#281: Hazardous Waste Incinerators: A Technology Out Of Control?

=======================Electronic Edition========================

RACHEL'S HAZARDOUS WASTE NEWS #281
---April 15, 1992---
News and resources for environmental justice.
------
Environmental Research Foundation
P.O. Box 5036, Annapolis, MD 21403
Fax (410) 263-8944; Internet: erf@igc.apc.org ========== RACHEL-4CM = DIOXIN FOCUSED DIRECTORY Remote Access Chemical Hazards Electronic Library. Dioxinnz.com. =======================Original Source========================

Throughout the late 1970s and early 1980s, EPA (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency) learned the hard way that landfills always leak and usually contaminate groundwater. So the agency kept making new restrictions on what chemicals could be buried in the ground. Because the agency did next to nothing to promote waste avoidance and pollution prevention, industry continued to produce more and more hazardous waste each year. Thus each year a larger and more diverse brew of toxins has been sent to the nation's 18 huge commercial hazardous waste incinerators.

There is now a decade's experience indicating that hazardous waste incinerators have never worked as designed, create massive pollution themselves, and periodically explode. Furthermore, as we saw last week, #280 EPA scientists have known since 1985 that hazardous waste incinerators cannot destroy wastes to the extent required by law.

This week we focus on the human management failures of incineration technology.

Chemical Waste Management is the nation's largest and wealthiest operator of hazardous waste incinerators. If anyone can afford to run an incinerator properly, Chem Waste can. Furthermore, the company says environmental compliance drives everything it does. Some of the parent firm's top executives donate time to sit on the boards of directors of prominent environmental organizations like Audubon and National Wildlife Federation. They have a vice-president in charge of environmental policy AND ethical standards. If anyone were capable of running an incinerator well, it would seem to be this company.

Yet during recent years Chem Waste's two incinerators have racked up a list of leaks, spills, releases, explosions, violations and coverups that would fill a hefty book.[1]

Standard operating procedure says:

--all wastes must be sampled and incompatible wastes must never be mixed, BUT CHEM WASTE HAS MIXED INCOMPATIBLE WASTES TOGETHER, CAUSING CHEMICAL REACTIONS THAT SENT PLUMES OF WASTES WAFTING OFF-SITE.
--The rate at which wastes can enter the furnace is carefully specified, YET CHEM WASTE ON SEVERAL OCCASIONS HAS BEEN CAUGHT FEEDING WASTES AT EXCESSIVE RATES, REDUCING THE EFFECTIVENESS OF WASTE DESTRUCTION.
--Temperatures in the furnace must be maintained at 1600 degrees or higher, YET CHEM WASTE SOMETIMES BURNS WASTES AT TEMPERATURES OF ONLY 1300 DEGREES.
--CO (carbon monoxide) must not exceed 500 ppm in the stack gas, YET CHEM WASTE HAS PERMITTED CO TO EXCEED THIS LIMIT.
--Manifests are supposed to say where all the wastes came from, YET CHEM WASTE HAS FAILED TO MAINTAIN PROPER MANIFESTS.
--Operating records are supposed to be kept, YET CHEM WASTE HAS FAILED TO KEEP THEM PROPERLY.
--Waste in leaking containers is supposed to be transferred to new containers, YET CHEM WASTE HAS FAILED TO DO THIS IN SOME CASES.
--All wastes are supposed to be sampled to avoid putting explosives into the furnace, YET BOTH CHEM WASTE INCINERATORS HAVE EXPLODED DURING THE PAST YEAR, OFFERING CLEAR EVIDENCE OF FAILURE TO IDENTIFY WASTES PROPERLY.
--Explosions are to be reported when they happen, YET CHEM WASTE HAS FAILED TO REPORT EXPLOSIONS AT ITS INCINERATORS.
--Waste feed is supposed to cut off automatically when hydrochloric acid (HCl) in the stack gas exceeds 100 ppm BUT CHEM WASTE HAD THEIR CUT-OFF SET FOR 500 PPM HCL.
--Chem Waste's incinerators are not licensed to burn dioxins, BUT ON DECEMBER 3, 1991, CHEM WASTE'S INCINERATOR AT SAUGET, ILLINOIS BURNED A 25-MILLIGRAM VIAL OF DIOXIN--ENOUGH DIOXIN TO PROVIDE A MAXIMUM ALLOWABLE LIFETIME DOSE FOR 232,000 PEOPLE.

