Bullseye Glass

Bullseye Glass's factory on Southeast 21st Avenue in Portland. (Mark Graves / Staff)

This post has been updated to clarify Bullseye Glass's use of arsenic in 2009.

A Southeast Portland stained glass manufacturer at the center of toxic air concerns was instrumental in creating what Sen. Ron Wyden has described as an air pollution loophole "the size of a lunar crater."

The company, Bullseye Glass, asked the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for the exemption after an Oregon Department of Environmental Quality permit writer told the company about the planned regulation in 2007, according to state records released Thursday to The Oregonian/OregonLive.

Wyden, an Oregon Democrat, last week said the federal environmental agency was looking into killing the exemption in response to the elevated levels of cadmium and arsenic found in Southeast Portland's air. Oregon authorities disclosed the alarming pollution data on Feb. 3.

Chris Edmonds, a Bullseye spokesman, said the company did nothing inappropriate in asking regulators to treat large and small manufacturers differently. "It was not a loophole in any sense," he said.

For years, Bullseye Glass burned cadmium, arsenic and other heavy metals in its glassmaking furnaces without any filtration on its smokestacks. The metals add color to stained glass. A nearby air monitor in October found arsenic levels 159 times above state safety levels and cadmium levels 49 higher. The company quickly halted use of cadmium, chromium and arsenic.

When the federal government moved in 2007 to set limits on how much pollution glass manufacturers could emit, the stained glass industry persuaded the agency to exempt it.

The federal environment agency's plan was to require all glass manufacturers making more than 50 tons of glass to limit the toxics in their exhaust. If emissions of any heavy metal on any individual glass furnace broke the EPA's ceiling, the company would have to put a filter on it or curtail production.

But three stained glass representatives told the EPA that those standards could put them out of business and said the agency hadn't included them in their analysis when developing the standards, according to the Federal Register.

One stained glass manufacturer - it isn't clear who - suggested the agency create an exemption for glass companies like Bullseye that run furnaces that are sometimes turned off.

The agency agreed.

Eric Durrin, Bullseye's controller, acknowledged the effort in a Jan. 2, 2008 email to an Oregon Department of Environmental Quality employee.

Durrin heaped praise on Kathy Amidon, the state regulator who alerted him, saying she was "the only person in any agency in the US to notify a manufacturer of a potential impact of the EPA regulation changes. You helped all of the colored glass manufacturers."

The people who drafted the original pollution rule for glass makers "were not aware of our industry subset," he wrote, and "they were very receptive to our input. The final document works for us."

Amidon, now retired, could not be reached Thursday. A Department of Environmental Quality spokeswoman did not respond to requests for comment.

Durrin told The Oregonian/OregonLive that Amidon notified him about the pending federal glass rule sometime in 2007. He said his company didn't believe the regulation should apply to a small outfit. "We were offered the opportunity to provide input and we did provide input," he said.

Mary Peveto, president of Neighbors for Clean Air, a Northwest Portland advocacy group, said the state Department of Environmental Quality had helped other businesses carve out similar exemptions in the past.

"This isn't just a heads up -- they had one interest and they served that one interest," she said. "There's no corresponding phone call to the neighbors or the community or the public health authority."

After Bullseye and other glassmakers prevailed in creating the exemption for small manufacturers, Bullseye sought to limit its obligations to air pollution regulators further.

Bullseye previously had received a warning letter from state regulators, in 2005, saying it failed to monitor its arsenic emissions as required.

In 2009, the company asked officials with the federal environmental protection agency to verify whether Bullseye had to report arsenic emissions. Glass companies like Bullseye are limited to emitting 2.7 tons of arsenic per furnace, and records show Bullseye reported using 825 pounds in 2009.

"It seems to me that Bullseye is operating below the thresholds for these regulations for arsenic trioxide," Durrin wrote in an email.

An EPA official responded in a letter a year later that no, the company was not exempt from monitoring and reporting requirements.

Other records released Thursday show that state regulators knew as early as 1984 that Bullseye Glass and another stained glass manufacturer, Uroboros Glass, were using heavy metals.

State regulators apparently lost track of the companies: a subsequent 2011 inventory of Portland's glass manufacturers emitting toxic pollution omitted any mention of the two businesses.

Correction: This post was updated to clarify that Bullseye Glass used 825 pounds of arsenic in 2009; it did not emit that much.

-- Rob Davis

rdavis@oregonian.com

503.294.7657

-- Fedor Zarkhin

503.294.7674