Portland, Ore.-The battle lines are already forming for the trial of D.B. Western of North Bend, a big user of urea for producing formaldehyde and formaldehyde resin for industrial applications, and its president and owner, Dennis Carter Beetham, on state and federal charges of illegally dumping hundreds of tons of industrial waste. One state regulator described the hazardous waste case as “one of the most serious we’ve seen in Oregon.” In a U.S. district court arraignment earlier this month, Beetham pleaded not guilty to the charges that he and his company unlawfully mishandled several hazardous wastes, dumping hazardous polymerized liquid formaldehyde and nitric acid into a cinder cone on a ranch Beetham owned in Powell Butte, Ore., and storing hazardous polymerized liquid formaldehyde waste at the ranch. Beetham’s Portland attorney, Janet Hoffman, promised the case would be “hard fought” and “complex,” claiming that “there are multiple scientific issues in the case as well as substantial credibility issues.” She said the company has sued regulators, accusing them of changing the test method to reclassify some of the waste as hazardous. Leah Koss, interim manager of the Oregon DEQ’s office of compliance and enforcement, told Green Markets that the later test was an improvement for determining hazardous elements and was used on only about 5 percent of the waste. “So it’s really not even relevant,” she insisted. “There is no argument to be made that they wouldn’t have had hazardous waste out there if there had been a different test method used.”
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