The preceding list barely scratches the surface. How could these lapses, violations and pollution disasters occur? If the company can't control it's own technology, what about government? The person responsible for developing EPA's hazardous waste incinerator regulations back in 1978 was William Sanjour. In a recent letter to a grass-roots activist, Sanjour offered several reasons why the regulations, as finally written, don't work:[2]

"I've talked to many people who live near hazardous waste sites and I have reviewed many records, and this is the way it really works," Sanjour wrote. "Inspectors typically work from nine to five Monday through Friday. So if the incinerator has anything particularly nasty to burn, it will do so at night or on weekends. When the complaints come in to the inspector's office the next day he will call the incinerator operator and ask what's going on. He may also visit the plant but rarely finds anything. The enforcement officials tend to view the incinerator operator as their client and the public as a nuisance."

"Keep in mind that hazardous waste is a factory's garbage. If they typically ship out say a thousand gallons a month of waste solvents and they find themselves with say fifty gallons of waste PCB which they don't know what to do with. What is more natural than dumping it in with the waste solvent to be hauled away to the incinerator? No one would be the wiser," Sanjour wrote. 

He offered other reasons as well:

--The regulations require no monitoring of ambient air in the vicinity of the incinerator.
--It's easy for an operator to cheat because he or she produces and maintains the records.
--Government inspectors are typically poorly trained. They have low morale and high turnover. EPA statistics show that 41% of inspectors have conducted fewer than 10 inspections. "There is no reward to inspectors for finding serious violations and, indeed, zealous inspectors are typically given a hard time by their supervisors," Sanjour wrote.

* * *

Recent events at the Jacksonville, Ark., incinerator (not a Chem Waste facility) appear to follow a script that might have been written by William Sanjour.[3]

The Jacksonville site manager, Robert Apa, issued respirator masks to all employees and sent an inter-office memo April 1 ordering everyone to keep their masks handy because of dangerous "puffs" of pollution being emitted from the furnace, which has begun burning 16 million pounds of dioxin-contaminated chemical warfare wastes left over from Vietnam. Seals in the fire box are leaking, and periodically, for reasons that are not understood, pressure builds up inside the furnace, forcing "puffs" of contaminants to escape. The puffs last from 5 to 45 seconds and, of course, represent emissions that entirely bypass the pollution control system. The Jacksonville incinerator was constructed in the middle of a residential neighborhood, over the objection of local citizens, as a demonstration of the manly prowess of the government-industry partnership that developed during the governorship of Bill Clinton.

When news of the puffs got out, Mark McCorkle, an Arkansas state official assigned to regulate the Jacksonville incinerator, first tried to pressure the ARKANSAS DEMOCRAT-GAZETTE (the state's largest paper) not to print anything about it. McCorkle then conceded that the pollution "puffs" posed a potential hazard to workers, but denied that the public could be affected when the puffs drifted off-site to the homes that lie a long stone's-throw from the furnace. "If you were to take this memo out of context, it would appear to be a horror story," McCorkle said.

Site manager Apa stressed the difficulty of preventing the puffs. He said, "We have taken measures via procedural changes and a new interlock, to minimize the duration [of the puffs.] However, as soon as one problem is identified, another seems to appear. This last week, the slag dams caused release of unburned material onto the TDU pad."

Jacksonville citizens continue to work desperately to shut down the incinerator. A new group, Jacksonville Mothers and Children Defense Fund (JAMAC), will soon file a lawsuit seeking shutdown. They are asking groups everywhere to sign on to their suit. For details, contact Sharon Golgan at JAMAC, 1105 Wilds, Jacksonville, AR 72076; phone (501) 982-4366. Or contact attorney Gregory Ferguson in Little Rock: telephone (501) 372-0771.

