St. Charles Redmond fined for storage tank violations | Redmond News | centraloregondaily.com

Oct 26, 2024

St. Charles Health System in Redmond, Ore.

The Oregon Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) has fined St. Charles Health System $13,363 for violations of the underground storage tank at its Redmond facility.

In a letter to St. Charles, DEQ said it documented several violations during an Aug. 3, 2023 inspection. Among them:

“DEQ issued this penalty because having proper release detection equipment installed and performing testing of spill prevention and overfill prevention equipment is important to ensure that releases are discovered quickly before contamination spreads beyond the immediate area of the USTs and allows immediate response to any sign of a release. If a leak goes unnoticed due to unmaintained release detection equipment, the leaking fuel can have lasting harmful effects on the environment or human health,” the letter reads.

A St. Charles spokesperson issued this response:

“We believed we were in compliance with leak testing requirements that went into effect in 2020 and have had no leaks or environmental impact to date. When we were notified in 2024 that we were not in compliance with the new DEQ testing standards, we began actively working with the DEQ on a solution to ensure we meet compliance going forward.”

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