Helena Chemical: A company that’s not doing ‘the right thing’

The three-way battle raging in southern New Mexico between the Helena Chemical Company, the New Mexico Environment Department and the community of Mesquite, New Mexico, has heated up again with new reports of a toxic spill.

According to a departmental phone log provided by NMED spokeswoman Marissa Stone Bardino, the latest spill occurred on July 29 at a local farm in Berino, near Mesquite.

The logs says a Helena truck transporting liquid URAN fertilizer to the farm hit a bumpy patch on a dirt road and spilled about 350 gallons on the ground. About 23 cubic yards of earth were excavated and samples were taken for testing.

According to Bardino, the company took its time reporting the incident.

“Helena had 24 hours to report the spill,” she said.  “They reported it at 23 hours and 15 minutes.”

Bardino’s boss, state Environment Department Secretary Ron Curry, confirmed the spill Wednesday and said the state is losing patience with the Tennessee-based company.

After talking to Curry, I’m wondering just how much flagrant disrespect the state will tolerate.

“I’m always concerned when Helena has an accident because we’ve had so many problems dealing with them over the years and they seem so resistant to trying to improve the way they do business,” Curry told me. “They are unique as a company so far as that, in my tenure as secretary, I don’t believe I’ve come across a company that is so unwilling to do the right thing.”

In fact, Curry said, the July 29 spill is the second to occur in the last few weeks.

“There was another one, near their Rincon facility, a few weeks earlier. It’s considerably smaller,” he said.

Add that to the long litany of air-quality and reporting violations the company has had since 2004 — resulting in hundreds of thousands in fines — and the list of grievances is long.

“It’s important that everyone know that we have been attempting to deal with Helena since 2004,” said Curry. “I’ve met with the upper levels of management.  I’ve visited them, they’ve visited me, we’ve made suggestions.  But there just hasn’t been the sort of response coming form the company that indicates that they are trying to be a good corporate citizen.”

Helena spokesman Louis Rodrigue, a vice president in Helena’s southern business unit, said Wednesday that the company has tried to work with the NMED but has concerns about the “science” used to determine the violations. He noted that the company has filed a review of several past violations and also ordered an independent air-quality analysis, Rodrigue said.

“We would like a better relationship with the NMED. What we do is important to jobs in New Mexico and to the economy of New Mexico. We are an important cog in that whole farm economy. It is important that companies like Helena can continue to do business here,” he said.

Rodrigue said Helena has millions of dollars of sales in New Mexico, selling to a wide variety of clientele, including farmers, ranchers, municipalities and “anywhere where people are growing food, fiber and nuts, or producing hay for dairies.”

In New Mexico, Helena employs roughly 45 people, he said.

Helena bought the facility from a local resident in the late 1980s and made it part of their Tennessee-based company.

“We do not make fertilizer,” Rodrique said. “Potash is shipped in by rail and truck and we distribute it.  We receive chemicals that are packaged and shipped out in containers to customers (and) also have Roundup in bulk that we put into smaller packages and redistribute to customers.”

Curry said he is aware that Helena has an economic impact in New Mexico, but said that has no bearing on how they are regulated and their responsibility to comply.

“We don’t consider that when we make decisions about whether companies are complying with the law. We’re aware there are people employed there and jobs that are created by Helena but we are also aware of the fact that we are charged with protecting the rights of the citizens of New Mexico. There’s a balancing act that has to take place, and it makes it difficult to achieve that balance when you have so many events that have occurred.”

It’s not just Helena’s formal violations that make it such a bad neighbor — it’s the almost cruel way they’ve treated those in the community of Mesquite who’ve sincerely spoken out about what they believe is a danger to their health.

Late last year, a group of residents led by community organizer Arturo Uribe sued the giant company, saying it was responsible for various health problems, particularly among children in the community. In return, the corporation sued Uribe, his wife and his attorney for defamation and slander.  The others have since been dismissed from the suit by a judge, leaving Uribe as the only defendant. However, in connection with the suit, Helena has conducted extremely unpleasant depositions of priests and others at several churches in Mesquite, upsetting many in the community, Uribe says.

But slap suits won’t stop Uribe from talking about Helena.

“It’s hard for me to believe that any any kind of industry or business would have the priviledge to operate in a manner that puts people and the environment at risk,” he said.  “When I look in my front yard, I see saturated dirt. When the wind picks up, I breathe it.”

Curry said Helena has miscalculated badly if it thinks it can make its problems go away by trying to silence Uribe.

“I’ll say this about Arturo,” Curry said. “If Helena makes the mistake of assuming that this is a this is one-man organizing against them or just one group, then they make a huge mistake. This is an entire community that is concerned about the way the Helena deals with the community of Mesquite. Every legislator down there… has taken the position that what the community of Mesquite is trying to do is correct.”

Is Helena so bad for New Mexico that the state no longer even wants the company here?  Curry wouldn’t say. But his comments sure make me wonder what might come next.