After a decade of experimentation and experience, the record now indicates that hazardous waste incinerators cannot be operated safely even when the operator desires to do so. If the operators have any inclination to cut corners, regulatory officials seem unwilling or unable to bring them to justice.

--Peter Montague, Ph.D.

===============


[1] Jeff Bailey, "Concerns Mount Over Operating Methods Of Plants That Incinerate Toxic waste," WALL STREET JOURNAL March [20,] 1992, pg. B1, B5. And: Julia Flynn, "The Ugly Mess at Waste Management," BUSINESS WEEK April 13, 1992, pgs. 76-77. Court records related to Chem Waste's Sauget, IL, and Chicago incinerators provide details of the many problems we have listed.

[2] Correspondence from William Sanjour to Terri Swearingen dated March 27, 1992. Eight pages; available from us for $2.00.

[3] Sandy Davis, "Incinerator Safety Stiffened," ARKANSAS DEMOCRAT-GAZETTE April 9, 1992, pgs. 1, 10A.

Descriptor terms: epa; landfilling; groundwater; incineration; hazardous waste; chemical waste management; cwmi; explosions; compliance; carbon monoxide; co; sauget; il; dioxin; hcl; hydrochloric acid; william sanjour; enforcement; pcbs; jacksonville; ar; cbw; vietnam; bill clinton; jacksonville mothers and children defense fund; jamac; chicago;

#345: Corruption Out Of Control in Arkansas

=======================Electronic Edition========================

RACHEL'S HAZARDOUS WASTE NEWS #345
---July 8, 1993---
News and resources for environmental justice.
------
Environmental Research Foundation
P.O. Box 5036, Annapolis, MD 21403
Fax (410) 263-8944; Internet: erf@igc.apc.org==========
RACHEL-4CM = DIOXIN FOCUSED DIRECTORY Remote Access Chemical Hazards Electronic Library. Dioxinnz.com =======================Original Source========================

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was back in court in June, once again defending the right of the Vertac incinerator to vent dioxin-contaminated gases into a residential neighborhood in Jacksonville, Arkansas.

The Jacksonville incinerator has been burning dioxin-contaminated pesticides since last November as part of a Superfund cleanup at the Vertac site. For more than a decade, the Vertac company manufactured dioxin-contaminated pesticides in Jacksonville for use in the Vietnam war. Vertac officials left town hurriedly in the mid-1970s, abandoning some 30,000 leaking drums of chemical wastes. Despite local protests, Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton personally approved the Vertac site incinerator last November.

In mid-June two employees of the incinerator company signed affidavits saying they had seen dioxin-contaminated wastes being intentionally blown out the smoke stack. One of the employees said under oath that she had regularly seen dioxin-contaminated pesticides oozing from the hot kiln: "I have seen 2,4-D pesticide waste leaking from the seals around the incinerator kiln. The waste oozes out from the seals and burns on the outside of the hot kiln, giving off black smoke and a strong odor," she said.

An EPA official stationed at the Vertac site confirmed publicly that dioxin-contaminated pesticide wastes "ooze" from the kiln during combustion. Rick Ehrhart, remedial site manager for EPA, told a news reporter pesticide leaks from the kiln are "not unusual." He said such leaks are "cause for concern" but that nothing can be done about them. "You don't have a lot of control over it," he said.[1] Such leaks are just "something that happens at all incinerators," he said.[2]

Even before these latest revelations, federal district judge Stephen Reasoner in Little Rock had concluded in April that the Vertac incinerator was a public health hazard and was operating "in violation of the EPA's own regulations," and he ordered it shut. EPA and the Vertac incinerator operators filed a joint appeal, and Judge Reasoner's first shutdown order was overturned on procedural grounds. Reasoner then heard new testimony, re-wrote his conclusions, and ordered the plant shut a second time.

The day Judge Reasoner's second shutdown order was filed, the 8th circuit court of appeals in St. Louis overturned Reasoner's order BEFORE VERTAC AND EPA HAD EVEN FILED A SECOND APPEAL. No appeal had been filed when the appeals court overturned Judge Reasoner's second order and directed that Vertac be allowed to keep operating. It was one of the most remarkable displays of judicial prejudice in memory.

