Page 227 - Peterson 85 Years and Going Strong

14
EMISSIONS: EARTHMOVING TACKLING THE EMISSIONS ISSUE
It was late on a Tuesday afternoon in June 1985. Most people had left work for the day. Marketing as- sistant Eileen Grafton was sitting in her office in San Leandro finishing up an article for the company newspaper when a familiar face popped around the corner.
“Torey? Torey Baker, is that you? What are you doing here?” She hadn’t seen Torey since high school.
“I’m looking for someone to speak with,” she said a bit formally, standing there in her US Coast Guard uni- form. “We’ve been looking for the source of an oil leak out into the bay and today we traced it back to here.”
Uh-oh.
That was Peterson’s entrance into the world of environmental regulations and proactivity. Over the next few days, Peterson officials traced it back to a wash-rack pond. “In the old days, every heavy equipment yard had a sump pond. Customers would bring in their equipment for repair, and the first thing we would do is wash their machine,” says Bill Doyle, Peterson’s second-generation owner (1977–95). “The wash rack and collection pond were part of the normal routine of doing business in our industry.” But not anymore.
Since then, every heavy equipment owner in the state has had to change the way they maintain their equip- ment and adapt to a laundry list of EPA regulations. Field techs now carry cleanup kits to ensure they leave no drop behind. Every service truck has an oil reservoir to haul away the old oil. Shops now use non-chlo- rinated and low volatile organic compounds or water-based detergents instead of solvents to clean parts and equipment and swab up shop spills. And customers pay a hazardous waste surcharge on every repair job for the disposal of oil and oil-contaminated consumables like filters. Long gone are Peterson’s old wash racks
225