Fish-farm firm accused of violating pesticide law

By Craig Welch
Seattle Times staff reporter

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The Environmental Protection Agency is seeking up to $1.7 million in civil fines against Redmond's Argent Chemical Laboratories, which manufactures and sells products for fish-farming operations around the world.

In one of the largest cases of its kind, the EPA says that, between 1999 and this year, the company made hundreds of sales of unregistered chemicals for use in rivers and streams, sold chemicals without proper warning labels and sold particularly hazardous chemicals to people not legally trained to use them.

One of those pesticides — rotenone, commonly used to eliminate unwanted fish — can be fatal if swallowed or inhaled, and can kill every form of life in a waterway if used improperly. Sales of rotenone are restricted by law to certified applicators.

But EPA officials said they tracked sales by Argent to uncertified homeowners on Bainbridge Island, in Seattle and in Miami. Another 55-pound bag was shipped, unlabeled, to a resort in Hawaii, where testing revealed rotenone concentrations 30 percent higher than the purchaser expected.

"This is a serious case," said Richard Parkin, acting manager of EPA's pesticides unit. "We have a repeat violator, now again out of compliance. What's going on here is egregious."

It marks the third time since the late 1980s that the EPA has accused Argent of mishandling pesticides.

In 1988, the company was fined $70,000 and faced criminal charges for lying to the EPA and the federal Food and Drug Administration. Its two executive officers, Eliot Lieberman and Beatriz Shanahan, were charged individually in the case.

Shanahan was fined $10,000. Lieberman was fined $20,000 and spent 60 days in a work release program — one of the stiffest penalties ever in a pesticide case. In 1994, Argent again agreed to a $50,000 civil fine to settle another 21 federal pesticide violations.

Lieberman is out of the country on business, and telephone calls to Shanahan's home and office yesterday were not returned. Attorney Larry Finegold, who represented Argent in previous cases, said he couldn't comment until he had thoroughly read the 42-page complaint, but added, "It's an industry highly regulated by the EPA and FDA, and it can be easy to run afoul of them."

EPA and FDA are responsible for ensuring that pesticide manufacturing and distribution are tracked and regulated so consumers are aware of the environmental and health risks. In 1998, Argent sent EPA a letter saying the company no longer was manufacturing pesticides, which meant the company no longer had to submit annual reports to the government outlining what it was producing.
 
But after inspections in 1999 by the Washington state Department of Agriculture and the state Department of Ecology, regulators began tracking Argent's advertising and shipments.

The agency contends Argent unlawfully resumed manufacturing some products, and repackaged others.

For example, Argent received bulk amounts of a copper-based herbicide designed to kill algae in ponds and fish hatcheries, and shipped it in small amounts to Ecuador, Mexico, Germany and parts of the U.S., EPA officials argued in their complaint. But Argent's packages left off warning labels that said anyone applying the product should wear a respirator, and that high concentrations can kill crops, grass and trout. Also, some labels urging caution were printed only in English, the EPA said.

Argent has 30 days to respond to the accusations.

Craig Welch: 206-464-2093 or cwelch@seattletimes.com