In mid-June the two Vertac employees came forward and signed affidavits[3] under oath saying they had witnessed continuing spills of hazardous waste at the site, and had witnessed flakes of dioxin-contaminated salts falling from the incinerator smoke stack "comparable to a light snow fall."

Carolyn Lance, a Vertac employee, said in a sworn affidavit that she had worked at the Vertac site two and a half years, first as a maintenance technician, then in a warehouse dispensing parts to repair crews. "[O]n May 14th, at about 2:50 p.m.," she wrote, "I noticed salt flakes ranging in size from about the size of a nickel to the size of a quarter falling through the air. The flakes were coming from the incinerator stack. The release of hazardous salts from the stack is not unusual at the Vertac incinerator," she said. "There have been several other occasions when I have observed salt flakes falling from the incinerator stack. These incidents last ten to fifteen minutes at a time and are comparable to a light snowfall."

Chris DuJardin also worked at Vertac for two and a half years, as a maintenance technician, and reported seeing the same incident May 14th. DuJardin said in a sworn affidavit, "On May 14, 1993, at approximately 3 or 3:30 p.m. I was alerted by a co-worker that contaminated salts created by the spray dryer pollution control system were spewing out of the stack of the Vertac incinerator. Pollution control salts are contaminated with hazardous chemicals that are partially removed from the incinerator's gases by the spray dryer system prior to emission into the air. It is my understanding that the salts are contaminated with dioxins and heavy metals. Normally the salts drop through the system and are collected in drums to be disposed of as hazardous wastes.

"Initially, I didn't think much of the May 14, 1993 event," DuJardin said in a sworn affidavit, "because the Vertac incinerator and related systems experience frequent malfunctions and other problems requiring constant attention.

"However, upon looking at the stack I became alarmed because of the amount of salts and height of the salt plume blowing out of the stack. The plume appeared to be headed in the direction of my home and a nearby school attended by my nephew....

"It was obvious to me that the incinerator's 300 horsepower fan had been intentionally turned on in order to clear the salts from the system. The incinerator had recently been experiencing operating difficulties apparently because salts had clogged various systems where they normally should not be found.... As a result of the salt clogging problem, the spray dryer component of the incinerator had built up such pressure that the fiberglass housing of the system cracked. I was involved in repairing the cracks in the spray dryer system's housing.

"I decided to inform Mr. Dan Fuller, operations coordinator, about the salts coming from the stack.... When I told Mr. Fuller about salts coming from the stack, he told me it was steam, not salts, that were being emitted. I told him I knew it was salts because I had been outside and had seen the salts falling to the ground and being blown away. Mr. Fuller responded to my concern by saying, 'prove it.'

"... Since leaving the site on May 14, 1993, I have expressed my concerns to the media, investigators from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) criminal investigation division, and Arkansas Assistant Attorney General Charles Moulton. Despite my communication with various government officials, the Vertac incinerator continues to operate," DuJardin wrote.

In her affidavit, Carolyn Lance described other serious problems at the Vertac site. She wrote, "I have seen 2,4-D pesticide waste leaking from the seals around the incinerator kiln. The waste oozes out from the seals and burns on the outside of the hot kiln, giving off black smoke and a strong odor. I understand that D-waste [2,4-D pesticide waste] was leaking from the kiln as recently as Monday, June 14, 1993. Over the last six months I have observed at least one period of time when waste leaked from the seals and onto the outside of the kiln every day for about a thirty day period. Since January 1993 I have observed wastes leaking from the kiln seals at least every week, sometimes dribbling down onto the concrete pad the incinerator sits on," Lance wrote.

EPA administrator Carol Browner now has an opportunity to confront the corruption in Jacksonville head on. Attorneys for local citizens opposed to the Vertac incinerator wrote her in late June, asking her to intervene personally to "stop the poisoning" in Jacksonville. Attorneys Richard Condit and Mick Harrison of the Government Accountability Project (GAP) in Washington, D.C., said, "Our clients do not wish to resort to direct confrontations with EPA and the Clinton administration, but they will not stand by and continue to be poisoned." Browner's office said it would take several weeks for the administrator and her attorneys to draft a reply.

