Despite Boeing's attempts to portray itself to the public and the media as an agreeable, cooperative company, it has a history of knocking heads with regulators over environmental violations, fines and other sanctions.

Privately, government regulators characterize Boeing as one of the more combative, stubborn companies with which they deal. Environmental fines and violations, regulators say, are met with surprising defensiveness, though none contacted by the Free Press were willing to discuss Boeing's corporate personality on the record.

Appeals of fines and violations have been dragged out for months and years at a time, sometimes for as little as $40,000 - about what the Boeing Co. earns every 14 minutes. And while no company would admit doing something wrong that it actually didn't do, Boeing has a history of denying misdeeds for which it previously had accepted responsibility. In other cases, the company has been granted face-saving "official" innocence for environmental missteps that it "unofficially" had admitted committing.

Nearly every government regulator contacted by the Free Press said they felt uncomfortable discussing these behavioral patterns. Only one, who asked not to be identified, would go as far as to say that Boeing's corporate behavior "is interesting." Some said privately that Boeing officials have a history of getting miffed when details of their regulatory battles manage to reach the public.

The public record and the private sentiments of regulators tell a different story than the one told by Boeing environmental affairs director Kirk Thomson: "If we've made a mistake, we are the first to admit it."

According to government officials and records, Boeing:

• Continues to deny any responsibility for contamination of the Duwamish River, despite the discovery of waste in the waterway commonly discharged from Boeing facilities near the river.

• Continues to deny any responsibility for the presence of trichloroethylene (TCE) in drinking water wells in Moses Lake, despite the fact that Boeing once dumped the carcinogenic solvent near the wells onto the bare ground. The Environmental Protection Agency says Boeing is a long way from proving its innocence. Said one EPA official, "If Boeing dumped (TCE) out there, they probably will be liable for the cleanup." The city of Moses Lake has spent $2.5-$3.5 million as a result of the contamination and must drill new wells. The area is a federal Superfund site.

• Continues to deny any responsibility for contamination of the shut-down Midway landfill in Kent, despite the fact that Boeing used to dump spray-paint sludge from its Auburn plant at the landfill. Drifting toxics fumes from the landfill forced several families living nearby to be evacuated in 1985. A lengthy federal court fight over paying cleanup costs is underway. (See main story.)

• Succeeded in avoiding an "official admission of guilt" stemming from the EPA's record-setting $334,325 fine for the mishandling of toxic waste at Boeing's Everett plant. The fine was reduced from $620,475.

• Vehemently denied that it had been warned about contamination at the Western Processing and Queen City Farms waste sites in south King County, despite the sworn testimony to the contrary at the 1990 trial between Boeing and its insurers. Trial participants said that Boeing was warned at least 16 times over 30 years that the dumping may cause contamination and may have been illegal. Thomson told the Free Press that the sites represented the "state of the art" of hazardous waste handling when they were in operation from the 1950s to when the EPA shut them down in the early 1980s.

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Contents on this page were published in the April, 1993 edition of the Washington Free Press.
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