No Backsies (and Dear Heidi)
- Mark Lipton
- Apr 29
- 3 min read
The Sherwin-Williams manufacturing facility in Rochester, Pennsylvania continues to make paint illegally, doing grave harm to the people and planet there. With little regard for the impacts of their actions beyond growing their own earnings, which Sherwin announced were up in the first quarter of this year.
A callousness even I did not believe Sherwin-Williams could possess.
Because the effects of Sherwin’s illegalities there are evident prima facie, Monty that means it’s fucking everywhere. Most notably in the health outcomes in this town of just 6,000, where each day for the last two-weeks I have been introduced to another resident of Rochester suffering with cancer or some other grave health effect which are known side effects of the neurotoxins Sherwin vents there. And dumps, because Sherwin takes their promise to cover the earth seriously.
But Sherwin-Williams CEO Heidi Petz says it’s all cool, the company made more money last quarter than it did the same quarter the year before. And there’s no line for counting victims on a balance sheet. At least not until she needs to add $50,000,000 to the expense line for legal defense, a retainer which will need to be refilled before this case is exhausted. Plus, a line for victim remuneration and the expenses to repair this plant, and five others equally dangerous, at-least according to the EPA.
Last week I learned the worst part of this story, news which left me retching, hoping the purge would exorcise Heidi’s foulness from my being. Recovering, I decided instead to tell the story here, though I will need more time to develop it. Though once I do, Google knows my intentions.
On Monday I dropped a new podcast mini-series with guest Kim Reinbold of Cloverdale Paint, Canada’s largest home-grown coatings manufacturer. Kim and I recorded one marathon call stretching more than two hours, the best hour of which became the three-part series.
All three episodes are up on my YouTube channel, Soundcloud and my own site, and I’ve noticed that some of you have already binged the series, a sentiment I can appreciate having spent that time with Kim. Like so many here her story is of a life spent in paint, I’ll leave it to Kim to tell the rest. While she did we discussed the Canadian paint market, the impact of tariffs and the 51st state fiasco, slogging for a corporation versus working for a family-owned business and working as a woman in an all man’s world. Which until the last decade or so of Kim’s three-decade career is what paint was.
But while the industry remains dominated by men, women now fill every role: dealers, vendors, store and corporate employees and even the CEO of the largest paint manufacturer. Lady paint geeks who Kim wants to reach, so if you are one and would like to be a guest on a podcast Kim is considering, reach out to her here.
Dear Heidi
I don’t know why you moved several truckloads of Methyl Methacrylate from your plant in Rochester to the Engineered Polymer location in Williamsport, where such volumes of that toxin are so anomalous employees there noticed the tankers. And I guess they trust me more than they trust you. Wise considering the conditions in Rochester, which I find to be analogous to those in Garland on August 6th in 2023, the day before that plant exploded.
There are other unknowns I plan to make known, so you can never deny your complicity when accountability comes, which I believe will happen soon. If not by my words then by the outcome of these circumstances, at which time both Sherwin-Williams and Pennsylvania DEP will have even more questions to answer.
But before DEP answers my second question—how was this allowed to go on for so long—they’ll have to answer my first, which to this point they’ve been unwilling to do. Likely because the question itself precipitates a paradox which requires they enforce the law before replying, or answer for why they refuse to. Putting their own standing at risk—something I doubt they will do just so you can get richer.
Leaving me confident that once they get around to it, this one will be easy.
