Oregon DEQ settles record fine with Portland roofing manufacturer
The Oregon Department of Environmental Quality has settled the largest fine in its history with a Portland roofing material manufacturer that failed to control its air pollution for a decade.
Malarkey Roofing Products modified its facility in 2009, but didn’t notify DEQ. In 2018, the company notified DEQ that its formaldehyde emissions might be higher than believed. Source testing in 2019 confirmed that.
DEQ fined the company $2.1 million in October 2021, at the time the largest penalty it had ever issued. Last week, DEQ settled for $1.45 million, after Malarkey proved it had not avoided as many costs from the violation as originally estimated.
The settlement agreement requires Malarkey to complete both short- and long-term actions to control and monitor pollution.
The agreement also asks Malarkey to consider paying up to $1.16 million of the fine towards DEQ-approved projects, known as supplemental environmental projects, that provide air-quality benefits to the surrounding community.
Related: Port of Morrow gets Oregon’s second-largest environmental penalty
Company officials apologized to the community last fall.
“The moment we discovered that installing the stack in our building may have impacted our emissions, we contacted DEQ to let them know,” company president Greg Malarkey said.
Malarkey Roofing has production facilities in Oregon, California and Oklahoma. Its Portland facility is located at 3131 N. Columbia Blvd., in the Kenton neighborhood.
In December 2021, the company agreed to be acquired by The Holcim Group, a Swiss multinational company that manufactures building materials.
Last month, DEQ fined the Port of Morrow $2.1 million for repeatedly overapplying wastewater containing nitrogen to agricultural fields and failing to monitor those fields. It’s now DEQ’s largest fine.
Tracy Loew is a reporter at the Statesman Journal. She can be reached at tloew@statesmanjournal.com, 503-399-6779 or on Twitter at @Tracy_Loew.
This article originally appeared on Salem Statesman Journal: Oregon DEQ settles record fine with roofing manufacturer
