Private and public failings leave toxic stench in SheridanLate last month, one of North America’s largest treated-wood producers pleaded guilty in Yamhill County Circuit Court to 10 misdemeanor counts of unlawful water pollution, based on a legacy of toxic emissions on a plant site upstream from a South Yamhill intake supplying drinking water in Sheridan. But outside of the nine-year copper naphthenate interlude, Taylor, Pacific and Stella-Jones established a lengthy record of repeated toxic waste violations. Canadian-based Stella-Jones has been phasing out PCP in favor of diesel oil infused with 3% dichlorooctylisothiazolinone, known as DCOIT. But DCOIT is not particularly environmentally friendly either, and has been the subject of damaging local spills in its own right. Let’s leave the old “need to know” standard to the CIA, where it actually makes sense.