Orange County is demanding that GKN Aerospace, the company whose Garden Grove facility sparked a chemical crisis that prompted wide evacuations across six cities, pay more than $4 million to cover costs stemming from the emergency.

The multimillion-dollar bill is meant to reimburse the county for costs incurred while dealing with the incident, which forced about 50,000 residents to flee as firefighters warned that a 7,000-gallon volatile chemical tank was at risk of exploding or causing a major spill.

In a letter sent Friday demanding payment, county attorneys called the May 21 incident a “catastrophic failure” of the company’s chemical storage tank cooling system.

“This incident was clearly not an unforeseeable accident as GKN has a well-documented history of regulatory violations at the site dating back over a decade,” states the letter, which was obtained by The Times.

The company, according to county attorneys, faced California Division of Occupational Safety and Health citations and more than $900,000 in fines from the South Coast Air Quality Management District for past offenses.

GKN Aerospace officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment Friday.

In May, a pressurized tank of methyl methacrylate began to fail at the company’s facility in Garden Grove. The chemical inside the tank continued to dangerously heat, and the cooling system at the facility was unable to reduce the temperature.

A crack was found in the tank, and fire officials said it was at risk of either leaking or exploding as internal pressure continued to build.

The incident has already prompted several inquiries, including by federal authorities. In June, the FBI served warrants at the facility. GKN officials at the time said they were cooperating with the investigation.

“The blame for this disaster lies solely with GKN and the county should not be bearing the brunt of these expenses,” Orange County Supervisor Janet Nguyen said in a statement.

The letter to the company included an itemized list of costs incurred by county agencies during the emergency, including $2.7 million by the Orange County Sheriff’s Department, more than $233,000 by the county executive office and $195,000 by the county’s Health Care Agency. It also included $500,000 of discretionary funds that supervisors allocated to assist affected residents.

Additional expenses incurred by the Orange County Fire Authority — estimated at $2.8 million — were not included in the $4-million total.

“The county works hard to stay in excellent fiscal shape and now we have 10 agencies with huge expenses along with OC Fire Authority,” Nguyen said. “We need reimbursement.”

GKN had previously pledged more than $3 million to nonprofits, including the OC Community Resilience Fund launched by the United Way, to help residents and business owners.

But in the letter to GKN executives, the county argued that the donation did not absolve the company of liability or of costs incurred by taxpayers.

“The County demands immediate financial accountability to mitigate the impact caused to the County’s public emergency resources,” the letter states.

In the letter, county attorneys also requested that the company maintain all records, materials and physical evidence related to the incident because of possible future litigation.

Climate Change, characterized by rising temperatures, sea levels, and ocean acidity, poses an existential risk to countless species around the globe. For species like the Antarctic Adélie penguin, disappearing sea ice and rising acidity and temperatures could lead to their extinction in the coming years. Using 30 years of satellite imagery from the NASA/USGS Landsat mission, a team of researchers studied the eating habits of this penguin species by analyzing the distribution and color of their guano across Antarctica.

Their research, which appears in a study in Current Biology, is a major first for Earth science, where space-based observations were used to capture food-web and population dynamics at a continental scale. Their conclusions were frightening, indicating that global warming and shrinking sea ice are altering penguin diets, with consequences for their health and longevity. Their findings provide measurable insights into how penguin diets and populations correlate with the impacts of climate change.

The research team was led by Clemson University and included researchers from Stony Brook University, UC Santa Cruz, NASA, and other institutions. For their study, they analyzed the color across visible and infrared wavelengths to obtain a “spectral signature” of guano. Based on its color, the team reconstructed the diets of Adélie penguins from 1984 to 2013. This was coupled with sample collections from penguin colonies, which were analyzed in the lab to measure spectral properties.

*Artist’s impression of a Landsat satellite. Credit: NASA*

They then ran a stable isotope analysis on these samples to determine where the penguins’ diet fell in terms of more krill or more fish. This is especially important because Adélie penguins typically subsist on fish in areas with more sea ice, but consume more krill in regions where sea ice has decreased. As such, mapping out the species’ dietary patterns served as a useful indicator of broader changes in Antarctic ecosystems due to the impacts of Climate Change.

With the combined data, the team was able to build a model linking guano spectra to diet, which they then applied to Landsat imagery.

The study is the first to use satellite observations to measure food-web dynamics on a continental scale over the span of decades. Previously, studying food webs and population dynamics across all of Antarctica has been difficult due to its vast expanse, remoteness, and the logistical challenges of working in a freezing and windy environment. Whereas researchers could collect samples and monitor populations in some colonies, sampling every colony repeatedly over decades was impossible.

This study also highlights how Earth-monitoring satellites can enable scientists to track environmental changes and their impact on local species. Using Landsat imagery, the team studied penguin colonies across the continent over decades to monitor their feeding patterns. Said Dr. Casey Youngflesh, an Assistant Professor at Clemson University:

Satellites enabled us to do something that would otherwise be impossible. The innovation wasn’t the satellite technology itself, but the ability to leverage these decades of satellite imagery with modern geochemical, statistical, and computational tools. No one intended for these satellites to be used to monitor penguins, but now we’re able to use them in these novel ways.

*Penguin colony as seen by drones. Credit: Thomas Sayre-McCord/WHOI/MIT*

The team’s findings have deep implications for the long-term survival of Adélie penguins. While they are among the top predators in Antarctica, their diet is limited to a few prey species, primarily Antarctic silverfish and krill. In addition to being less nourishing than fish, krill is also becoming less abundant in some parts of the continent due to rising temperatures and increased consumption by seal and whale populations (which are currently recovering).

In the years since the study period, scientists have monitored large-scale reductions and record lows in Antarctic sea ice. If those declines continue, Adélie penguins may have to shift toward more krill-dominated diets, with consequences for their long-term survival. Said co-author Michael J. Polito, a professor of ocean sciences at UC Santa Cruz:

Adélie penguins are an iconic species breeding all around the continent of Antarctica. They act as a ‘canary in the coal mine,’ and our study illustrates how recent warming has disrupted the Antarctic marine food web they rely on to the detriment of many of their populations.

We spied on penguins from space by using satellite images to figure [out] what they eat all around Antarctica to help explain their diet and population response to recent climate change. Antarctica has experienced rapid environmental change in recent decades, and this approach gives us a new and powerful tool to learn how it has affected penguins.

Further Reading: UCSC, Current Biology