What A Fine Cannot Measure

Enumclaw, Washington, is a small city of about 13,000 people tucked in the foothills of the Cascades, east of Tacoma. It is the kind of place where people move to be closer to nature, to raise kids in a town where they know their neighbors. The Parker-Hannifin facility at 225 Battersby Avenue sits inside that community. It makes rotary actuators, the mechanical components used in mining, agriculture, and construction equipment. Heavy industrial work. The kind that generates serious chemical waste.

For years, the people of Enumclaw were told, implicitly, that the rules were being followed. That someone was checking the drums. That the labels were on the containers. That if something went wrong, there was a plan in place and someone to call. None of that was true.

Open containers of paint-solvent mixtures sat in the facility’s work areas. These are not benign substances. Spent solvents and paint mixtures are classified as dangerous waste in Washington State precisely because they carry fire, explosion, and toxic exposure risks. Workers who spent their days near those open buckets were breathing that ambient air. No label on the container told them what the risks were. They may not have known what they were sitting next to.

The weekly inspection logs, required by law to catch leaks and container deterioration before they become exposure events, were skipped 75 times across roughly five years. That is roughly one missed inspection every three to four weeks, week after week, year after year. The general facility inspections, required monthly to catch malfunctions and discharge risks before they threaten health or the environment, were missed 25 times over four and a half years.

When inspectors arrived in January 2023, the facility’s emergency plan listed a person who no longer worked there. The plan did not include a home phone number or an alternate emergency coordinator. If something had caught fire, or if a shipment of hazardous material arrived that couldn’t be moved, the person on paper as responsible for coordinating the response had already left the building, permanently. The local fire department, hospitals, and emergency response teams had no formal arrangement with the facility, even though the type of waste being handled legally required it.

The people of Enumclaw did not sign up to live next to a facility that was quietly pretending to follow the rules. The workers inside the plant were not told what the real risks were. The law exists because chemical exposure events in industrial facilities don’t announce themselves. They build up, they leak, they burn. The fine Parker-Hannifin paid will not give anyone back five years of breathing air near open solvent buckets. It will not restore the trust that comes from knowing a company is being honest about what it is storing and how dangerous it is.

Straight From The Document: What The EPA Found

The following quotes come verbatim from the EPA Consent Agreement, Docket No. RCRA-10-2024-0232, filed September 13, 2024. Parker-Hannifin waived its right to contest these allegations and to appeal the Final Order.

“At the time of the Inspection, EPA observed the following containers of waste being managed as satellites: Two approximately three-gallon containers used to accumulate wipes that were characterized as dangerous waste. The containers lacked labels or signs with the words ‘hazardous waste’ or ‘dangerous waste’ and lacked labels or signs that identified the major risk(s) associated with the waste. The containers sat open. Three approximately three-gallon containers used to accumulate paint-solvent mixtures that were characterized as dangerous waste. The containers lacked labels or signs with the words ‘hazardous waste’ or ‘dangerous waste’ and lacked labels or signs that identified the major risk(s) associated with the waste. The containers sat open.”

— Consent Agreement, Paragraph 3.32(a) and (b)

“Between October 17, 2019 and June 1, 2024, Respondent failed to conduct and/or provide logs for 75 weekly inspections as required by WAC 173-303-630(6).”

— Consent Agreement, Paragraph 3.36

“Between the date of the Inspection and on or around June 1, 2024, Respondent was allowing the contents of 3-gallon buckets to dry, which altered their physical and chemical states. The 3-gallon buckets contained paint and solvent mixtures categorized as a dangerous waste.”

— Consent Agreement, Paragraphs 3.46 and 3.47

“Between the date of the Inspection and on or around June 1, 2024, Respondent’s training for its Facility personnel failed to discuss Washington State’s dangerous waste regulations and failed to meet the minimum requirements of WAC 173-303-330(1), Respondent failed to develop a training plan with the necessary personnel information as required by WAC 173-303-330(2), and Respondent failed to keep records for all current and prior employees of the past three years pursuant to WAC 173-303-330(3).”

