Ranor agrees to pay EPA issued fines
By Caitlyn Kelleher JOURNAL REPORTER

Ranor, Inc., a Westminster-based company, agreed to an approximately $100,000 settlement with the Environmental Protection Agency after being charged with facility violating the federal Clean Water Act and the Emergency Planning and Community Right-To-Know Act in June.

The payment will include a $90,635 to the federal agency and an additional $15,000 for a supplemental environmental project to purchase chemical emergency response equipment that would be donated to the Westminster Fire Department.

The company is located on 65 acres off Bella Drive and operates a 125,000 square foot manufacturing facility with 143 employees. The company said the chemicals listed by the EPA - chromium, nickel and manganese - are located in the facility as solid metal plates.

The facility, which produces metal products for the military, nuclear, aerospace and commercial industries, violated Clean Water requirements by discharging storm water without a permit.

Because the permitting requirements were not followed, the facility also failed to implement "best management practices" to address storm water discharges, and failed to perform required monitoring that would show the quantity of pollutants being discharged into waters of the United States.

Ranor officials responded that they have taken the steps to change their practices to met the "best management" standards.

"The facility's storm water discharges to a beaver pond and an unnamed perennial stream," according to the EPA press release. "As runoff from rain or snowmelt comes into contact with these materials, it picks up pollutants and transports them to nearby storm sewer systems, rivers, lakes, or coastal waters."

Yout wrote in the press release that "testing since September 2006 indicates that although storm water runoff from our facility contains metals in amounts that exceed EPA industrial benchmarks, they are under the EPA requirements for tap water based on the EPA Risk-Based Concentration Table."

The facility also failed to file with EPA required "Toxic Release Inventory" reporting forms for the years 2003 and 2004, as required by Right-to-Know Act. These forms would have reported the company's processing of nickel, chromium and manganese.

This failure to comply with chemical reporting requirements hampers the general public's ability to obtain accurate, quantifiable data about the type and amount of pollutants being released in their neighborhoods, according to the EPA's press release.

"Not filing paperwork is a serious issue, which as pointed out in the EPA press release can result in very substantial penalties," Steve Youtt, the company's CEO, responded in a press release in June. "Ranor management took action immediately after being made aware of these requirements by EPA officials in April 2006."

The company hired a nation wide environmental consulting firm to help with the filing of the reports and provide all other requested for information, Youtt wrote.

In July, Ranor provided copies of our Storm Water Runoff Plan as well as storm water runoff analysis data to the Westminster Board of Health and to the Westminster Conservation Commission.