The Grant County Veterans Memorial Business and Conference Center was filled with concerned members of the community as well as elected officials Tuesday evening for a briefing on the N.M. 15 oil spill cleanup.
A public meeting held Tuesday evening by R. Marley, LLC, the trucking company responsible for the spill and cleanup of hundreds to thousands of gallons of emulsified oil on N.M 15 last month, turned into a three-hour face-off with a crowd of visibly angry members of the public.
In addition to representatives of the trucking company, the meeting included staffers from the New Mexico Environment Department, New Mexico State Police, the U.S. Forest Service and the New Mexico Department of Transportation.
“I want to get into the bigger picture of things — everybody that’s here, and they’re really mad at this trucking company, they’re the only ones that have been out there in the creek with us,” cleanup volunteer Tony Russ said at the meeting. “I’m sorry, but the Forest Service, where have you guys been? We need 50 people in the creek. You guys have it, DOT has it.
“Where have you guys been?” he continued. “All this bureaucracy bulls**t to blame somebody first and then get it cleaned up. No! You clean it up first, and then you worry about who you blame! What are we doing as humans, if we cannot do this first and then figure out — oh, OK, fine, it’s their fault. I don’t [care] about that. I just want to see it cleaned up, [and] not have everybody sitting around at the top of the creek watching my friends down there.”
Russ then left the room to a round of applause, visibly upset with the situation. He also called out the community at large for not getting more people out to help with the cleanup.
One of the mysteries surrounding the spill has been why State Police officers, who quickly took control of the crash scene shortly after the tanker truck overturned on the morning of Sept. 26, did not report the spill to the state Environment Department, instead managing the incident as a traffic accident. While State Police officials were present during the meeting, R. Marley consultant James Bearzi made it clear to the crowd that the meeting was hosted by the trucking company, and other agencies would have to host their own.
“State Police, when they respond to an accident like this, they are the commanders, and they are the ones who determine whether or not it is a hazardous material incident,” Bearzi said. “They didn’t do that at the time.
“There may be further investigations about what happened, but we relied on assurances we shouldn’t have relied on that these agencies were going to do the proper reporting — particularly for the Environment Department,” he continued. “They didn’t, and we shouldn’t have done that. That’s not going to happen again with, at least, R. Marley Trucking.”
Geronimo Cassidy, one of the leading organizers of volunteer efforts to clean up the spill, pointed out that even if a tanker truckload of milk were to spill off into the creek, it could be classified as an environmental hazard, depending on where that creek goes.
“Just because it isn’t hazardous doesn’t mean it [shouldn’t] be reported — or however it’s phrased,” Bearzi said in response to Cassidy. “His point is well taken. It doesn’t have to be a hazardous waste, a hazardous substance, or a hazardous material, which are all very specific terms under law. This specific material isn’t any of that, and I can explain in detail why that is.
“But he’s right that a tanker truck of milk that goes into a watercourse or could eventually make its way [there] — that still has to be reported, because it’s what’s called a potential water contaminant,” Bearzi continued. “It doesn’t have to be hazardous in any regulatory way to make it reportable, and we should have.”
Marley Vice President of Operations Dane Marley spoke to the crowd, telling them that he was not there to say that other people should have reported this and he shouldn’t have. He accepted responsibility for the failure.
“My outfit should have reported this,” he said. “We dropped the ball on that. Whether it’s because someone else said they were going to do it, or because we had assurances, whatever it was — several people that were around this incident should have reported it, and we’re one of them. There’s a lot of fault to be had, and I’m not going to pass it to anybody else.”
Another question that arose during Tuesday night’s meeting was who authorized the truck to be on that narrow, winding mountain road that day. A community member pointed out that it was “the largest” tanker truck he had ever seen.
“I just want to know who made the decision that it was OK for that truck to go down,” one community member asked. “Was it the DOT? Was it the company? Who made that decision?”
“The driver,” Marley replied. “The driver continued to follow that road, [even though] the product was set to deliver just past Pinos Altos. He was looking for road construction folks, and did not have cell service to find out the load had been canceled. The driver proceeded down the road, and then went to a point and turned around — and when he was coming back, that’s when the accident happened.”
Multiple members of the community pointed out that there is signage posted at both ends of the road restricting large trucks and large loads. Marley said that the size of the truck hauling the material was standard.
“The truck itself was inspected by the highway department, with the enforcement DOT folks after, and was found to be well within specifications,” Marley said. “If you look at our safety record, we beat the national average. Our vetting program — we do not allow drivers that have less than two years of experience with a Class A [commercial driver’s license]. We vet very strictly, [and] we employ electronic logging devices in all of our vehicles.”
He also said that the company does not provide every driver with satellite phones because it is cost-prohibitive. He also made it clear that the driver was not speeding — as evidenced, he said, by the fact that the truck and trailer did not completely roll over.
Volunteer cleanup efforts have continued since shortly after the spill, and a volunteer who came to the meeting directly from the site claimed that the check dams had all been removed.
“All of the dams that we made yesterday were all taken off of the river and put on the bank,” the volunteer said.
“I am not aware of that,” Marley On-site Coordinator Chris Gray responded. “I’ve been gone for 36 hours from the site. I’m going to reassess in the morning.”
Bearzi pointed out that volunteers are observing something completely different than Marley’s field people, and asked them to show him exactly what they are seeing. He said he will be out to the creek next week, and hopes to meet with them then. He also explained how they can determine how far down the drainage the spill went.
“The first day for us, we went down the stream and looked for globs,” Bearzi said. “There are these natural check dams, and we went in and tried to enhance them. The Forest Service seemed to be OK with that, but they can speak for themselves. That was the downmost extent — and that was about 900 or so yards from the release site.”
Several members of the audience accused the trucking company of lying to the community throughout the process.
“My request is that you further vet your information before you send it out in an email as a blast to our senators, congressmen, or whoever it is,” volunteer and Silver City resident Cecilia Marie said. “It is dampening our volunteer efforts — saying that there’s more people out there than there really is, saying that the check dams are natural when our team built them, that your teams are professional but they are people wearing trash bags as rain ponchos and don’t have gloves.
“It wasn’t a question,” she continued. “It was a request to please tell the truth.”
Bearzi said that every day, either Gray or Marley leaves the scene early to report the number of people on-site, when they showed up, how long they were there and the current progress of the effort.
“It’s a big email distribution list,” Bearzi said. “If folks are getting that — you guys have the distribution list — say, reply all, ‘No, there weren’t 19 people, there [was] nobody up today.’ When you say the volunteers built the check dams, have they [been] built since the accident? Or for the fire runoff?”
Multiple people shouted that the check dams were put in place by volunteers after the spill occurred, for which Bearzi commended them.
Cleanup efforts continued this morning, with even more volunteers expected on the scene.
Jordan Archunde may be reached at [email protected] press.com.
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