The reply, when it comes, will reveal unmistakably what this administrator is made of.

Is "poisoned" too strong a word for what EPA and the Vertac operators are doing to the people of Jacksonville? How dangerous is dioxin? EPA has been studying this question for the past 2 years, and some conclusions are beginning to emerge. For at least a decade, EPA has considered dioxin so dangerous that humans shouldn't be exposed to it at all. Then the paper industry and the Chlorine Institute convinced EPA officials to take a fresh look at available scientific evidence.

Dr. Kenneth Olden, director of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) said recently, "I've looked at the data, and I'm not aware of any new scientific studies that suggest it's not as dangerous as we thought it was."[4] Dr. George Lucier of NIEHS says dioxin is not only a carcinogen but it also increases the risk of diabetes, reduces sperm count, and can cause birth defects by disrupting the normal working of human calls. "I would say one's concerns about [existing] environmental levels of dioxin have not been diminished by recent scientific evidence," Lucier said.[4]

Linda Birnbaum, whom SCIENCE magazine calls "EPA's top dioxin researcher," says, "In my opinion, there is no reason to believe that dioxin is less hazardous than had been presumed in the past."[5] Taking into account "toxic equivalency factors" for dioxin-like chemicals (dibenzofurans and some PCBs), the current average of "dioxin equivalents" in the blood of Americans is 50 parts per trillion [ppt] and "Fifty ppt is a level we should be concerned about," Birnbaum told SCIENCE.

In sum, the current best science says there's already enough dioxin in the bodies of average Americans to create health risks. An incinerator like the one in Jacksonville, raining dioxins down upon the heads and homes of local citizens, is a public menace.

--Peter Montague, Ph.D.

===============


[1] Sandy Davis, "Vertac leaks common, affidavit says," ARKANSAS DEMOCRAT GAZETTE June 22, 1993, pgs. 1B, 3B.

[2] Sandy Davis, "Lawyer's letter asks EPA chief to stop 'poisoning' at Vertac," ARKANSAS DEMOCRAT GAZETTE June 25, 1993, pg. 2B.

[3] Both affidavits are available from us for $4.00 each.

[4] Eric J. Greenberg, "Feds Warn of New Dioxin Dangers," NEW YORK DAILY NEWS June 24, 1993, pg. 14.

[5] Richard Stone, "Dioxin: Still deadly," SCIENCE Vol. 260 (April 2, 1993), pg. 31.
Descriptor terms: epa; jacksonville; vertac; incineration; superfund; lawsuits; gap; government accountability project; ar; arkansas; pesticides; 2,4,5-T; cbw; bill clinton; whistle blowers; stephen reasoner; spills; hazardous waste; occupational safety and health; carol browner; dioxin; kenneth olden; niehs; george lucier; linda birnbaum;

Descriptor terms: incineration; meetings; calendar; cchw; ralph nader; washington; dc; mike williams;

#325: A Sea Of Troubles Engulfs Incineration

=======================Electronic Edition========================

RACHEL'S HAZARDOUS WASTE NEWS #325
---February 17, 1993---
News and resources for environmental justice.
------
Environmental Research Foundation
P.O. Box 5036, Annapolis, MD 21403
Fax (410) 263-8944; Internet: erf@igc.apc.org ==========
RACHEL-4CM = DIOXIN FOCUSED DIRECTORY Remote Access Chemical Hazards Electronic Library. Dioxinnz.com
=======================Original Source========================

The incineration industry has suffered a series of major setbacks in recent weeks. The federal government's showcase dioxin-burning incinerator in Jacksonville, Arkansas--to which Bill Clinton personally gave a green light one week before he was elected President (see RHWN #311)--was shut down last week by a federal judge. Lawyers for EPA (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency) admitted to U.S. District Judge Stephen Reasoner in Little Rock that the Jacksonville incinerator could not destroy 99.9999% of the dioxin fed into it, as is required by EPA regulations, whereupon the judge ordered the plant shut.

