Why Borghi USA, Inc. Paid a $0 Fine After Endangering 165 Employee’s Lives and Destroying The Environment w/ Hydrochloric Acid.

A Pipe Burst. Acid Hit the Floor. Nobody Was Prepared.

On April 12, 2022, a pipe inside Borghi USA’s steel pipe processing plant at 402 W. Division Street in West Burlington, Iowa ruptured. Approximately 2,000 gallons of hydrochloric acid poured across the facility floor. That is enough liquid to fill roughly 26 standard bathtubs, and it was one of the most corrosive industrial chemicals on the planet.

Borghi did not report the spill to state authorities until April 14, 2022, two days later. By then, the West Burlington fire and police departments had already responded to the scene. The fire department evacuated every worker in the building and shut the facility down entirely.

The acid did not stay inside. The EPA’s formal order states the hydrochloric acid flowed out of the facility and contaminated the soil around the building. The people of West Burlington, Iowa now have industrial acid in the ground outside a pipe factory.

Acid in the Ground. Workers Out the Door. And It Gets Worse.

The cleanup that followed required specialized environmental contractors. Clean Harbors Environmental Services removed seven large portable containers holding approximately 1,925 gallons of corrosive hazardous waste, plus two meow containers of sodium hydroxide and 40 drums totaling 8,000 pounds of additional hazardous material from the site. That is a staggering volume of toxic material that had no business accumulating in a facility with zero emergency infrastructure.

What the EPA found when inspectors arrived in October 2022 was worse than the spill itself. Borghi had been quietly stacking 52 giant 275-gallon totes of unknown liquid waste in a lot on the northwest end of the property. None of them were labeled. No one had inspected them. Some were in such bad condition that their contents had to be transferred to new containers just to move them.

That single sentence from the plant manager is damning. The company’s own management had no idea what was in those containers. They inherited an illegal hazardous waste dump and apparently decided that was someone else’s problem.

Nine Ways Borghi Broke Federal Law. Zero Days of Consequences.

The EPA’s formal charging document does not list one violation or two. It catalogs at least nine distinct categories of federal hazardous waste law violations. Each one, standing alone, represents a conscious failure to protect workers and the surrounding community. Together, they paint a picture of a company that treated safety regulations as someone else’s concern.

No Plan. No Training. No Labels. For Years.

The training failure deserves its own spotlight. Federal law requires that workers at hazardous waste facilities complete a formal training program within six months of being hired, and then complete an annual review every year after that. The EPA found that not a single Borghi employee had received any hazardous waste training as of October 2022. When inspectors returned in August 2024, employees still had not completed annual training reviews for 2022, 2023, or 2024. That is three consecutive years of failing to train workers who handle industrial acids and other toxic chemicals every single day.

There was also no contingency plan for emergencies. Not a draft. Not an outline. The legal requirement is specific: a facility handling these quantities of hazardous material must have a written plan designed to minimize harm from fires, explosions, or unplanned releases. Borghi had none when the acid spill happened in 2022, and the company’s own acknowledgment of the problem took months to materialize in filings to the EPA.

The Number That Defines the Whole Story

The Non-Financial Ledger: What Money Cannot Measure

Consider what it means to walk into work as one of those 165 employees at Borghi USA on April 12, 2022. You are processing steel pipes. It is an ordinary Tuesday. Then a pipe bursts, and suddenly 2,000 gallons of industrial acid are spreading across the floor. Hydrochloric acid does not just smell bad. It burns mucous membranes, damages the respiratory tract, and causes chemical burns on skin and eyes. There was no spill control equipment present. There was no emergency plan to follow.

The West Burlington fire department made the call to evacuate. That means workers were not warned by an internal emergency system, guided by trained safety personnel, or directed through a pre-rehearsed evacuation protocol. Emergency responders from outside the facility took control. The EPA’s own order confirms why: the fire department cited harmful fumes, a lack of proper personal protective equipment for the employees, and the potential explosivity of hydrochloric acid. Workers at Borghi did not even have the right gear to be in the building.

The failure to train a single employee compounds the betrayal. Federal law does not ask companies to train workers as a courtesy. It requires it because untrained workers in a hazardous waste environment cannot protect themselves. They cannot identify the waste they are handling. They cannot execute an emergency response. They cannot even recognize when something has gone wrong until acid is already on the floor. Borghi had no hazardous waste training program in place as of October 2022, and follow-up inspections in August 2024 confirmed the company still had not conducted annual training reviews for 2022, 2023, or 2024. That is not a paperwork oversight. That is three years of choosing not to protect your workers.

The soil contamination outside the facility is a harm that extends beyond the workforce. The hydrochloric acid that flowed out of the building soaked into the ground around 402 W. Division Street in West Burlington, a real neighborhood in a real Iowa town. That contamination does not disappear when a settlement is signed. The families who live near that facility, the people who walk past that lot, the groundwater that feeds local wells: none of them were parties to the $0 deal the EPA cut. None of them were compensated. And none of them had any say in how long Borghi got to operate with 55 totes of unlabeled toxic waste sitting in a field next to their community.

Straight From the Document. No Spin.

These are direct quotes and formal findings from the EPA’s Consent Agreement and Final Order, filed July 15, 2025. Nothing has been altered.

“The West Burlington fire and police departments responded to the spill on April 14, 2022, due to concerns about the health and safety of facility employees. The fire department evacuated employees and closed the facility due to the harmful fumes, lack of proper personal protection equipment for the employees, and the potential explosivity of hydrochloric acid.”

— EPA Consent Agreement and Final Order, Paragraph 33

“The hydrochloric acid flowed out of the facility, contaminating soil around the facility.”

— EPA Consent Agreement and Final Order, Paragraph 34

“At the time of the 2022 Inspection, none of the totes at the facility were appropriately labeled or marked in any way.”

— EPA Consent Agreement and Final Order, Paragraph 73

“At the time of the 2022 Inspection, none of the Facility personnel were trained in hazardous waste management procedures relevant to their positions.”

— EPA Consent Agreement and Final Order, Paragraph 91

“Respondent has demonstrated that it is unable to pay any penalty in this matter. Because of Respondent’s inability to pay the penalty, therefore, Complainant conditionally agrees to resolve the claims alleged herein for $0.”

— EPA Consent Agreement and Final Order, Paragraph 99 (the $0 justification, verbatim)

“At the time of the 2024 Inspection, Facility personnel had not taken part in an annual review of the initial training for the years 2022, 2023 and 2024.”

— EPA Consent Agreement and Final Order, Paragraph 92

Beyond the Factory Floor: Who Else Borghi Hurt

Environmental Degradation: Acid in Iowa’s Soil

The EPA’s order states plainly that hydrochloric acid flowed out of the Borghi facility and contaminated the soil around the building. This is not a theoretical risk or a potential harm. This is documented, confirmed contamination of land in a residential and commercial area of West Burlington, Iowa. The fact that the settlement document mentions soil contamination without attaching a remediation timeline, a soil testing requirement, or an independent environmental monitoring mandate is a gap that should alarm anyone living near 402 W. Division Street.

The 52 to 55 unlabeled totes of unknown hazardous liquid stored outside on a gravel lot for at least 18 months represent a second, slower contamination risk. The EPA’s own document notes that three containers had degraded so severely that their contents required emergency transfer to new containers. Degraded containers in an outdoor lot, through Iowa winters and summers, produce leaks. Those leaks reach soil. Soil contamination reaches groundwater. The order does not account for what seeped into the ground over 18 months before anyone from the EPA arrived.

Public Health: 165 Workers. Zero Protection.

Hydrochloric acid exposure is a serious occupational health hazard. Inhalation of the fumes causes respiratory irritation, coughing, choking, and at higher concentrations, pulmonary edema and chemical burns to the airways. The fire department’s decision to evacuate and close the facility confirms that the fume concentration inside Borghi on April 12, 2022 was dangerous enough to require professional emergency intervention. None of the 165 workers had received hazardous waste training. None of them had been taught emergency procedures. Many likely did not fully understand what they were breathing.

The absence of a contingency plan means there was no scripted response, no designated emergency coordinator, and no pre-established communication chain for exactly the kind of event that occurred. Contingency plans exist precisely because chemical emergencies unfold in seconds. When there is no plan, workers improvise. Improvisation in an acid spill environment gets people hurt. The settlement document does not indicate whether any workers suffered health consequences from the April 2022 event. That absence of information is itself a problem: there is no public accounting of worker harm.

Economic Inequality: Who Gets a $0 Fine and Who Doesn’t

The EPA’s justification for the $0 penalty is a single sentence: Borghi “demonstrated that it is unable to pay any penalty.” The agency’s own RCRA Civil Penalty Policy from June 2003 lists inability to pay as a mitigating factor. What the policy does not address is who gets to make that claim and who validates it. A small Iowa manufacturer can reportedly demonstrate financial hardship and walk away from nine categories of federal violations with a quarterly reporting requirement. An individual American who cannot pay a parking ticket does not get the same grace.

The economic logic of this outcome is worth stating directly. Borghi USA saved money by not training its workers, not labeling its waste, not buying spill control equipment, not drafting an emergency plan, and not obtaining a storage permit. Every one of those omissions reduced operating costs. The company then claims it cannot afford the penalty that exists specifically to recoup those savings and deter future violations. The EPA accepted that argument. The workers who breathed acid fumes, the neighbors whose soil is contaminated, and the West Burlington first responders who responded on April 14, 2022 received nothing from this resolution.

Who Is Watching, and What You Can Do

The corporate contact named in the settlement document is Matthew Brakeville, Borghi USA, Inc. (matthew.brakeville@borghiusainc.com), identified as the company representative who received the final order. The company’s legal representation was Jessica Merrigan, Spencer Fane, LLP.

Regulatory Bodies with Jurisdiction

• EPA Region 7 (Lenexa, Kansas): Issued this order; retains enforcement rights for any future violations.
• Iowa Department of Natural Resources (IDNR): Borghi reported the spill to the IDNR on April 14, 2022. The IDNR has ongoing jurisdiction over soil and groundwater contamination in Iowa.
• OSHA: Has independent jurisdiction over worker safety at Borghi USA. The absence of PPE, training, and emergency procedures for 165 workers is squarely within OSHA’s authority.
• DOJ: The EPA’s order explicitly reserves the right to pursue criminal sanctions. No criminal referral is mentioned in this settlement.
• EPA Office of Inspector General: Can review whether the $0 penalty determination followed proper procedure and whether the inability-to-pay analysis was adequately documented.

The article was written with references to this following EPA PDF document: https://yosemite.epa.gov/oa/rhc/epaadmin.nsf/Filings/7B44DA892AE6B62C85258CC9005369BF/$File/Borghi%20USA%20Consent%20Agreement%20and%20Final%20Order.pdf

One might also find this one interesting….: https://yosemite.epa.gov/oa/rhc/epaadmin.nsf/Filings/688EE44A545898A885258A29005DE2B5/$File/Borghi%20USA%20Consent%20Agreement%20and%20Final%20Order.pdf

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