— Consent Agreement, Paragraph 3.58

“At the time of the Inspection, Respondent’s SPCC Plan listed an emergency coordinator who was no longer employed at the facility and failed to list a home address, telephone number, or alternate emergency coordinator as required by WAC 173-303-350(3)(d).”

— Consent Agreement, Paragraph 3.70

Who Pays The Real Cost

Environmental Degradation

The hazardous waste mismanagement documented at the Enumclaw facility created specific, documented environmental risk pathways, even where a release has not been confirmed in the settlement record.

• Open containers of paint-solvent mixtures and paint wipes designated as dangerous waste were stored without lids in an active manufacturing area. Volatile organic compounds (VOCs) from these materials do not stay in the room; they migrate into the surrounding air and can deposit on nearby soil and water surfaces. Enumclaw sits in a watershed region with proximity to agricultural land and natural waterways.
• Washington State’s Dangerous Waste Program exists specifically because improperly stored hazardous materials can leach into groundwater. The facility operated for years without the required weekly leak inspections, meaning that any slow seep from a corroded drum or cracked container would have gone undetected for weeks at a time.
• Spent solvent and paint mixtures are listed dangerous wastes under WAC 173-303-082 and 173-303-9904. These designations exist because these substances contain compounds toxic to aquatic life, soil microbiota, and plant systems at even low concentrations.
• The unpermitted “treatment” of dangerous waste, allowing solvent-paint mixtures to air-dry to alter their chemical state, releases vapor-phase compounds into the ambient environment without any engineering controls. This occurred from at least January 2023 through June 2024, with no documented monitoring of what was released.

Public Health

Workers inside the facility and residents of the surrounding Enumclaw community faced compounding, documented exposure risks that are the direct result of Parker-Hannifin’s failure to follow legally required safety standards.

• The five open containers of dangerous waste observed at the time of inspection, including containers holding paint-solvent mixtures and hazardous wipes, exposed workers in the painting area to inhalation of solvent vapors. These compounds are associated with neurological effects, liver and kidney damage, and respiratory irritation with repeated exposure.
• Workers were not trained on Washington State’s dangerous waste regulations. The legal training requirement exists to ensure that people handling hazardous materials know what they are touching, how to protect themselves, and what to do when something goes wrong. Parker-Hannifin’s workers were denied that knowledge base.
• The mercury-containing universal waste lamps stored in open, overflowing boxes posed a breakage and mercury vapor release risk in an enclosed workspace. Mercury vapor at elevated concentrations causes neurological damage and is particularly harmful with chronic, low-level exposure.
• The emergency plan, which named a contact who was no longer employed, meant that the facility had no functional emergency response chain in place. For workers, this means that in the event of a chemical fire, a spill, or a toxic release, the response structure they were relying on was a fiction.
• The facility’s failure to coordinate with local hospitals and emergency response teams under WAC 173-303-340(4) meant that Enumclaw’s first responders had no pre-established protocols for the specific chemical hazards at this facility. That gap puts both responders and the broader community at elevated risk during any incident.

Economic Inequality

The settlement structure and the penalty amount reveal a two-tiered system where corporations absorb the cost of years of noncompliance as a business expense, while workers and community members absorb the health and environmental risk.

• Parker-Hannifin Corporation reported annual revenues exceeding $19 billion in recent fiscal years. A $366,000 penalty for nearly five years of documented hazardous waste violations is, for a company of this scale, a rounding error. It functions as a cost of doing business, not a deterrent.
• The maximum statutory penalty was $121,275 per day per violation. With seven counts and a violation window stretching back to October 2019, the theoretical maximum exposure runs into the tens of millions of dollars. The $366,000 settlement represents an extraordinary reduction from what the law authorizes.
• The workers at the Enumclaw facility, who are the people most directly exposed to the consequences of improper waste handling, receive nothing from the settlement. The penalty goes to the federal government. There is no remediation fund, no medical monitoring requirement, and no worker compensation component in this order.
• Small businesses in the same industry that do follow the rules, including paying for proper permits, training, and inspection logs, compete against a company that saved money by skipping those requirements for years. Regulatory noncompliance is a form of market subsidy for corporations large enough to absorb the eventual fine.
• Enumclaw is not a wealthy urban center with a robust environmental health infrastructure. The community’s ability to monitor, respond to, or litigate against industrial environmental violations is fundamentally limited compared to the legal and financial resources of a Fortune 500 company.