It was a stunning victory for Greenpeace chemist Pat Costner, who had been the first to reveal that incinerators could not achieve 99.9999% destruction (see RHWN #312 and #280), and for local activist-citizens like Sharon Golgan in Jacksonville who had fought the incinerator proposal for at least six years.

The nation's other showcase incinerator--built by Waste Technologies Industries (WTI) on the banks of the Ohio River in East Liverpool, Ohio--was fighting for its life in federal court in Cleveland earlier this week. Local citizens there have been opposing the WTI incinerator proposal for 12 years. EPA's Region 5 office in Chicago and Ohio state officials bent the rules, and even broke a few, to give WTI a permit to start burning wastes (see RHWN #287). The state of West Virginia, local citizens, and Greenpeace filed a lawsuit January 13 asking a federal judge to prevent WTI from conducting a "test burn."[1] As soon as a test burn is completed, the WTI incinerator can begin commercial operation for up to a year while EPA evaluates the test results. (Vice-President Al Gore said December 7, 1992, that he and Mr. Clinton would stop WTI from proceeding until a study was completed of all health issues, and all legal issues surrounding EPA's issuance of a permit [see RHWN #315]]--but it now appears that Mr. Gore has changed his mind.) Federal Judge Ann Aldrich in Cleveland issued a temporary restraining order against WTI January 15 and set February 16 as the day she would decide whether to issue a preliminary injunction, which would prevent WTI from conducting the trial burn until a full court trial could be held.[2]

As we go to press, it is not clear how this phase of the battle will come out. However, secret EPA documents that came to light during in court have raised serious health questions about every incinerator in the country, including solid waste incinerators.

Background

At issue in every instance is dioxin, which is created as an unwanted byproduct of incineration (and as a byproduct of other industrial processes, such as pulp and paper manufacture, and the manufacture of some pesticides). In April, 1991, EPA began a major "scientific reassessment" of dioxin and discovered that effects of dioxin can be observed in human cells at the levels of exposure now present in the environment. In other words, there's already sufficient dioxin in the environment to produce observable effects in humans. The Clinton/Gore administration knows this is a problem because a December, 1992, briefing document prepared by the EPA Transition Team says, "This [EPA's dioxin reassessment] is likely to be an extremely controversial document as there are new findings indicating adverse reproductive effects at existing environmental levels."

A Secret Risk Assessment and a Leaked Memo

EPA's position throughout the 1980s has been that incineration is safe, even though every incinerator is known to produce dioxin. To "prove" the safety of incinerators, EPA has used a technique called "risk assessment." A risk assessment estimates the amount of dioxin being released, estimates various pathways it might travel through the environment, and calculates the resulting exposures of humans. Finally, a risk assessment estimates the health effects resulting from the calculated exposures.

In the case of dioxin, over the years EPA's "standard" risk assessment has assumed that airborne dioxin only enters humans through their lungs. Dioxin that falls to the ground and is then incorporated into the food chain and eaten has always been ignored in EPA risk assessments.

However, the EPA's team of scientists conducting the official "reassessment" of dioxin's toxicity published a draft report last summer called, ESTIMATING EXPOSURE TO DIOXIN-LIKE COMPOUNDS in which they clearly stated that a proper risk assessment for an incinerator must include all routes of exposure for dioxin, not merely via the lungs.[3] It is well known that dioxins accumulate in the food chain, and that meat, milk and fish are the major sources of dioxin exposure for humans.[4]

When Greenpeace researcher Joe Thornton did his own risk assessment on the WTI incinerator, using the technique recommended in EPA's draft report, including dioxins in beef and milk, he found that WTI posed risks 10000 times higher than EPA had calculated. To counter Thornton, EPA did its own food-chain risk assessment, which was not released to the public, but which came to light in court.[5] The EPA's secret risk assessment concludes that dioxin from WTI is 1000 times more dangerous than the "official" published EPA risk assessment says it is.

