Benjamin Spillman

bspillman@rgj.com

4:50 p.m. Friday update:

On Friday, the owners of the foundry sent out a statement saying the video was, "Produced by the men involved to falsely accuse the company of directing them to illegally dispose of wastes from our manufacturing process, and to further their own agendas."

Original story:

Operators of a foundry near Carson City are scrambling to cope with the fallout from a viral video that depicts workers emptying barrels of “sludge” onto bare ground.

The online video has been viewed more than 400,000 times, including by David Emme, administrator of the Nevada Department of Environmental Protection.

“We’ve received reports of this from other sources as well and we are investigating the incident,” Emme said.

The video, posted to YouTube and Reddit, shows one man dumping liquid from one of several barrels while another narrates. A third man is briefly visible.

Voices in the video describe the substance as “sludge” and “acid” and the camera hovers momentarily over a label that says “metalworking fluid,” without further specifics on the contents.

Also, the narrator of the video says workers were forced to dump the barrels but does not provide evidence backing the claim. The video also lacks evidence to support the claim the dumping had been ongoing for weeks.

On Reddit the video is titled, “Guys forced to dump chemical waste in the NV desert by their employer.”

“I’m documenting this because I’m not trying to go to prison for this,” said the narrator, whose face is shown but is unidentified by name. “We have been forced to do this, we have been told to do this.”

The narrator says the video was shot on March 3. It was posted to Reddit on Tuesday and has generated more than 3,600 comments on the site.

“This is all the sludge out of our parts wash machine, acid all kinds of stuff,” another voice says.

Although the foundry isn’t identified by name in the video on Wednesday a spokesman for Production Pattern & Foundry in Mound House acknowledged it is the company depicted.

“This has caught everybody by surprise,” spokesman Craig Banko said. “We found out about it this morning.”

According to the company website Arlene and Steve Cochrane are third-generation owners of the firm which makes metal parts for manufacturing machinery of everything from heavy trucks to semiconductor chips.

Banko said company leaders were in meetings dealing with the fallout from the video. He wouldn’t say whether the men in the video were current employees.

He described the area where the video was shot as the powder coating shop.

“Any product down at the paint shop can be dried out and thrown away,” he said. “That is the proper disposal method, pitching it over a hill is not.”

Jessica Garcia contributed to this report.

Full statement from the Production Pattern & Foundry: