Investigative Report; Environmental Compliance; Huntington, Indiana

A Town Was Left in the Dark for 43 Days

EPA Region 5 Enforcement Action; Filed September 3, 2024; Gebhart Holdings, Inc. / Metal Source LLC

A company sitting on tens of thousands of pounds of molten metal and toxic fluoride compounds in a residential Indiana county decided the local fire department didn’t need to know about it, and the federal government let them settle the matter for $11,319 (roughly what a typical Hoosier family spends on groceries in a year).

What Happened: The Basic Facts

On April 20, 2022, Gebhart Holdings, Inc. acquired a facility at 1605 Riverfork Drive, Huntington, Indiana. The company operates through a subsidiary called Metal Source LLC. Fourteen days later, May 3 and 4, 2022, Gebhart conducted an environmental audit of the property and discovered what was there.

What was there mattered. The facility held five federally classified hazardous chemicals in amounts at or above 10,000 pounds each: A-614-2 non-ferrous flux, molten aluminum, compressed oxygen, silicon, and sodium aluminum fluoride. Every single one of these carries an OSHA health or physical hazard classification. Molten aluminum burns at over 1,200 degrees Fahrenheit. Sodium aluminum fluoride is acutely toxic and can cause skeletal fluorosis with chronic exposure.

Federal law, specifically Section 312(a) of the Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act (EPCRA), required Gebhart to file a complete hazardous chemical inventory with three parties: the Indiana State Emergency Response Commission (SERC), the Huntington County Local Emergency Planning Committee (LEPC), and the Huntington Fire Department. The deadline was March 1, 2023. Gebhart filed on April 13, 2023.

That is 43 days late. Forty-three days during which the Huntington Fire Department, the people responsible for responding to any fire, explosion, or chemical emergency at that facility, legally lacked the information they were supposed to have.

The Non-Financial Ledger: What You Can’t Buy Back

The Huntington Fire Department Was Flying Blind

Picture the scenario: a fire breaks out at 1605 Riverfork Drive during those 43 missing days. The first responders from the Huntington Fire Department arrive at a metal processing facility. They do not know there is molten aluminum on site. Molten aluminum reacts violently with water, the most basic fire suppression tool on the truck. Pouring water onto a molten metal fire doesn’t just fail to extinguish it; it can trigger a steam explosion.

EPCRA exists entirely because of disasters like the 1984 Bhopal chemical disaster, where a lack of public information about industrial chemicals directly multiplied the death toll. Congress passed the law so that communities, especially fire departments and emergency planning committees, hold the chemical inventory of every industrial facility in their jurisdiction. That knowledge is what lets responders survive the jobs they show up to do. Gebhart Holdings stripped the Huntington Fire Department of that knowledge for over six weeks.

The Community Had a Legal Right to This Information

The law doesn’t just protect firefighters. Section 312 of EPCRA exists to make hazardous chemical information available to the public. The Huntington County LEPC, the body responsible for community-level emergency planning, also went without this data past the legal deadline. That means the county’s emergency plan for this facility was built on incomplete information during those 43 days.

Residents living near Riverfork Drive never voted to accept the risk of being proximate to tens of thousands of pounds of hazardous industrial chemicals. The least the law demands is transparency. The people who live, work, and raise children in Huntington County had a federal legal right to know what sits in their backyard, and Gebhart Holdings decided that right was worth ignoring until April.

They Knew. They Just Didn’t Act.

The document makes clear that Gebhart conducted its environmental audit on May 3 and 4, 2022, and disclosed the audit results to the EPA on June 4, 2022. That means the company possessed the knowledge of what hazardous chemicals were on site, in reportable quantities, well before the March 1, 2023 reporting deadline. They had roughly nine months to file on time. They filed 43 days after the legal deadline instead.

This was a choice. The failure was not a mystery or an oversight buried under bureaucratic complexity. The company knew what chemicals were present, knew they had safety data sheets for those chemicals, knew the annual reporting deadline, and still missed it by over six weeks. The community’s safety was deprioritized against whatever internal timeline Gebhart Holdings was running on.

Legal Receipts: Straight from the Document

“Section 312(a) of EPCRA… assists state commissions, local committees, and fire departments in planning for emergencies and makes information on chemical presence and hazards available to the public. A delay in reporting could result in harm to human health and the environment.” Source: EPA Consent Agreement and Final Order, Factual Background, Paragraph 10

“Each day Respondent failed to submit to the SERC a completed Emergency and Hazardous Chemical Inventory Form including a-614-2 non-ferrous flux, molten aluminum, oxygen, silicon, and sodium aluminum fluoride by March 1, 2023, for calendar year 2022 constitutes a separate violation of Section 312(a) of EPCRA.” Source: EPA Consent Agreement and Final Order, Paragraph 57

“Respondent neither admits nor denies the factual allegations in this CAFO.” Source: EPA Consent Agreement and Final Order, Paragraph 7

“Respondent waives its right to request a hearing… any right to contest the allegations in this CAFO and its right to appeal this CAFO.” Source: EPA Consent Agreement and Final Order, Paragraph 8

“Complainant has determined that the combined appropriate civil penalty to settle this action is $11,319 for the EPCRA violations. In determining the penalty amounts, Complainant considered the nature, circumstances, extent and gravity of the violations, and with respect to Respondent, its ability to pay, prior history of violations, economic benefit or savings resulting from the violations and any other matters as justice may require.” Source: EPA Consent Agreement and Final Order, Civil Penalty, Paragraph 60

Societal Impact Mapping

Public Health: The Chemicals They Hid

Sodium aluminum fluoride, one of the five chemicals Gebhart failed to report, is acutely toxic. Chronic exposure to fluoride compounds causes skeletal fluorosis, a debilitating bone disease. Its threshold under EPCRA reporting is 10,000 pounds, meaning Gebhart held at least that quantity on site in a residential county without informing anyone with emergency planning responsibility.

