After a tank rupture killed 11 workers at a Longview paper mill, the Washington Department of Ecology said a public EPA database was wrong about the facility’s pollution record. But neither Ecology nor the EPA will say exactly what was wrong, what was real or when the public record will be fixed.
As of publication, the Environmental Protection Agency’s Enforcement and Compliance History Online database, known as ECHO, still showed Nippon Dynawave’s status as “Significant/Category I Noncompliance” under the Clean Water Act, with 12 quarters in noncompliance and eight quarters with significant violations. But Ecology spokesperson Andrew Wineke told me this week that the significant-noncompliance designation was incorrect and that most of the noncompliance entries shown in ECHO were due to data issues.
Wineke said the problem stems from how benchmark exceedances, warning-level readings that require corrective action but are not violations, are transferred from Ecology’s water quality database to EPA systems. He said Ecology categorizes those exceedances correctly, but the EPA’s system flags them as violations, leading to the incorrect designation.
EPA spokesperson Laura Knudsen did not answer questions about how many ECHO entries were accurate, whether the EPA agrees with Ecology’s assessment, whether other Washington facilities are affected or when the public record would be corrected. Instead, she said Nippon Dynawave is permitted by Ecology and assessed for compliance by the state agency. She added that ECHO displays data Ecology sent under federal reporting rules.
Wineke said the ECHO data problems do not affect state oversight because Ecology and the EPA meet quarterly to discuss significant noncompliance issues. But when asked, he declined to characterize Nippon Dynawave’s compliance record before the May 26 rupture, saying only that “all regulated facilities are expected to comply with their permit requirements and other regulations.”
The discrepancy leaves the public record unclear. The EPA’s website still reports the facility as having serious water compliance problems, while Ecology says most of those listings were tied to data issues. Neither agency has publicly identified which entries were real violations and which were not.
The unanswered questions involve the EPA’s public database, not the underlying state compliance records Ecology says are reliable. Those records show Nippon Dynawave has been assessed $41,500 in environmental penalties since 2017.
The database discrepancy centers on Clean Water Act records. Ecology has not disputed the facility’s separate air pollution penalties, including a $4,500 state penalty in August 2024 for exceeding sulfur dioxide limits and a $5,500 penalty in March 2026 for violating National Emission Standards for Hazardous Air Pollutants.
The state compliance records also show wastewater problems, including one biochemical oxygen demand reading that was 770% of the permitted limit, plus 2025 chemical and wastewater incidents and warning letters the agency did not publicize individually.
Wineke said Ecology’s policy is to issue news releases for penalties over $10,000 and to include penalties over $1,000 in quarterly penalty summaries. He said Nippon Dynawave had been penalized three times since 2024, all below the $10,000 news release threshold.
The penalties and compliance history are separate from the cause of the May 26 rupture, which remains under investigation. The tank failure created an environmental emergency when hundreds of thousands of gallons of caustic white liquor spilled into the site and nearby ditch system, killing 2,902 fish. Officials later said the dike and ditch network was clear of harmful chemical contamination after 72 hours of pH testing showed no elevated levels.
Community air monitoring ended after 10 days with no harmful gases detected, though monitoring continued along the Nippon Dynawave perimeter fence while contractors decontaminated the site.
Nippon Dynawave President Matt Peerboom and the company’s press team did not respond to multiple requests for comment about the company’s regulatory record, safety culture and response to the rupture.
Last Updated on June 6, 2026 by Joe Douglass
