OSHA Proposes $68,560 in Penalties Following Worker Being Burned in Scotia Power Plant Last March
![Mill in Scotia releasing smoke. [Photo from Saturday, March 22 provided by a reader]](https://kymkemp.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Smoke-from-Scotia-power-plant.jpg)
Mill in Scotia releasing smoke. [Photo from Saturday, March 22 provided by a reader]
The U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has cited Humboldt Sawmill Company, the operator of the Scotia biomass power plant, following the March 31 explosion that sent a worker to the hospital with burns and other injuries.
According to OSHA’s citation record, five violations were issued — four classified as “serious” and one as “other” — for a total of $68,560 in proposed penalties. The inspection was opened on April 3, 2025, just days after the explosion, and remains officially open as of this month.
OSHA records show the company was cited for violations involving workplace safety procedures, employee participation, hazardous energy control, electrical equipment maintenance, and emergency preparedness. The company has contested the citations as of October 3 however.
The March 31 incident was first reported by Redheaded Blackbelt, in which we described a report over the scanner of a worker suffering first- and second-degree burns to about 10 percent of his body after being engulfed in flames for roughly 20 seconds. He reportedly jumped from a ten-foot catwalk to escape the blaze.
The power plant, which was the subject of a piece in The California Report earlier this year, is located at 108 Main Street in Scotia, and produces electricity from mill byproducts such as bark and wood waste. The facility has operated for decades but has drawn increased scrutiny in recent years over both safety and environmental concerns. The plant has a contract with the Redwood Coast Energy Authority (RCEA) that runs through 2031.
Hat tip to Sage Alexander writing for the Times Standard for first reporting about this.
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Hmm… I suppose Red Head might as well show the plant as it normally operates ??
Lovely picture. I don’t have a copy like that. If you are the photographer and you send me a larger version with permission to use, I promise that I’ll use it on some other story in the future (she says enticingly…you can either get your real name displayed or I can keep you anonymous.) Send to [email protected]
That’s a different view of the power plant. If available, it would be informative to get the date and time of this photo. Thanks for the great news story.
OSHA is another one of the now woke DEI government agencies. Incompetent , impractical, authoritative, corrupt, and unreasonable. If paid will osha get the money? Should it not go to the worker? Was it not the workers fault? All the citations are basic safety procedures. Incompetence and failure are place on the company.
OSHA is not Worker’s Comp. One is regulatory, the other is for the workers benefit..
Yeah, it’s so “woke” for an agency to not allow hazards to workers. Let’s go back to the “good old days” of the Triangle Fire.
There were 14,000 worker fatalities in 1970, the year before OSHA was created. There were 826 in 2024. With the population being much larger today than in 1970.
I kinda feel like I agree with part of what Mr. Clark wrote..I’m not sympathetic to the plant, and 68k is not a huge amount for them to pay, but I’d feel better if the money went towards to victim of the accident or some other compensation fund, or safety improvements. I just don’t feel like the fine protects the workers. I feel like OSHA’s mission is important enough for us to fund as taxpayers, independent of revenue from fines. (And has nothing to do with “woke”, whatever that is) Mandatory improvements for safety considerations ahead of an accident is money better spent. Just because the company is at fault for overlooking a safety issue that proved itself, it doesn’t mean our government agencies always do effective work either. It’s not a partisan issue, other than that any States’ administration may want to check in and see if their agencies are actually doing anything to further the will of the voters, or just dog packing a disaster with 20-20 hindsight.
OSHA has made a sizable difference in safety but how much did it’s regulation making also contribute to sending manufacturing overseas? The same is a question about environmental regulations. The number of jobs where there is a serious risk of injury- manufacturing- dropped a third in the same period.
It is great to regulate for less injury or less pollution but in that case shouldn’t the people making the regulations make sure that it does make America uncompetetive with places that don’t?
So why did the government push for globalization instead? It had become cheaper to import goods from places that weren’t heavily regulated, where wages were lower. But that did little for the environment when, for example, India and China add coal fired electrical plants to get the power to make goods then ship them to the US.
