ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, March 1, 1996 TAG: 9603010064
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: CATHRYN McCUE STAFF WRITER
MEMO: ***CORRECTION***
Published correction ran on March 2, 1996.
The name of Yokohama Tire Corp. was incorrect in a story Friday about
its Salem plant.
YOKOHAMA IS DOING much better, but, every now and then, its carbon black blankets, and blackens, the neighborhood.
Paul Harvey wasn't allowed to come inside his Highland Road home for a few days in January. He was too covered with soot.
With so much fur and four paws, the dog, which takes its name from the famed radio commentator, tracks the black dust all over its owner's rugs and floors.
"It's greasy, oily-like," Frances Vaughan said. "Once it gets in, it's in to stay."
Vaughan's home is not far from the Yokohama Rubber Corp. plant, which uses carbon black as a raw material to make tires.
One Sunday several weeks ago, the plant's air pollution control equipment malfunctioned, and the powder-fine dust filtered down over the Salem neighborhood.
"I call it a fallout. This is a really big one," Vaughan said. For the 27 years she has lived here, Vaughan has put up with the dust, scrubbing it from her patio furniture, repainting her walls, washing her floors and frequently bathing her two dogs.
It used to be a constant problem, she said, but it's gotten better over the past few years - except for an occasional fallout.
Sanat Bhavsar, director for environment, health and safety at the plant, said that, on Jan. 28, one of the hundreds of specially designed bags that trap pollution collapsed. The dust spewed onto the roof, and the wind carried it over the adjacent neighborhood.
Bhavsar made several visits to the neighborhood and saw how the carbon black coated yards, decks, windowsills and driveways. The material is not petroleum-based, he said, but it soaks into porous things - including skin - and smears when you try to wipe it away.
In 1990, state regulators responded to several complaints about carbon black. One woman who likes to go barefoot in the summer kept a pan of water and abrasive cleanser to clean the gunk off her feet before going inside. Even a state inspector who had investigated a problem with one of the bags couldn't completely wash the stuff off for several days.
Since then, Yokohama has spent between $5 million and $6 million installing and upgrading pollution control equipment and monitoring programs, spokeswoman Kelly Teenor said. Yokohama turns out about 19,000 tires a day and employs 1,050 workers, she said.
"It's a very clean plant for what they're doing," said Bob Saunders, with the Department of Environmental Quality's Roanoke regional office. "But when they have an accident, it's very noticeable because it sticks." It's also more of a nuisance because the plant is so close to a residential area, he said.
Plant officials followed correct reporting procedures after the episode, Saunders said, and the DEQ did not cite the plant for any violations.
Yokohama's record with the DEQ has been good for the past five years, save for a few warning letters about maintaining pollution control equipment. The company is still working to pay a fine of $278,000 that Mohawk Rubber got in the mid-1980s for installing equipment without a permit. Yokohama bought Mohawk in 1989.
Under a deal worked out with the DEQ, Yokohama has earned back nearly all the money by cutting emissions of another pollutant, volatile organic compounds, Saunders said.
And the DEQ has gotten fewer complaints about carbon black lately, he added.
Yokohama has hired a professional cleaning company to wash patios and other affected areas at about nine houses in the Salem neighborhood, Bhavsar said. The company also has met with the manufacturer of the bag that ruptured, and now has someone check the bags on the weekends, Teenor said. Previously, checks were made only during the workweek.
As of Thursday morning, Vaughan was waiting for the cleaning crew to show up. She still thinks that a tiny bit of carbon black escapes from the plant even when there isn't an accident, because she continues to have to wipe down her white, plastic patio furniture almost every day during the summer.
"I'm going to leave my little table out there and check it," Vaughan said. She figures she'll be calling her industrial neighbor again.
LENGTH: Medium: 87 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: ERIC BRADY/Staff. Residents of Highland Road in Salem -by CNBSonny Vaughan (from left), Lorraine Vaughan, Jim Bean, Frances
Vaughan, Kathleen Musselman, Patsy Bean, Greg White and Lee Beatty -
show what it's like to live near the Yokohama Rubber Corp. plant in
Salem.