawful water pollution that occurred between December 2022 and March 2023, so not the most recent violations we’ve seen … and this originated from DEQ. They tipped off Oregon State Police, which then investigated and worked with the Yamhill District Attorney on this case. Then it was prosecuted by a State Department of Justice Environmental Crimes expert and Stella-Jones was ultimately fined $250,000. But this will be reduced by $50,000 if it avoids further pentachlorophenol pollution for the next three years.
Miller: Aspen and Kaylee, thanks very much.
Ford / Tornay: Thank you.
Miller: Aspen Ford and Kayley Tornay are reporters for InvestigateWest.
Ruth Hyde works for [the Department of Environmental Quality]. She is the Western Region Administrator at DEQ, and she joins us now. Ruth Hyde, welcome.
Ruth Hyde: Thank you.
Miller: Can you explain the over $1 million civil penalty that your agency announced this morning?
Hyde: Yes, absolutely. I want to start by saying we are talking about a very complex site. DEQ’s purpose, in some part, is to protect the environment, the communities and public health in Oregon. So we’ve been working with Stella-Jones Corporation on compliance for some time. And we’ve issued this million dollar penalty today, in part from all of these violations that the reporters spoke about, in the lead up to this.
Miller: How long has this penalty been in the works?
Hyde: This started in 2022, and we issued pre-enforcement notices in 2023 and 2024. We’ve also offered Stella-Jones technical assistance and other permit regulatory clarifications, and have issued this enforcement today. And what I want to underscore is that this process takes time, especially in this size and complexity. We have to get it right.
Miller: Well, what is it that takes the time? Because as we were hearing there, especially at the end, there are residents who have, as I hear it, two different complaints – and maybe we can take them one by one. But the first is, if state and federal authorities had reason for very serious concerns about serious discharges of these toxic chemicals, why not somehow move faster to prevent these spills and contaminations from continuing to happen?
Hyde: Well, we have moved swiftly when it comes to communicating with the entity here, which is Stella-Jones, and making sure that there is a robust response to any spills. I just want to clarify that we’re talking about stormwater that is falling on the property itself and then running into the river. There’s no actual discharge from their operations that is going into the river.
Miller: But the stormwater is only causing a problem because the chemical is existing in the area? I mean, if Stella-Jones were doing everything right, then stormwater wouldn’t be a problem, correct?
Hyde: That’s right, absolutely. After all the work that’s gone into this site over the last few decades, it’s incredibly unfortunate that we’re still dealing with these violations today.
Miller: What do you say to residents who have this separate concern, which is they feel like they’ve been left in the dark about what’s been happening at this site? One example was the guy who actually contacted DEQ saying, “I think there might be something wrong with this river. Downriver from this site there are no crayfish; upriver, there are.” And he says he basically didn’t hear anything back.
But more broadly, whose responsibility is it to tell the public about potentially dangerous releases of regulated chemicals like pentachlorophenol?
Hyde: Yes, that’s a great question. DEQ is required by law to make all of its processes public and that’s exactly what we’ve done. We’ve followed public process and all the information about this site is publicly available. And further to that, we’ve been very transparent about the water quality and hazardous waste violations. We’ve worked closely with the city of Sheridan, who operates the water treatment facility [that] supplies water to the city, and they communicate the condition of the water to the people who drink it.
Miller: So in that sense, if residents feel like they’ve been in the dark, you’re saying partly that’s the fault of the city?
Hyde: Well, we are committed to environmental quality for public health at DEQ and we rely on all of our partner organizations at all levels of government. We can’t do this work by ourselves. The Oregon Health Authority also helps us with communicating health advisories when needed, related to water and toxicity in water.
And I’d just like to point out that there was a non-detect from the instruments that we have at DEQ in the South Yamhill. There was a non-detect level of this toxic chemical, pentachlorophenol, and others in the recent testing. So I know contamination is not good, not a good thing generally. People want to swim. They want to be able to fish in the river. They’re understandably concerned, but this toxicity and the risk level is unlikely to be a public health issue at this point.
Miller: Is it just a coincidence that the announcement of this large civil penalty came out after the InvestigateWest article came out?
Hyde: It is not a coincidence. It is something we’ve been working on for some time. These processes take time and we do want to be responsive. EPA and others have also levied enforcement on Stella-Jones in the last couple of weeks, and we’re in line with all of those.
Miller: What would it take, just briefly, for you to withdraw a company’s permit, to say you cannot continue to operate until you change your ways?
Hyde: It’s difficult to close a facility down. In Oregon, we do have the authority to do that under the direction of the governor. DEQ can order a facility to shut down if contamination presents an “imminent and substantial danger,” but luckily we’re not talking about these types of serious violations at Stella-Jones and Sheridan. It’s just not that extreme.
Miller: Ruth Hyde, thanks very much.
Hyde: You’re welcome.
Miller: Ruth Hyde is the Western Region Administrator for the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality.
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