Engineer says root problem behind Ferndale propane tank isn’t the tank — it’s a patchwork of regulations

Published 1:30 am Friday, July 10, 2026

Wendy Hiester, a retired chemical engineer, Orcas Island resident and former engineering superintendent at the BP Cherry Point Refinery, said in an interview with the Islands’ Sounder that the real issue behind the aging propane storage tank at the AltaGas Cherry Point terminal is not the tank itself, but a gap in Washington state’s regulatory system that allows facilities handling refinery-scale volumes of hazardous chemicals to escape the oversight refineries receive.

“For me, the bigger thing is, the regulations and why aren’t these regulations applying to the terminal?” Hiester said. Asked what she wanted readers to take from her reporting, she returned to the same point: “It’s like for me, the big thing is regulatory wise. Why isn’t this being solved?”

Hiester first raised concerns about Tank T1, a single-walled tank built in 1977 to store butane and later converted to hold refrigerated propane, in a July 2 opinion piece she wrote for the Seattle Times. In the interview with the Islands’ Sounder, she said the terminal’s accident risk is tied less to any single design flaw than to the fact that the facility falls outside WAC 296-67, the Washington Administrative Code section governing process safety at the state’s oil refineries.

“So that WAC 296-67 does not apply to the terminal, even though it’s handling propane and butane, which — a lot of which come from the nearby refineries — are extremely, just as hazardous as they would be in the refineries,” Hiester said. She said the terminal’s throughput, which AltaGas has stated at up to 48 ship loads a year, or roughly 72,000 barrels a day, puts it “in the same capacity range as the refinery” — yet it is not subject to the refinery rule’s requirements, including its mandate to evaluate inherently safer design and technology.

Hiester said she intends to raise the issue with lawmakers: “That, for me, is an area that I personally plan to try and work on with our state representatives. I’m planning to write them some letters about this.”

Hiester said this regulatory pattern extends beyond the AltaGas terminal. Asked about the Nippon Dynawave Packaging facility in Longview, Washington, she said: “The Nippon paper plant was basically a gap where that tank wasn’t covered under regulations that would have governed it in other situations, because we have a patchwork of regulations.”

Hiester said that gap was compounded by a lack of technical capacity locally. She said Whatcom County, a party to a hearing before the county hearing examiner earlier this year over 31 unpermitted projects at the terminal, told the hearing it has no chemical engineers on staff and none under contract. “They don’t have any professionals on their staff or are contracted to provide a proper review and oversight of this terminal.” She said the hearing examiner’s findings concluded “the county did not use their discretion,” meaning officials did not seek out qualified experts to review the projects.

Sworn testimony filed in the same proceeding by retired chemical engineer Charles A. Brown supports several of Hiester’s points.

Brown, a Washington-licensed chemical engineer with a background in air permitting and pollution control design for Radian, VECO and BP, testified that Tank T1 was refilled with propane after regulators approved only a butane refill. According to his testimony, the Northwest Clean Air Agency, or NWCAA, “issued an Order of Approval to Construct (AOC) 1196 as a temporary permit to allow emptying T1 for inspection and refilling with butane,” but “the tank was refilled with propane.” Brown testified that this 2015 change “was the first modification in a comprehensive major project that changed the purpose and useful life of the terminal with significant impacts over the next several years.”

Hiester was careful to distinguish her concern from a prediction of catastrophe. “This amount of risk is what it’s called, right? Because risk is a combination of probability and consequence. So it’s a low probability, high consequence event,” she said. She also cautioned against dramatizing her account: “I don’t want this to be too inflammatory. I just want to be very, very factual and to the point.”

Asked directly what she hoped this particular story would convey, Hiester returned again to the regulatory question rather than the terminal itself: “For me, that’s the bigger issue—rather than trying to make some big story out of it. The real question, for me, is regulatory: why isn’t this being solved?”

AltaGas is appealing the hearing examiner’s order requiring the county to redo its review.