Screen Shot 2017-04-10 at 6.47.07 PM.png

Entek International's facility in Lebanon.

(Google Street View)

Oregon officials think they've found high levels of a cancer-causing chemical in the air near a Lebanon battery parts maker, but a judge won't let them say a word about it.

Linn County Circuit Court Judge Thomas A. McHill on Friday agreed to Entek International's request for what appears to be an unprecedented gag order against state environmental and health regulators. Entek would be "irreparably harmed" if the regulators told the public about the preliminary finding, McHill wrote.

Ironically, though, much of what those regulators have to say appears in public court documents filed in their defense.

Those records say computer modeling indicates high levels of a cancer-causing solvent, trichloroethylene, may be present near Entek in an area that includes an elementary school.

Concentrations of the chemical could be more than 70 times higher than what health officials say is safe, the state's filings say. The company is the largest known source of the solvent in the area, they say.

Entek sued the state Thursday, arguing that the Department of Environmental Quality shouldn't be allowed to tell the public about the pollution because the plant's emissions are within its permitted limits.

The state would "unnecessarily alarm Entek employees and members of the community by distributing misleading information" about the company's lawful use of trichloroethylene, the company's attorneys argued in a filing.

The attorneys, Joel Mullin and Stephen Galloway, did not respond to a request for comment.

State health and environmental officials said in court filings that they had planned to develop a communications plan to tell the public what they know about the pollution. They also planned to tell residents they were deploying air monitors to verify what modeling has shown.

Lawyers for the state said regulators would explain clearly to the public that they were still gathering information about the situation, not taking any enforcement action against the company.

McHill's temporary restraining order prevents Oregon's environmental and health departments from discussing the case until either they've proven that Entek is violating an existing law, or they have established new statewide air pollution rules.

A Department of Environmental Quality spokeswoman and several environmental attorneys said they believe the order is unprecedented in the state.

"If the agencies are forced to respond to inquiries from the public by explaining that it cannot answer any questions because Entek has secured a court order to keep the monitoring secret, it is entirely possible that Entek's reputation will be worse off, not better," an Oregon Department of Justice attorney argued in a brief.

Under orders from Gov. Kate Brown after last year's Portland air pollution scare, state regulators have been drafting new rules that would crack down on air pollution from industrial sources. Many states have already gone much farther than Oregon to reduce toxic sources of air pollution.

Mark Riskedahl, executive director of the Portland-based Northwest Environmental Defense Center, said the gag order showed how important it is for the state to finish updating those new regulations. He said he'd never heard of an Oregon court prohibiting the state from discussing an issue with the public ever before.

"It is very troubling that the company would go to such great lengths to keep the public in the dark about this," Riskedahl said.

Attorneys for Entek and the state Department of Justice return to court Wednesday.

News researcher Lynne Palombo and staff reporter Fedor Zarkhin contributed to this report.

-- Rob Davis

rdavis@oregonian.com

503.294.7657; @robwdavis