Covering the Earth

On January 30, 2026, the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection issued Sherwin-Williams a series of violations for illegal operations at their Rochester plant. Since learning that I've uncovered even more truths about that plant, which I intend to share with you each day this week.

A deposit on the years it will require to make a full accounting of what in the end, will be paint’s largest environmental disaster sans lead.  A criminal act perpetrated by intent or negligence creating a plume of contamination unsafe for human life, though 6,000 still live there. In circumstances so dire that since discovering them, I've committed all of my hours to bring them to an end.  

What we know from public document search is that since 2022 Sherwin-Williams has been venting unreacted Per- and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances on the people of Rochester, PFAS and other neurotoxins CEO Heidi Petz doesn't want to pay to dispose of legally. Plus, it's easier to shit it on the poor people.

A package coatings plant like the one which exploded in Garland in August of 2023, Rochester handles some of earth’s nastiest chemicals.  And they do it in, “A manner inconsistent with good operating practices,” according to the DEP.  The violations in January were for failing to contain, managing or dispose of these chemicals, which are found plentifully in the homes and atmosphere around that site.  

One of the violations was for failing to install a thermal oxidizer, a device which destroys Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) before exiting the plant.  Evidence shows that Sherwin has not operated a thermal ox here for at-least four years, though a reply to my Right to Know requests seems likely to prove it’s been without one for longer.  Perhaps as many as nine-years.  With each hour since then its own crime, according to Pennsylvania’s Air Pollution Control Act. 

DEP also cited Sherwin for failing to test their scrubbers, which stops regulators from determining just how much waste they’re venting, in breach of 25 Pa. Code § 139.11.  The first clue of a criminal conspiracy, though that’s for the Pennsylvania Attorney General to determine.  Which considering the circumstances here, has some probability.    

If the scrubbers are not working the plant’s solid waste, an unreacted resin sludge known as Particulate Matter, is also being sent up untreated the stack.  Like a giant leaf blower covering the earth around Rochester in a poison of microplastics, which will lay in wait forever for their opportunity to enter and poison a human body. 

Sherwin-Williams is required to perform "stack testing" every five years, further explaining my intuition that there has been no thermal ox for longer than four years.  An obfuscation which seems to point to the smoking gun, or in this case stack.  Suggesting that Sherwin has been poisoning Rochester far longer than four years. 

If it ever was!  Because in March of 2012 the plant was hit with a flurry of violations, including failures to inspect and properly maintain records.  Most concerning though were the failures of design: tanks lacking the necessary emergency valves with improperly connected lines, in direct breach of performance and design standards according to 25 Pa. Code § 245.612.  A search for permits to cure these failures has failed to identify any efforts to cure these flaws.    

Tomorrow I’ll detail the chemicals released, with Wednesday reserved to discuss their side effects, which include shortness of breath, eye and skin irritations, diseases of the liver and kidney and tumors.  Thursday you’ll meet the people of Rochester, who are suffering these afflictions.  What I post for Friday, will depend on what Sherwin has to say between now and then.

That should give my investigators enough time to gather this same detail on the Sherwin package coatings plant in Vance, Alabama.  Which sources whisper is in similar condition to Rochester.

And Then?

I’ve promised victims that my coverage will continue until the PFAS of Sherwin’s depredation, have been removed from their ground or my ashes are spread over them.  As this journey begins it’s unclear where it will lead or the content it will cause me to create, though I’m working on both those things now.  Much of my investigation to date will be released in upcoming content, though before I get to that there are two other stories I expect to be covering, the first being the closing of Rochester and any plant Sherwin has which does not have an operating thermal ox. 

Which I’m expecting within hours of this post.

After that I’ll need time to cover the “resignation” of Sherwin-Williams CEO Heidi Petz, who likely read the first paragraph and went to clean out her desk.  Because there can be no recovery from this malefaction; and she lacks the competency to do so, even if Sherwin’s board gives her the time. 

Which I’m betting they will not.