Barrel refurbishing plant closes
Indiana facility run by same owner that runs troubled plants in Milwaukee area
A chemical drum recycling plant that had worker safety issues for years has been shut down by its owner, which also runs three troubled plants in the Milwaukee area.
IndyDrum, in Indianapolis, was "unable to recover from the loss of a major customer and has not been able to provide sustainable returns for quite some time," Debbie Crow, a Greif Inc. spokeswoman said in an email to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel on Tuesday.
Employees were told last week, she said, and the closing was effective immediately. The plant employed fewer than 40 people.
IndyDrum was part of a network of six drum refurbishing plants called Container Life Cycle Management, in four states including three plants here — in St. Francis, Oak
Creek and Milwaukee, which operate as Mid-America Steel Drum.
The joint venture, known as CLCM, is majority owned by Ohio-based Greif, an industrial packaging company. The plants refurbish 55-gallon steel drums and large plastic containers, called totes, cleaning them for reuse or recycling.
The CLCM plants in Wisconsin, Indiana, Arkansas and Tennessee have been the subject of a Journal Sentinel investigation that has documented unsafe working conditions and environmental problems.
Workers at the plants said chemicals were routinely mixed together, triggering dangerous reactions that resulted in chemical and heat-related burns, injuries from
exploding barrels, breathing difficulties and other health problems.
Following the Journal Sentinel investigation in February, five agencies have examined the operations of the Milwaukee-area plants, issuing more than 70 violations and $114,000 in fines so far.
Air testing near the plant in St. Francis by the Journal Sentinel and separately by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency revealed the presence of chemicals commonly used by the plant at levels that constitute a nuisance odor and which may be making people in the neighborhood sick.
The Journal Sentinel's examination of drum recycling plants in other states revealed the industry's record of pollution, fires and noxious smells being discharged over surrounding residential areas.
It is unclear if the work from IndyDrum will be shifted to one of the other facilities.
Much of the IndyDrum plant was heavily damaged in a May 2014 fire caused by spontaneous combustion of chemicals that had been mixed with sawdust used to clean drums.
In 2010, employees at the plant had told a safety inspector that they mixed together “every type of chemical known to man,” and had seen all kinds of reactions such as smoke, crackling, spattering and bubbling of liquids.
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) cited IndyDrum for 23 workplace safety violations, the majority classified as serious. The agency proposed $289,500 in fines but settled for $110,000.
Bobby Johnson worked at IndyDrum for 13 years, first on the docks unloading drums and later on the regrinding line, overseeing large plastic containers as they moved along the conveyor belt through the shredder.
Johnson said on a good day the company would process around 1,000 drums. But work had been slowing down recently, he said. The company had been losing customers, but he didn’t know why.
Last Wednesday morning, the company broke the news.
“They called everybody in the conference room and said as of today, we are closing the door,” he said.
Records obtained by the Journal Sentinel show Johnson had suffered a chemical splash to his face in 2013 after pressure had built up in a drum.
Johnson had removed the drum’s bung, which is like a cap, and car wash polish erupted on the left side of his face, according to the incident report.
Johnson, 56, said Tuesday he didn’t recall the episode and that he didn’t have any problems working for the company.
“It wasn’t a bad job,” he said.
He said he’s upset to be out of work and is now looking hard for new employment.
Good-paying jobs aren’t easy to find in that part of the city, said Zach Adamson, an Indianapolis city councilman.
The plant closure was tied to a consolidation of CLCM's operations, Crow said. She did not name the customer that IndyDrum lost or say more about why the customer pulled out.
“CLCM is still determining where production from this facility will be redirected. An announcement of this kind is difficult, but it is especially challenging during this time of year. CLCM will work to minimize the impact to employees,” she said.
In October, U.S. Sens. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) and Joe Donnelly (D-Ind.) sent a letter to the heads of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration, urging them to expand their probes into the drum refurbishing plants as the U.S. Department of Transportation already had done.
DOT investigators are examining operations and safety at 13 facilities in nine states.
John Diedrich of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel staff contributed to this report.