Silicon dust, another chemical on the list, is a recognized respiratory hazard. Prolonged inhalation causes silicosis, an irreversible and potentially fatal lung disease. Molten aluminum, operating at temperatures above 1,200 degrees Fahrenheit, poses catastrophic burn and explosion risk to anyone in proximity during a failure event. The A-614-2 non-ferrous flux carries its own health hazard classification under OSHA standards. Every single chemical on this list, in the quantities involved, warranted the legal protection that Gebhart Holdings stripped from its community for 43 days.

The EPA’s own statutory language, cited directly in this case document, confirms: “A delay in reporting could result in harm to human health and the environment.” The agency cited this principle in the same document where it accepted an $11,319 settlement. The government identified the harm and then charged roughly the price of a used car for causing it.

Economic Inequality: Who Pays and Who Doesn’t

The maximum penalty under EPCRA Section 325(c)(1) at the time of this enforcement action was $67,544 per day of violation. Gebhart violated reporting requirements to three separate entities (the SERC, the LEPC, and the Huntington Fire Department) for 43 days each. The theoretical maximum exposure for Gebhart Holdings ran into the tens of millions of dollars. The EPA settled for $11,319 (roughly the same as a midrange used car, or about six months of minimum-wage take-home pay in Indiana).

The settlement document notes that the EPA factored in Gebhart’s “ability to pay.” That language, standard in corporate environmental enforcement, functionally means that the richer and larger the company, the more a regulator considers their financial comfort before setting a fine. The penalty was not calibrated to the risk imposed on the community. It was calibrated to how much Gebhart Holdings could be expected to absorb without discomfort. That is a different calculation entirely, and it is one that ordinary people never benefit from when they appear in court.

The gap between what Gebhart Holdings paid and what the law authorized is staggering. The maximum penalty for a single reporting entity (SERC, LEPC, or fire department) at $67,544 per day for 43 days totals roughly $2.9 million (enough to fully fund a small-town fire department for three years). Across all three required reporting recipients, the theoretical ceiling approaches $8.7 million (enough to put every resident of Huntington County through a full year of community college). Gebhart paid $11,319. The message that sends to every other industrial operator watching is not subtle.

The “Cost of a Life” Metric

Put it plainly: for less than the cost of a used MacBook per day, Gebhart Holdings purchased 43 days of noncompliance with a federal emergency planning law designed to protect firefighters and the public from exactly the kind of industrial chemicals the company was storing. The EPA, in its own penalty determination language, acknowledged it weighed “economic benefit or savings resulting from the violations.” Whatever that economic benefit was, it almost certainly exceeded $11,319 ($263 per day, or the cost of a decent dinner for two).

The penalty is structured so that it functions as a cost of doing business rather than a deterrent. Any company doing the math knows that the risk-adjusted cost of late filing is trivially small compared to whatever internal friction causes the delay. Until penalties scale to actually hurt a company’s bottom line, this enforcement model rewards non-compliance.

What Now: Eyes Open, Action Required

Who Is Involved

The respondent in this case is Gebhart Holdings, Inc., an Indiana corporation, operating through its subsidiary Metal Source LLC, at 1605 Riverfork Drive, Huntington, Indiana. The settlement was finalized by EPA Region 5 and signed by both parties on September 3, 2024.

Watchlist: Who Should Be Watching This

• EPA Region 5 (Superfund and Emergency Management Division): The agency that brought and settled this action. Ask them publicly whether the penalty level meaningfully deters future violations by operators with similar chemical inventories.
• Huntington County LEPC: The local emergency planning committee that was denied this chemical inventory for 43 days. Community members have the right to attend LEPC meetings and demand accountability from industrial operators in their county.
• Indiana State Emergency Response Commission (SERC): The state-level body responsible for coordinating emergency planning. SERC records on Tier II chemical filings are public documents.
• OSHA: Worker safety at a facility handling molten aluminum, silicon dust, and fluoride compounds is a live and ongoing concern independent of this EPCRA action.
• Department of Justice: The settlement agreement explicitly preserves EPA’s right to pursue criminal sanctions. The DOJ can still act.

What You Can Do Right Now

Pull the Tier II data for your county. Every facility above the reporting threshold is required to file annual hazardous chemical inventories. Those records are public. Contact your state SERC or LEPC and request them. Attend your county LEPC meeting. Find out who else is filing late or not at all. Connect with local environmental justice organizations and mutual aid networks who are already tracking industrial hazards in working-class communities. The law gives communities these rights. The companies count on you not using them.