The Math Behind The Settlement

Hold The Line: Your Next Steps

The settlement is signed. Parker-Hannifin’s obligations under this order are narrow: pay $366,000, submit inspection logs by March 31, 2025, and file a revised training plan within 90 days of the Final Order. The order does not prevent future enforcement for future violations. Staying on the record matters.

Who Signed This Agreement

• Matthew Jacobson, Group Vice President of Operations, Parker-Hannifin Corporation: Signed the consent agreement on behalf of the company, September 13, 2024.
• Edward J. Kowalski, Director, Enforcement and Compliance Assurance Division, EPA Region 10: Signed for the Complainant, September 13, 2024.
• Richard Mednick, Regional Judicial Officer, EPA Region 10: Issued the Final Order, September 13, 2024.
• Tasha Miracle, Assistant General Counsel, Parker-Hannifin Corporation: Listed as the company’s legal contact of record. Address: 6035 Parkland Boulevard, Cleveland, Ohio 44124.

Watchlist: Who Oversees This

• EPA Region 10 (Pacific Northwest): The enforcing authority on this case. Kyle Masters (Masters.Kyle@epa.gov) is the designated EPA contact for compliance documentation under this order. Future violations at this facility go to this office.
• Washington State Department of Ecology: Administers the Washington Dangerous Waste Program (WAC 173-303) on the ground. State inspectors operate independently of the EPA and can bring separate enforcement actions. They were notified of this action under Section 3008(a)(2) of RCRA.
• U.S. EPA Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance (OECA): The national office that tracks RCRA enforcement data and trends. RCRA violations are reported in the ECHO database (echo.epa.gov), where you can search facility ID WAD988493573 for the full compliance history of this facility.
• U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ): This Final Order specifically preserves the right of the EPA and the United States to pursue criminal sanctions for violations of law, separate from this civil settlement. Criminal referrals for knowing violations of RCRA are legally available.
• OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration): Worker exposure to hazardous chemicals in the workplace falls within OSHA’s jurisdiction under the Hazard Communication Standard (29 CFR 1910.1200). If workers at this facility were not informed of the specific chemical hazards of the substances they handled, that may constitute a separate OSHA violation.

What You Can Do Right Now

• Search the EPA’s ECHO database (echo.epa.gov) for Facility ID WAD988493573. This shows the complete inspection and enforcement history. If new violations appear, that record is the foundation of any future accountability campaign.
• Contact the Washington State Department of Ecology’s Dangerous Waste Program directly to ask whether state-level enforcement is being pursued separately from the federal action. State agencies sometimes have stronger tools or faster timelines than federal agencies.
• If you work at this facility or know someone who does, contact OSHA’s Region 10 office to inquire about workplace hazardous communication rights. Workers have a legal right to know what chemicals they are exposed to and what the associated health risks are.
• Support Enumclaw-area environmental and community organizations that monitor local industrial facilities. Local knowledge and community organizing are what close the gap between federal inspection cycles. Facilities are not inspected every week; neighbors are there every day.
• Use shareholder tools if you hold Parker-Hannifin stock or participate in any fund that does. File or support shareholder resolutions requiring environmental compliance disclosures and third-party audits of hazardous waste handling at all facilities, not just the ones that get caught.
• Demand that your congressional representatives strengthen RCRA penalty structures. A maximum fine of $121,275 per day sounds large, but when settlements routinely land at a fraction of that ceiling, the deterrent effect disappears entirely. Graduated mandatory minimums for large corporations are a concrete legislative fix.