OKLAHOMA CITY — A record $6.65 million administrative fine which the executive director of the state Department of Environmental Quality assessed against a Chickasha company that was storing large volumes of hand sanitizer in Grady County where fires erupted last year remains unpaid.
In addition, a hearing before a DEQ administrative law judge on the fine and a compliance order the DEQ issued to Brannan Bordwine and one of the companies he owns, Bordwine Development Inc., has been postponed to an indeterminate date.
Southwest Ledger was previously assured by the agency’s public information officer, Erin Hatfield, that the ALJ’s hearing “will be open to the public” and will be held at the DEQ’s headquarters in Oklahoma City.
Blumen hand sanitizer stored at three sites in Grady County owned or leased by Brannan Bordwine was consumed during three fires in two and a half months last year. Laboratory analysis of the products found at Bordwine’s sites were found to contain ethanol, an alcohol that is a volatile organic compound.
The first fire occurred Aug. 7, 2022, at the former Chickasha Manufacturing location at 5501 S. Fourth Street (U.S. Highway 81 and State Highway 19). Brannan Bordwine “entered into an oral lease” of that property from Blessed Chickasha Collective in June 2022, according to a lawsuit filed in Grady County District Court on Feb. 9, 2023.
Hand sanitizer at the Chickasha Manufacturing site was so volatile that when the fire erupted there, the cast-iron lids on two manholes were blown off and the municipal sanitary sewer briefly caught fire from sanitizer that flowed into the line, state and local fire officials reported.
During the Aug. 7-8 fire, the warehouse and its contents were “a total loss” and flames consumed all hand sanitizer stored at the site, the State Fire Marshal’s office confirmed. The building reportedly encompassed approximately 100,000 square feet of space.
On Aug. 8, DEQ personnel investigated a drainage ditch “in close proximity” to the site; they reported finding dead vegetation for approximately 725 feet and smelling hand sanitizer. The DEQ collected water samples for analysis.
Also that day, personnel with DEQ’s Land Protection Division and from the State Environmental Laboratory Services Division conducted site visits at two of Bordwine’s three storage facilities.
Four days later, on Aug. 11, 2022, firefighters were summoned to extinguish a fire at Bordwine Development’s principal headquarters at 1102 Pikes Peak Road in Chickasha. Bordwine owns that piece of property, records in the Grady County Clerk’s Office show.
According to the DEQ, hand sanitizer dumped into three roll-off containers on the property was incinerated.
DEQ inspectors toured the headquarters site on Aug. 14 and observed 28 “totes” (approximately 8,400 gallons) of hand sanitizer. A tote is an industrial-size plastic tub in which liquids can be transported on railroad cars. DEQ inspectors said they also found 20 to 30 pallets loaded with hand sanitizer.
Two months later, on Oct. 18, 2022, a raging fire destroyed a warehouse Bordwine leased in Ninnekah at 1003 W. Quail Lane, on U.S. Highway 81 south of state Highway 19. Also consumed by flames were an estimated 1,500 to 2,000 pallets of ethanol-laced hand sanitizer stored at the site formerly occupied by H&B Machine & Manufacturing.
DEQ received reports of heavy activity at Bordwine sites
Bordwine Development came to the attention of the DEQ on July 19, 2022. The state agency fielded a complaint that the company was receiving “semi-truck loads of hand sanitizer and dumping” the product on the ground at the former Chickasha Manufacturing building. Brannan Bordwine reportedly was leasing that site.
Two days later the DEQ received a second complaint. This one alleging Bordwine employees were “dumping and burying” several loads of hand sanitizer and recalled hand sanitizer on land less than a mile away in Ninnekah formerly occupied by H&B Machine & Manufacturing. Brannan Bordwine was leasing that site, too.
DEQ investigators said that when they spoke to Bordwine on July 25, 2022, about the Ninnekah site, he “stated they were not dumping and burying hand sanitizer but were recycling pallets, cardboard and plastic.” He also said they were “placing some of the alcohol-based hand sanitizer in a one-half pit barrel and donating large portions of the bottled hand sanitizer to groups, organizations, and people in need.”
