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State Sen. Jeff Wilson, R-Longview, said Tuesday he will introduce a bill in the Legislature’s January session to put above-ground chemical storage tanks at Washington paper mills under state inspection for the first time — the first legislative response to the tank collapse that killed 11 workers at the Nippon Dynawave Packaging mill here on May 26, according to a report by Oregon Public Broadcasting.
Wilson, who represents the 19th Legislative District and also sits as a Port of Longview commissioner, told OPB that above-ground tanks like the one that failed are currently regulated by no state agency at all. Companies inspect and certify their own equipment. His proposal would hand that authority to a state agency — he named the Department of Ecology as a candidate — with power to inspect and certify the tanks and to fine companies up to $5,000 a day for failing to keep them safe.
The gap Wilson wants to close is not disputed. Reporting by KIRO 7 in the days after the collapse found that the mill’s white-liquor tanks had never been inspected by any state or federal regulator before the failure. Washington’s building and boiler-safety codes do not reach process vessels of that kind, and OSHA’s process-safety rules cover only a narrower list of highly hazardous chemicals that does not include the caustic white liquor used in Kraft pulping.
The tank that failed, known at the mill as the G tank, held roughly 1.2 million gallons of white liquor, the caustic cooking chemical used to break down wood chips into pulp. It ruptured at 7:09 a.m. on May 26, releasing hundreds of thousands of gallons across the mill site in a matter of seconds. Eleven workers died and eight more were injured, making it one of the deadliest industrial accidents in Washington state history.
The human cost is still moving through Cowlitz County Superior Court. Mackenzie Ammons, the widow of 33-year-old electrician Jared Ammons, filed a wrongful-death suit against Nippon Dynawave on Sept. 9 alleging the company ran the tank on a “run-to-failure” basis despite three separate warnings between July 2025 and February 2026 that its walls were corroded well below minimum safe thickness. Her suit followed an earlier wrongful-death claim filed in August on behalf of two brothers also killed in the collapse. Neither case has specified a dollar figure in damages; both remain pending.
Regulators have separately found fault with the company’s maintenance record. The state Department of Ecology issued initial determinations on Aug. 26 citing Nippon Dynawave for 35 environmental violations connected to the collapse and gave the company 30 days to respond before any penalty is set — a process that, under state law, can carry fines of up to $10,000 per violation per day. Separate reporting has tallied more than 50 Ecology violation notices at the Longview site going back to 2016, a record that has fed skepticism in Longview about whether self-certification of aging industrial infrastructure was ever adequate.
Wilson’s bill will not be heard until the Legislature convenes in January, and Tuesday’s announcement is a proposal, not filed legislation — Wilson has not yet released bill text, a lead House sponsor, or an estimate of how many tanks statewide would fall under the new inspection regime. Cowlitz County’s economy runs on mills like this one; any new inspection and certification regime will land first on employers here, and on a county government and Port of Longview board that Wilson himself sits on. He has not said whether the port authority took a position on the proposal before he announced it.
The mill has continued to push back on the federal investigation into the collapse, telling news outlets in September that a U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board interim finding — that the tank had been “unfit for service” for roughly 10 months before it failed — left out key facts about the company’s maintenance response. Nippon Dynawave has not said whether it supports or opposes Wilson’s proposed inspection mandate.
What happens next in Olympia is only one track. The CSB’s final investigation report, county and state enforcement actions against the mill, and the Ammons and earlier wrongful-death suits in Cowlitz County Superior Court are all still open. For a county whose paper mills have anchored its economy and its skyline for a century, the question raised by a state senator who is also a port commissioner is whether Olympia — not the companies themselves — should decide when an aging tank is safe to keep running.
Sources: Oregon Public Broadcasting, Washington State Department of Ecology, KIRO 7, KPTV
