Chemical exposure vs. a competitive disadvantage

Vermont regulators say they didn’t know enough about the company’s industrial processes to head off the eventual contamination of water supplies in North Bennington. Records show that ChemFab kept state officials in the dark about what chemicals were released from smokestacks at the North Bennington plant.

But state regulators and ChemFab executives were aware that fluorocarbons caused the “Teflon flu” some workers experienced in the 1970s. State regulators at the time required ChemFab to begin venting the exhaust into a neighborhood of North Bennington through smokestacks.

In 1986, Bill Bress, the state toxicologist, said that six specific fluorocarbons in the factory exhaust would need to be analyzed and quantified in order to determine whether ChemFab emissions were safe. The tests were never conducted.

Charles Tilgner III, ChemFab’s vice president of manufacturing, responded in a memo to the state that information about the chemical emissions would needlessly scare the neighbors.

“I believe you said that the state has not developed any maximum emission rates for any of the 25 compounds that you have asked us to quantitate,” Tilgner wrote. “Since the presentation of results without any accepted standards to measure them against will only raise the anxieties of our neighbors, I am sure you had something in mind which we just never got to in our discussion.”

Eleven years later, then-director of Vermont’s air-pollution division of the DEC, Brian J. Fitzgerald, wrote to his New York counterparts about pollution controls required at Teflon coating factories.

Tom Gentile, of New York’s Bureau of Stationary Sources, said his state was looking to place stricter pollution controls on a ChemFab competitor in Hoosick Falls called Taconic Plastics, which was believed to be emitting PFOA and toxic PTFE breakdown products.

In his May, 1997 letter to Vermont’s DEC, Gentile included a memo from Arline Sumner, an environmental chemist, who said the Taconic Plastics factory was emitting PFOA and toxic fumes from the Teflon compound PTFE.

“The American Council of Governmental Hygienists states that ‘air concentrations [of these compounds] should be controlled as low as possible,’” Sumner wrote. She urged New York regulators to take steps to prevent the fumes from escaping the factory. “Exposure … must be avoided,” she wrote.

“Toxic effects in animals from PTFE fumes are found at low inhaled concentrations,” Sumner wrote. “You should focus on working with the facility to reduce all point and fugitive emissions of these products in an attempt to resolve the neighborhood complaints.”

“Our review indicates that the resident complaints associated with emissions from this facility may be related to the thermal decomposition products of PTFE,” Sumner wrote.

But instead of heeding that warning from New York regulators, Vermont officials exempted ChemFab from air quality rules and allowed the company to pull pollution control devices, or abaters, off smokestacks in October of that year.

“To require the continued operation of catalytic abaters in Vermont would put ChemFab at a significant competitive disadvantage,” the variance board wrote.

The board said the emissions controls were too costly for the company and blamed ANR staffers for failing to oppose ChemFab’s claims.

Maps produced this year by a Saint-Gobain contractor show that the removal of smokestack controls coincided with the highest rate of PFOA pollution in Bennington.

The variance board was hardly alone in looking out for ChemFab’s interests.

State commerce agency officials also asked environmental regulators to look the other way when questions were raised about the adequacy of emission controls at the plant.

Frank Cioffi, then-commissioner of the Vermont Department of Economic Development, promised ChemFab executives that state regulators would back off from state air quality requirements, according to records from DEC.

DEC officials said in a January 1997 memo that Cioffi “seems to have made promises to ChemFab that they would not have to run the [pollution-control devices],” and he “seems to have a knack for making promises that the Department can’t keep.”

Cioffi said in an interview in July that disagreements between the commerce agency and environmental regulators were common.

“There’s a healthy tension between the agencies, which is not a bad thing,” Cioffi said. “But the bottom line is, ANR called the shots on permitting.”

“Every job was important, especially in places … like Bennington,” where there weren’t many good jobs to begin with, he said.

But Cioffi denies making promises to ChemFab. “I had no authority to make any promises,” he said.

“Our job was to communicate what the challenges were, what the problems were, and then turn it over to permitting [at the DEC],” Cioffi said. “We didn’t operate like that on the [Gov. Howard] Dean team. That wouldn’t have happened.”

But records conflict with Cioffi’s description of events. At the time, Barbara Ripley, then-secretary of the Agency of Natural Resources, had choice words for Cioffi’s boss, commerce secretary William Shouldice. In a July 1997 memo, Ripley accused Shouldice of attempting an end run around her agency to get Dean to intervene and relax air quality standards on ChemFab’s behalf without her knowledge.

“I received your note and the memo to the governor regarding ChemFab,” Ripley wrote. “First, I am profoundly disappointed that you sent that memo to the governor without calling or sending me a copy. Did you think that the governor would just tell me to change the standard? I believe we would be of better service to the governor if we went together to him with a solution rather than having you ask him to decide what to do.”

Dean did not relax air quality regulations for ChemFab, but he offered the company special tax incentives as an inducement to continue operating in Vermont.

Jim Stead, a former business recruiter for the state’s economic development agency, said Dean didn’t go far enough to keep ChemFab in the state.

“They really got no consideration at all,” Stead said. “The governor could have, after the meeting, said to the head of ANR: ‘Fix it,’ but of course, being Vermont, we wouldn’t consider that.”

Cioffi describes ChemFab as a bit player in comparison with employers like IBM, Husky Injection Molding and other large businesses in the state.

But Stead, who worked for Cioffi, said state officials felt particularly protective of the high-paying jobs at ChemFab.

“They were pretty heavy hitters,” Stead said, of ChemFab. “Eighty jobs in Bennington, at $16 to $18 an hour … quite a while ago, was a big deal, I thought.”

In a recent interview, former Gov. Howard Dean said he did not recall groundwater pollution being raised as an issue, only questions about air emissions. He said state officials were keen to avoid another groundwater pollution scandal after a dry-cleaning company in Williamstown was found to have contaminated wells in the 1980s.

“I can guarantee you if ANR said they were polluting the groundwater, they wouldn’t have gotten permission to do anything,” Dean said.

In regulating air emissions, Dean said there was a constant tension between environmental regulators and economic development officials, who often sided with the company’s pleas for less regulation. The balance, he said, was to find a way to protect the environment at the least possible cost, especially considering the company’s economic contribution.

Dean reiterated several times during the interview that Bennington County had few large employers and that ChemFab employed 80 to 90 people.

“The Agency of Natural Resources decided certain behaviors were OK and compromised and the company stayed, along with the jobs,” Dean said. “I don’t feel like ANR gave up and gave them the right to pollute. When we have discussions like this, it’s not how much is OK, it’s are there any ways to get to that goal and to what ANR wants without more expense.”

The former governor, who served from 1991 to 2003 and made a bid for president in 2004, recalled meeting with company officials more than a dozen times about air quality regulatory issues. He also discussed the issues with the environmental agencies.

“That’s what government does,” Dean said. “You listen to both sides and make a decision.”

Dean said it is now clear the company didn’t comply with state permits requirements. He said the company was just one of many that was always pushing back, looking for less regulation.

“All I can tell you is, the result was a bad result, and the company didn’t do what they should have done in the permits,” Dean said.