The Port Townsend Paper Company violated its clean-water permit twice last November when it spilled untreated wastewater into Puget Sound, according to Washington's Department of Ecology.
This notice of violation, issued to the mill Wednesday, arrives several days after an investigation by The Seattle Times detailed photos and video from a former employee who claims one of those spills was far larger than company officials reported.
A second ex-worker also came forward this week, adding his own account of the spill.
Now state regulators will start considering financial penalties or ordering more direct corrective action from the facility.
Or both," Ecology spokesperson Andy Wineke wrote in an email.
However, precisely how much of that sludge actually poured from the pulp and paper mill directly into Port Townsend Bay on Nov. 20 remains unclear. Company officials maintain the spill was relatively minor, while the former worker who presented the evidence says it was far worse.
Given new details about the spill, regulators with Ecology say they — and the state attorney general’s office — are still investigating the size and scope of the incident.
Mill officials stand by their original 150-gallon assessment.
“It is fair to scrutinize our report,” said spokesperson Randy Coté, senior vice president at a Seattle-based public relations firm. “It is not fair to imply, without actual evidence, that the mill did not report the incident accurately. By all available evidence, we most certainly did and we will continue to work with Ecology to finalize this matter.”
Ian Dale, a second employee who said he was at the spill scene early the next morning, says it was far larger, though he did not provide any photos or videos of his own.
“Add a couple of zeros to that,” Dale said of the mill's assessment.
State and federal regulators are more aggressively scrutinizing Washington’s pulp and paper industry after a chemical tank failed at a Longview mill in May, killing 11 workers and maiming eight others.
Port Townsend Paper Company CEO Rob Kreizenbeck wrote in an op-ed this week that he believes his mill deserves to be judged independent of that fatal disaster.
Kreizenbeck’s mill has been repeatedly cited for environmental violations. Ecology has issued five water-quality penalties to the mill since 2021. Most recently, the department fined the facility a $734,000 for a different series of spills earlier this year, including two that released thousands of gallons of alkaline chemicals into its own wastewater lagoons.
A second spill mentioned in Ecology’s notice of violation this week, stems from a Nov. 7 equipment malfunction that sent hundreds of gallons of untreated wastewater into the bay.
Regulators with Ecology are encouraging members of the public to share any additional environmental concerns they might have with the mill, Wineke said.
The mill’s most recent controversy surrounds the spill on Nov. 20.
A hole broke open deep within the mill’s operations and allowed untreated wastewater, or sludge, to dump directly into an unmonitored 24-inch pipe and, ultimately, into Puget Sound.
The mill’s environmental manager, Micheal Clea, reported the spill to Ecology, estimating the waste stream flowed at approximately 6 gallons per minute for 25 minutes, totaling 150 gallons. Mill officials discovered the spill around 8:41 p.m., stanched the flow within minutes, and sealed the hole by early the next morning, Clea wrote in his report.
Regulators with Ecology accepted Clea’s report and didn’t follow up for an investigation of their own. Not until John Tippins spoke out.
Workers speak out
Tippins, a veteran millwright on duty that evening, said he was one of the first to respond to the spill. His photos and videos of the incident depict a different scene than the one detailed by Clea’s single-page report. Not only was the pipe pouring wastewater at a much faster rate of flow, Tippins said, but the leak likely lasted hours, not minutes.
Tippins raised so much of a stink about the discrepancy between his experience and Clea’s report that he said the mill fired him. Now he’s seeking whistleblower protections.
Mill officials maintain they fired Tippins for unrelated performance issues, and they claim the new evidence he offers doesn’t change their estimate.
But it should, said Dale, a machine operations assistant, who worked the 5 a.m. shift on Nov. 21.
Dale said he worked on and off at the mill for about a year and he remembered taking a shift break along the mill’s eastern docks above the bay that morning. Looking down, he could see pulp and fiber along the shoreline.
The seawater took on a darker hue than normal, Dale said, and looked as if sludge had been mixed throughout.
This was a large spill, Dale said.
"This wasn't just seawater," he said. "It was like paper sludge you'd find underneath the machines. Water and paper mixed together.
Aaron Blank, CEO of Seattle-based Fearey public relations agency and another spokesperson for the mill, took issue with Dale's account and said an unnamed plant manager on the scene that morning saw no evidence of the spill.
After his break, Dale said he returned to work not expecting to hear anything more about the spill. He said the mill fired him a few days later for poor attendance and “being very loose at the mouth.” That included pointing out shortcomings and safety problems at the facility, he said.
Dale, who lives in Bremerton, has since found different work.
Environmental harm
These types of wastewater spills contain harmful particles and fibers and the wastewater itself can consume an outsized amount of oxygen in the water, which can kill fish, plants and animals.
Coté said mill officials have reviewed the spill three times and still believe “the event was limited in magnitude and did not involve an area of the process expected to pose a significant environmental risk.”
Still, state regulators can’t say precisely which compounds poured into the sea during this spill. Regulators did not test the waters after the spill or determine whether any fish or wildlife were harmed.
That lack of initial investigation also means discovering the full size or scope of the Nov. 20 spill will be exceptionally difficult.
Experts The Times asked to review photos and video from the spill — two engineers, a safety expert, a mathematician and an ecologist — agreed the evidence indicates a greater spill volume than 150 gallons, perhaps hundreds of times larger.
Recent incidents at the state's pulp and paper mills have exposed cracks in Washington’s regulatory framework, which can allow major issues to slip through undetected. State officials and lawmakers are looking for ways to shore up what amounts to a culture of self-regulation for the state’s major industries.
The second spill outlined in Ecology's notice of violation took place the morning of Nov. 7, after main and backup pumps within the mill failed. Untreated wastewater backed up in the system and an estimated 600 gallons of the waste poured directly into Port Townsend Bay, the notice says.
Ecology has two years from the date of the spills to issue fines or any additional orders, Wineke said.
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