Philip Transportation plans to move to Hollister
San Martin – Philip Transportation and Remediation Inc. has agreed to pay $125,000 to settle a civil lawsuit over the accidental dumping of toxic stormwater at its San Martin facility, according to the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Office.
On three different occasions in 2004, a worker at the facility mistakenly determined that concentrations of arsenic, lead and selenium – a metal that can damage the nervous system in excessive quantities – were low enough in a 5,000 gallon tank of rainwater to allow for its release into the ground, according to county prosecutors and a company spokesman.
The contaminated rainwater was collected from an area where trucks carrying hazardous materials from various businesses – one part of Philip Transportation’s overall trucking services – stop en route to disposal sites.
Tom Mohr, a hydrogeologist with the Santa Clara Valley Water District, predicted that the amount of harmful substances released into the ground are too small to affect Gilroy’s drinking water, which is supplied in part by ponds located across the street from the facility at 12475 Llagas Ave. But he said the district would expect more testing.
“The total mass released is rather small, so there’s reason to be optimistic that this won’t affect the groundwater,” Mohr said. “But nevertheless, it’s important to monitor the soil to confirm that. It’s possible that other spills occurred prior to the recordings (of 2004). The monitoring wouldn’t necessarily be so much in response to this incident.”
The settlement does not absolve the company from groundwater clean-up if testing uncovers further illegal dumping, according to John Fioretta, a deputy district attorney in the county’s environmental protection unit.
Normally, the company must treat toxic stormwater the same way as the hazardous materials that occasionally pass through the facility: By hauling it off-site for disposal. But the company’s waste permit allows for on-site disposal of stormwater runoff – collected from areas where hazardous materials are handled – when toxicity levels fall below certain levels.
“There was no intentional conduct here,” Fioretta said. “Basically this was employee error, albeit a major one that shouldn’t have happened. Once (county environmental inspectors) found the violations, the company was very cooperative.”
The illegal discharges were discovered in 2005 during the course of a routine inspection by the Santa Clara County Department of Environmental Health’s Hazardous Materials Compliance Division. Inspectors also found that Philip Transportation stored hazardous waste beyond the 10-day limit allowed under its permit, improperly labeled hazardous waste, and failed to conduct and document required inspections, among other violations.
“The violations were addressed fairly quickly and in 2006, the county inspector came on the property and found no violations,” said Morris Azose, the company’s vice president of environmental affairs.
The San Martin waste facility was the center of a major environmental battle in the mid- to late-’90s, when AllWaste Transportation and Remediation Inc. (which eventually merged with a national trucking company to form Philip Transportation) was found to be operating illegally at the site. AllWaste took over the 9.6-acre site in 1991 from STAMCO, a prior trucking company that started operating at the site in 1982 without obtaining the appropriate land-use approvals.
In 1998, county supervisors agreed to rezone the land for industrial use to allow for hazardous waste hauling, despite the objections of residents and environmentalists, who complained about the potential threat to Llagas Creek. The waterway, located 100 feet from the facility, is used to recharge ponds that supply Gilroy’s drinking water.
Azose said times have changed since the late ’90s. Hazardous material transport now represents less than 10 percent of the load aboard trucks that pass though San Martin. Of that 10 percent, he said that less than a quarter involves the handling of metal drums containing hazardous materials. While transfers between trucks take place on occasion, he said drivers more typically rest at the site before moving on to disposal sites.
He said the same would apply when the company moves next month to a new location on Shelton Road in Hollister. The company was forced to relocate following a July decision by county planning commissioners to revoke the site’s permit as a trucking and hazardous waste site. The move comes after county planning department inspectors found the site was out of compliance with more than 40 conditions attached to its 2001 permit approval.
Azose said the company, which leases the site, decided to move after it became clear the owner would not be able to meet the conditions of the permit, some of which he said could prove costly. Azose could not provide the name of the landowner by press time.
“Our landlord was unable to comply with his land use permit,” he said. “As a result we had no choice but to look for a new location.”
Serdar Tumgoren, Senior Staff Writer, covers City Hall for The Dispatch. Reach him at 847-7109 or
st*******@gi************.com.
