Bills To Outlaw `Backhauling' Make Progress -- Food Contaminated During Shipment Alarms Lawmakers

OLYMPIA - The inspector told one horror story after another.

Flour hauled in boxcars had been contaminated with diesel oil during transport because fuel spilled from a previous shipment had not been cleaned properly.

A million dollars' worth of cattle died of poisoning after a car that hauled arsenic to a Tacoma smelter was subsequently loaded with grain used to make dairy feed.

Alden Fitch, a Spokane-based investigator for the state Department of Agriculture, last year told Congress of these and other incidents of contamination. Both Congress and the Legislature decided to take action.

Now the two levels of government are working on bills that would forbid trucks, trains and ships from hauling chemicals one way and then turning around to haul food the other.

What has surprised many is the fact that the activity - termed ``backhauling'' - isn't already illegal.

The state has taken immediate action: House Bill 2270 to forbid backhauling stands ready to be voted on, and Senate Bill 6164 passed the Senate last week.

The House bill, sponsored by Rep. Michael Heavey, D-Seattle, would put stringent limits on vehicles that haul food. It would require that tanks display a ``food only'' label for carrying edible products. If food-transportation companies want to haul permissible nonfood products, such as sawdust, back to back with food, they would have to seek a ``food compatible'' label from the state.

Controversy arose over backhauling after the Seattle Post-Intelligencer published the story of two Yakima truckers who had refused to backhaul chemicals and were fired.

Rikki Pomerenke and her husband, Jim, drove food trucks for Premium Transport in Yakima for about two years until they were fired for bringing the truck back empty instead of alternating a food load with a chemical one.

``This time we just decided we weren't going to do it any more,'' Rikki Pomerenke said. They had complained repeatedly to their boss in Yakima, but were told to backhaul chemicals. Their boss, James Ketchum, refused to comment about the incident.

Clara Stoehr of the state Department of Agriculture, who investigated Premium Trucking, said she could not determine if contamination had occurred because trucks making deliveries ``could not be located.'' However, she said, she had ``documentation that they were backhauling food with chemicals.''

The Pomerenkes, along with Fitch, the state Department of Agriculture investigator, were among several who testified at the House Energy and Commerce Committee in Washington, D.C., last year. The testimony spurred legislation at the federal level and now three bills to prohibit the practice are moving rapidly through Congress.

State lawmakers also saw fit to propose legislation here.

Heavey said his bill is especially strict because it contains a ``death sentence'' - once a vehicle carries chemicals, it may ``never, ever carry food again.''

Martin Sangster of the Washington Trucking Association said his group supports the legislation. He said backhauling was a travesty but something that only a small percentage of companies had practiced.

Yet Rikki Pomerenke contends that backhauling is quite common. ``We keep telling people our company wasn't the only one that was doing it,'' she said.

To date, there are no known reports of human death or illness caused by contamination from backhauling.