During inspections of multiple Bordwine sites in late July, DEQ personnel found pallets of hand sanitizer outside and inside warehouses stacked “two and three pallets high,” loose bottles of hand sanitizer on the ground, and loose cardboard, plastic, and pallets on the ground around the building.
In addition, state inspectors reported, Bordwine employees were using a loader/backhoe to put unpalletized hand sanitizer bottles into an open-top semi-trailer truck, crushing the bottles and removing the crushed plastic into another container “while allowing the liquid hand sanitizer to drain” out of the truck and onto the ground.
They also found an area at the Ninnekah site where a large open pit had been excavated and liquid “was standing in the pit,” along with loose bottles of hand sanitizer plus loose cardboard, plastic, and pallets on the ground around the warehouse.
Bordwine Development “failed to maintain and operate a facility in a manner that minimizes the possibility of a release of hazardous waste to the air, soil, or surface water which could threaten human health or the environment,” Scott Thompson, executive director of the DEQ, wrote in the administrative compliance order he issued on Aug. 22, 2022.
The hand sanitizer originated in China and Mexico “and cannot be shipped back,” Bordwine told the DEQ. He also said he had a contract to store and recycle the sanitizer.
OSBI, Fire Marshal investigated fires
The Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation and the State Fire Marshal’s Office conducted investigations of all three Grady County fires.
The OSBI “did assist in the investigations at the request of Grady County District Attorney Jason Hicks,” Gerald Davidson, special investigator in the OSBI’s Office of Professional Standards and Training, confirmed for the Ledger on March 22. However, the agency’s report on that investigation is confidential “pursuant to state statute,” Davidson said.
No criminal charges associated with those fires has been filed in Grady County, a March 23 Ledger search of Oklahoma State Courts Network records showed.
Authorities have never said whether the origin of any of the fires was determined with any certainty.
The State Fire Marshal’s office reported last year that both fires which occurred in August at Bordwine storage sites in Chickasha “had human involvement, and spontaneous combustion of the product is not being considered as a likely cause.”
The Ledger submitted an Open Records request March 22 by email and via the post office to the State Fire Marshal’s office, asking whether they issued any official report on “the suspected cause” of the Chickasha and Ninnekah fires at Bordwine facilities last year. No response was received before Ledger press time.
The Ledger placed seven telephone calls to the Chickasha fire department – two on Oct. 4 and five on Oct. 12, 2022 – in an attempt to talk to the fire chief and/or the deputy chief. But every call either went to a recorded message or was abruptly disconnected.
Another telephone call was placed to the Chickasha Fire and Emergency Medical Service at 9:35 a.m. March 21, 2023, and a message was left for Fire Chief Tony Samaniego, but he never returned the call.
DEQ filed application for temporary injunction
The DEQ on Nov. 18, 2022, filed an application for a temporary injunction to prevent Bordwine from moving, removing, burning, or otherwise disposing of any hand sanitizer from their current locations in Grady County “without the express, written permission of DEQ.”
The Blumen hand sanitizer is considered hazardous waste/material “for two reasons,” Hatfield told the Ledger. “The first is that the material flashed and is considered hazardous material due to ignitability.” Also, “a good portion of the hand sanitizer is actually recalled material (and not just expired),” Hatfield said. The “FDA states that anything recalled is hazardous waste and must be disposed of properly.”
In his response to the DEQ’s application for a temporary injunction against Bordwine and his properties, Bordwine’s attorney, Peter Scimeca of Oklahoma City, wrote that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency believes an item “must first be a solid waste before it can be a hazardous waste.” A “commercial chemical product is not a solid waste when it is reclaimed.”
Scimeca also wrote that EPA’s “guidance” states that hand sanitizer which is “destined for legitimate recycling” may be stored as a commercial chemical product “without needing a Resource Conservation and Recovery Act storage permit or otherwise being subject to RCRA hazardous waste requirements.”
No action on the DEQ’s application has occurred since Bordwine’s response filed on Dec. 12, 2022.