That would have been a good use of tariffs- to add the cost of government regulation imposed on US companies to imported goods too. But just the opposite was done. The fantasy of the US keeping up with places that do not impose burdensome regulation left an economy of poorly paid service jobs and the rise of a gig economy. It’s nice to have cheap goods but not at the cost of Americans no longer being able to afford o a Ning a house because wages have not kept up with costs.
https://www.bls.gov/opub/btn/volume-9/forty-years-of-falling-manufacturing-employment.htm
Woke is sooo overused and incorrectly used, like Karen. Karen was funny at first until every dude started to use it to discredit any female opinion. Show me some original critical thinking skills vs this supreme leader regurgitated cult crap
Original? “this supreme leader regurgitated cult crap”? Seems pretty unoriginal right there.
My opinion
I’m sure nothing but safer work practices can result from these alleged violations. TG, the worker wasn’t more seriously injured.
It’s unfortunate that this man was injured and should be compensated.PALCO, as it once was, was a great company that played such a huge role in shaping Humboldt County’s history and social fabric for over 140 years with its sustainable yield forestry. It was the largest employer in all of Humboldt County. It was also known to not have laid off one employee through the Great Depression, building their own town for its employees, its railroad, which eventually connected Humboldt County to Sanfrancisco. It was a time when Humboldt was looked on as a hard-working county, but it was also known for being taken over by Maxaam, which quit sustainable harvest and started to clear-cut, destroying a great company and in many ways a great county.
It was a hostile takeover. Mike Milken and his junk bonds. The ultimate vulture capitalist. I remember when this happened and was immensely sad because Pacific Lumber was a great company. I was pleased when he was arrested and convicted. Of course Trump pardoned him.
https://www.northcoastjournal.com/letters-opinion/milkens-unpardonable-redwood-felonies-16723085/
You’re talking about Pacific Lumber, aka PL. It was renamed PALCO after the hostile take over in 1985 by Charles Hurwitz. The Murphy family, who owned PL, screwed up by making the company public, selling shares on Wall St. Thats what allowed Hurwitz to snatch it. Sad story.
Did you ever go through mill b when they use to mill the big logs?
It’s ironic how the new owner of Palco, Charles Hurwitz, and some of our current leaders are cut from the same cloth. Hurwitz called a special meeting of the Palco employees and their families at the Scotia Theater after he set up office in Scotia. It was at that meeting that Hurwitz made his all-time cold-hearted statement to his loyal audience: “I believe in the Golden Rule,” he said. “That is, he who owns the gold makes the rules”.
Not much of a penalty to charge the mill with. I think it is actually a joke. No mention of what kind of settlement the burn worker will get, if any.
This isn’t the plants first rodeo with OSHA. Let snot forget the 3 P.L. night employees who died inside the de barking machine some years ago. At that time, OSHA issued a meegar $1500. fine.
Mills are dangerous,as is anything involved in logging industry .The reason PL was not really fined is because it was the employees fault,not the employer.These guys at the hardwood debarker had a jam and they didn” lock it out before they got in there,and the debarker turned on .They don’t know exactly why or how but the one thing OSHA was sure on was they bypassed a safety lock out which cost them big.It’s not always the company’s fault.
P.L.s safety culture, (or lack of) in the past didn’t allow for trivial formalities like locking out and tagging out of equipment when shutdowns happened. Lockout tags/training weren’t even available. Those things wasted time.
I will not cast blame one way or another. Those three workers were star performers with years of experience. It’s not relevant to the powerplant incident anyway and is a closed case.
The platform the worker jumped from was ladder access only at the time of the incident. The ladders have been replaced with stairs for easier access and retreat. This doesn’t resolve that the incident involved conflicting operations between two groups of workers. The injured worker being new to the powerplant, the experienced workers should have been more wary about what they and he were doing to clear the plugged cyclone
They are very lucky they didn’t buy property from unlicensed growers; the fine would have been one million dollars more.
No shit that would be funny if it wasn’t so true!
thank you