Billings Trucking Company Fined for Illegal Dumping

Aug. 11–Washington state environmental officials have levied a $40,000 fine against a Billings trucking company whose driver allegedly dumped nearly nine tons of soda ash along a road near a middle school last spring.

Joye Redfield-Wilder, a spokeswoman for the Washington Department of Ecology, said an anonymous tipster notified the state that a Montana trucker had dumped a load on April 15.

“For this program, the $40,000 fine is pretty big,” she said. “It’s an amount to get attention.”

A field test by the department showed the soda ash had a pH reading of between 12 and 13. The material can cause serious burns when mixed with water or even permanent eye lesions, according to the press release.

However, Bobby Williams, co-owner and president of WHW Inc. of Billings, said the Washington officials are blowing this out of proportion. He said the soda ash is essentially harmless baking soda and that his company is not at fault and will appeal the fine.

“That was strictly driver’s error,” he said. “We didn’t do anything.”

The driver, Joseph Lambe had worked for WHW for six months and was fired after the dumping, Williams said.

Soda ash is the common name for anhydrous sodium carbonate. One of its byproducts is baking soda. Soda ash is mined from trona and nahcolite and is used in glass manufacturing, detergents, medicine, photography, cleaning products and food additives.

Bobby Williams owns the decade-old WHW Inc., with his father, J.E. Williams. J.E. Williams Trucking was started in 1969. The companies are separate, but share the same address 305 Sugar Ave.

The WHW driver was hauling a load of soda ash from a Wyoming mine to Portland, Ore. He then drove to Finley, Wash., to pick up a load of fertilizer.

The fertilizer manufacturer told the driver he was 17,000 pounds overweight and would have to have an empty truck before he could be loaded.

The driver left, returning with an empty truck the next day. The soda ash was dumped a mile away from the fertilizer plant along State Route 397 in a half-mile band starting 2-feet to 3-feet deep then trickling down to 2-inches.

“The gravity was it appeared to be deliberate and it was near a school,” Redfield-Wilder said.

The state of Washington started the cleanup immediately because of the possibility of students coming in contact with the soda ash.

—–

To see more of the Billings Gazette, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.billingsgazette.com.

Copyright (c) 2005, Billings Gazette, Mont.

Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.

For information on republishing this content, contact us at (800) 661-2511 (U.S.), (213) 237-4914 (worldwide), fax (213) 237-6515, or e-mail reprints@krtinfo.com.