Pa. regulators push to recover $2.4 million from Rochester chemical fire cleanup
ROCHESTER — The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection continues to pursue legal action to recover $2.4 million in costs tied to the former Rochester Pool Doctor site.
Regulators last year filed a civil suit in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania to recoup millions in remediation costs after the former Pool Doctor/Beaver Alkali Products site housing hazardous chemicals collapsed and caught fire twice in 2019, forming a chlorine and bromine cloud that prompted two shelter-in-place advisories in Beaver County.
Defendants listed in the suit are building owners One Brewery Place of Rochester, Harold Davidson of Ellwood City and James Randy Davidson of Florida, alongside real estate investment firm M. Ultra Investment Group of Georgetown and specialty chemicals manufacturer Arxada of Williamsport.
Regulators, in the lawsuit, said Harold Davidson and, at times, his sons Brad and Randy Davidson, owned and operated a family business at the site for more than 50 years until Harold Davidson’s death in 2009. After his death, his sons continued operations through 2017, according to the lawsuit.
The family operated under a number of business names, including Beaver Alkali Products, Davidson Industries, Pool Doctor and, most recently, One Brewery Place. During most of that time, the company blended industrial chemicals for use in various applications, including solvents, lubricants and swimming pool disinfectants.
Harold Davidson, the DEP said, had a “demonstrated history of non-compliance with environmental law,” including illegal discharge of industrial wastewater into soil and groundwater in Lawrence County in the 1970s.
The Rochester company, at times, illegally disposed of unusable chemicals or processed them for use in experimental applications, regulators said, building a growing stockpile of hazardous waste throughout the warehouse property near Beaver Valley Bowl.
The DEP became aware of the defunct pool business years prior to the chemical fire while remediating the nearby Marino Brothers Scrapyard. The agency sent a number of inquiry letters to Pool Doctor/Beaver Alkali Products that went unanswered and made little progress during subsequent meetings with owners.
When a roof on one of the now-demolished buildings collapsed in 2019, state regulators took responsibility for remediation under the Hazardous Sites Cleanup Act. During the response, chemicals improperly stored at the property ignited and sent a noxious plume into surrounding areas.
“Many of the drums and containers were deteriorating, breached and spilling into a commingled, indistinguishable mass of waste,” the lawsuit reads, including chlorine and hydantoin used in pesticides, industrial water treatment and other applications.
The DEP originally planned to spend $375,000 to collect and properly dispose of chemical wastes at the site, but the building’s collapse and further investigation pushed those costs to more than $3 million after a year of work, officials said.
After filing an amended complaint in November, the DEP motioned for default against One Brewery, Harold Davidson and James Randy Davidson in late January for failure to respond or otherwise plead. The default entry was approved.
“An amended complaint was filed on Nov. 8, 2023, to which neither One Brewery Place, Harold Davidson nor James Randy Davidson have responded, and no extension of time was stipulated to or sought from the court," the default order reads.
DEP representatives also argued that defendant M. Ultra Investment Group, based in Georgetown, has acted as the de facto operator of the site since 2017, when Brad Davidson and other shareholders formed the company "for the purpose of developing the site as a sports bar or marketing the site to developers for a similar use.”
Another defendant, Arxada, LLC, formerly Lonza, LLC of Williamsport, is listed after regulators found drums of discarded off-spec waste hydantoin Lonza had generated and sent to the site decades prior. The department disposed of 140 tons of waste hydantoin, adding “no single contaminant required more cleanup costs than the unusable, unmarketable, discarded off-spec waste hydantoin Lonza generated.”
According to the lawsuit, Lonza, “elected not to undertake proper disposal of its off-spec waste hydantoin in various instances” throughout the 1980s and early 1990s.
“Sometimes under the guise of a sale, Lonza arranged with Harold Davidson and his sons for disposal or processing at the site of multiple shipments ... from its Williamsport plant,” the lawsuit reads, claiming the company "knew, or reasonably should have known, Harold Davidson, working as an individual small business operator, could not use in his essentially one-man blending operation at the site, within a reasonable time frame, the high volume of the unusable, unmarketable, discarded off-spec waste hydantoin Lonza sent him.”
The firm, now Arxada, filed a motion to dismiss the case in October, arguing the company “cannot be held liable for another party’s failure to properly store and maintain the chemicals Arxada sold to them.”
The litigation is ongoing.
This article originally appeared on Beaver County Times: Pa. regulators push to recover $2.4 million from Rochester chemical fire cleanup
