On July 30, a Surprise Police vehicle sat parked at the gate of the proposed ICE detention site, the officer chatting with a guard, while a chemical tanker blocked a fire hydrant a few yards away. That is what two months of city enforcement has produced on Sweetwater Avenue. The hazard has moved from the hydrants to the fire lane to a grocery store parking lot a mile away, the tankers keep coming because Rinchem cannot receive its own deliveries.
SURPRISE, Ariz. — For nearly two months, Northwest Valley Indivisible has documented a recurring public safety hazard on Sweetwater Avenue: chemical tankers waiting to enter the Rinchem chemical storage facility while parked in posted no-parking zones, blocking fire hydrants, and standing in a marked fire lane. In that time the hazard has not stopped. It has moved. When attention landed on the hydrants across from Rinchem’s north gate, the trucks shifted to the fire lane around the corner. About a week ago, a Surprise resident photographed a chemical tanker parked in a Fry’s parking lot next to a diner about a mile from the facility. The hazard the city has spent two months not solving is now turning up in shopping center lots where families park.
The reason trucks stack up on the street is that Rinchem cannot process them, and its own drivers have said so publicly for years. The company’s Surprise location holds a 2.8-star rating from drivers, who describe being kept waiting for days to drop a single load and finding no restrooms on site. The same operating model shows up at Rinchem’s Chandler location, which carries a 2.6-star rating across more than 80 reviews. Driver after driver describes a chemical facility with no live person on site, check-in by a QR code on a wall and an automated text message, and waits stretching from five hours to more than 24. One driver described “no people, just a qr code on the wall.” Another, unable to reach anyone at the gate, pointed out that this is “a chemical company of all things.” A truck that cannot get in has to wait somewhere, and Rinchem pushes that wait onto the public street.
The city has not stopped it, and it cannot keep its own account straight. NWVI notified the Surprise Police Department on June 8. On June 10, Interim Deputy City Manager Brenden Espie said the city would address it, beginning with driver education before any enforcement. For weeks, that education campaign was the city’s entire response to violations that included tankers blocking fire hydrants and standing in fire lanes, which are immediate safety hazards normally cited or towed on sight, not managed with a month of warnings. The city’s messaging has never resolved the basic question: has anyone actually been ticketed? Espie wrote on July 7 that enforcement had already started. Two days later, on July 9, he wrote that the citation phase would begin that day. On August 1, Councilmember Chris Judd told constituents that citations had started about a week earlier, in late July. Three accounts from the city, three different starting points, and not one confirmed citation behind any of them. NWVI’s public records request for the citation and warning records, R000160-072026, filed July 20, remains unanswered.
The city is not out of tools. Its own transportation policy prohibits truck and trailer parking on all city streets except during active loading and unloading, and the city has designated legal truck parking roadways in this industrial area, the nearest less than a mile from Rinchem. Trucks staging to enter the facility are not loading or unloading. They are waiting, which is exactly the kind of street parking the city prohibits. Lawful alternatives exist within a mile, and the violations continue anyway.
The law is not the obstacle either. The hydrant and no-parking violations on Sweetwater are on a public street, where Arizona law (A.R.S. 28-873) prohibits parking within 15 feet of a fire hydrant and anywhere official signs forbid it. The fire lane is not exempt just because it sits on private property. The International Fire Code that Surprise has formally adopted prohibits obstructing a fire apparatus access road, including by parking, and Rinchem’s lane is curbed and posted “Fire Lane No Parking.”
This is not a paperwork dispute. Rinchem stores chlorine, fluorine, and hydrogen chloride above federal Risk Management Plan thresholds, and the tankers staging on Sweetwater have carried sulfuric acid, tetramethylammonium hydroxide, ammonia, and hydrochloric acid. Dysart High School sits six tenths of a mile away, and its new school year begins August 6, just a few days from now. Mayor Kevin Sartor’s full-time job is Safety Coordinator for Dysart Schools.
The same corridor is where the federal government has proposed detaining hundreds of people, at 13290 W. Sweetwater Avenue. That plan is paused under a June 30 agreement until a National Environmental Policy Act review is complete, and no one is detained there now. It should stay that way. A city that has spent two months unable to keep chemical tankers off its own fire hydrants has not earned the trust to protect hundreds of people who would already be in a dangerously cruel situation where they could not evacuate on their own in case of a chemical release. The enforcement failure on Sweetwater is not a side issue. It is the clearest evidence yet of what this corridor cannot safely hold.
“Two months in, the city has not stopped this. It has just chased it from the hydrants to the fire lane to a grocery store parking lot a mile away,” said Brent Peak, Co-Chair of Northwest Valley Indivisible. “The trucks pile up on the street because Rinchem cannot receive its own deliveries, and the city cannot enforce its own parking rules even when an officer is parked a few yards from a chemical tanker blocking a fire hydrant.”
Community members can demand action in person at this Tuesday’s Surprise City Council meeting at 6:00 PM, 16000 N. Civic Center Plaza. They can sign up to speak during the Call to the Public and ask the council why, after two months, the city still cannot confirm a single citation on Sweetwater Avenue, and demand that they publicly oppose the Surprise ICE facility.
Media Contact:
media@northwestvalleyindivisible.org
Northwest Valley Indivisible is a progressive grassroots civic organization serving Arizona’s 8th Congressional District, including Surprise, Peoria, Glendale, and the northwest Phoenix area. NWVI mobilizes residents to defend democracy and hold power accountable, through electoral organizing, mass mobilization, public records and research, and direct action on local and national issues. The group’s research on the Rinchem facility was cited in the Arizona Attorney General’s federal complaint over the proposed Sweetwater Avenue detention site.