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Spooner company Cortec asks for more compliance time from OSHA
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Story posted Wednesday at 2:16 p.m. 12/17/2008 |
A Spooner company that was fined $250,000 for an explosion that severely injured two workers last spring is asking OSHA for more time to come into compliance. Rich Kremer reports.
Cortec Spray Technologies wants OSHA…the Occupational Safety and Health Administration…to give them another month to address a list of 14 serious workplace violations. The violations range from improper storage of flammable chemicals to a lack of formal employee training. Cortec Chief Operating Officer Anna Vignetti says the company has been working to address the violations.
“We’ve got more than a third done now but we will ask for an extension because our start up and production is not going to start as soon as we thought. So some of the abatements that we have to do are predicated on being able to start up and train and go through procedures.”
Aside from upgrading chemical mixing and storage facilities and spending thousands of dollars on explosion-proof tools, Vignetti says Cortec has hired an engineering firm to guide the abatement process.
“We’ve gone the long mile to make sure that we’ve done it correctly where before we had a safety consultant come in and say, ‘yeah that looks good’ and ‘boy we’re really impressed’. Actually this time we hired an engineer that is responsible, putting his name on the dotted line and making sure that is correct.”
Vignetti admits the incident and process has been costly for the Cortec Corporation but says it’s worth it to keep her employees safe.
“We don’t want to go backwards. We’re going to learn from what happened here and pray that nothing like that ever happens again. It’s not about us, of course we don’t want this to happen again as a company but it’s about the people and our human assets.”
Cortec Spray Technologies now has till the end of January to present OSHA with its results.
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