Tyree Oil of Portland pays $87K penalty for Clean Water Act violations
SEATTLE (January 16, 2025) -- The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced today that Tyree Oil, an Oregon-based petroleum distribution and storage company, has paid an $87,700 Clean Water Act penalty for systemic failures to adequately maintain its Portland facility and to maintain and implement an adequate plan to prevent or respond to possible releases of oil at the facility, which closed in early 2024.
During an inspection in October 2021 EPA inspectors found extensive violations of the Clean Water Act’s Spill Prevention Control and Countermeasure regulations which require facilities like Tyree Oil to prepare and implement a plan to protect local waterways and shorelines from the discharge of oil. The facility’s sewer lines were connected to the City of Portland’s stormwater system which eventually discharges into the Columbia River.
The EPA inspectors found that the facility’s SPCC plan was inadequate and that the company failed to implement important parts of the plan that could prevent releases of oil. The agency cited the company for 13 counts of violating the Clean Water Act, among them:
- failure to ensure that the facility’s diagrams match the actual facility layout;
- failure to maintain adequate secondary containment in the event of a spill;
- failure to have inspection records for oil-water separators used as spill prevention equipment at the facility; and
- failure of the facility’s plan to include routine periodic leak testing procedures for underground oil piping.
At the time of the inspection, EPA apprised Tyree representatives of the deficiencies in the facility’s SPCC plan and its implementation. In June 2022 Tyree updated its SPCC plan to address comments made by EPA during the inspection.