Leaving aside the serious ethical issue of EPA refusing to publish important health and safety information about WTI, an internal memo from Richard Guimond, acting chief of EPA's Office of Solid Waste and Emergency Response, dated January 22, 1993, leaked to Greenpeace, says, "There are very serious implications associated with adopting risk assessment procedures based on indirect exposure routes for air emission sources."[6] Translation: if food-chain exposures are now to be counted in incinerator risk assessments, many incinerators will be found to be unacceptably dangerous.

The new understanding of dioxin--that it's already present in the environment at levels that affect humans--plus the inclusion of food-chain exposures in risk assessments, plus the failure of incinerators to achieve the destruction efficencies required by regulations--all seem to add up to a mushrooming debacle for the incineration industry.

What are the alternatives to incineration?

Jacksonville holds the key

EPA scientists have known since 1985 that incinerators cannot achieve 99.9999% efficiency in destroying wastes present in low concentrations (see RHWN #280 and #312a.), but EPA officials have stated at hundreds of public presentations since 1985 that 99.9999% could be achieved. Lying to the public carries no penalty, but lying to a judge is a different matter. At the hearing in Little Rock February 12, EPA was represented by U.S. Justice Department lawyer Ron Spritzer. Judge Reasoner said to Spritzer, "Indulge me for a moment. If I asked you to prove that you could achieve a six 9 DRE [99.9999% destruction and removal efficiency] on dioxin, could you physically produce technological data that shows that?" "No sir, we could not," said Mr. Spritzer.[7]

That damaging admission was sufficient for the judge. He ordered the plant shut. EPA is considering appealing the judge's verdict, but they do not appear to have a strong case. In all likelihood, the Jacksonville incinerator is shut for good.

The Jacksonville incinerator was in considerable trouble even before Judge Reasoner's decision. On January 22, an Arkansas state official revealed that the incinerator was producing a larger volume of hazardous waste than it was destroying. The machine had been set up in a residential neighborhood of Jacksonville to "destroy" 30,000 drums of hazardous liquids left over from a defunct chemical factory that had made chemical warfare agents on the site for many years (most recently, herbicides for Vietnam). Local citizens had recommended moving the waste out of town by rail, or simply building a concrete mausoleum on the site to contain the waste safely until someone found a way to detoxify it. But Arkansas and federal EPA officials insisted that incineration was the safest, cheapest solution to the problem. They convinced then-Governor Bill Clinton to put up $10.7 million of state money to build and operate the incinerator.

At the end of a year's burning, 9,600 drums of waste had been "destroyed" by the Jacksonville incinerator, but in the process the incinerator had created 12,000 drums of salt and another 1730 drums of ash (13,730 drums total) for a net gain of 43% in the volume of waste. Furthermore, the salt and the ash are so laced with dioxin that they are legally a "hazardous waste" and thus cannot be taken off the site.

"We did not anticipate this," said Doug Szenher, a spokesperson for the Arkansas state department of Pollution Control and Ecology. "The whole idea was that the salt and ash was to have been de-listed [declared non-hazardous] and taken to a landfill site. It just didn't work out that way," he said.[8]

So after spending $7 million burning chemicals fruitlessly for a year, EPA is now spending $400,000 to build a 30,000-square-foot building on the site, to store the hazardous salt and ash until someone can figure out how to detoxify it. So far as we know, this is the first above-ground mausoleum built to store hazardous waste. (See RHWN #260.) In Jacksonville, above-ground concrete storage will soon be a real, demonstrated alternative to incineration.

--Peter Montague, Ph.D.

===============

[1] GREENWIRE staff, "WTI Incinerator: Foes File Suit in Effort to Block Test," GREENWIRE Vol. 2 No. 171 (January 14, [1993).] GREENWIRE is "the daily executive briefing on the environment" available on-line; phone (703) 237-5130.

[2] GREENWIRE staff, "Incinerator: WTI Counters with Suit of its Own," GREENWIRE Vol. 2 No. 172 (January 15, 1993). GREENWIRE is "the daily executive briefing on the environment" available on-line; phone (703) 237-5130.

[3] U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, ESTIMATING EXPOSURE TO DIOXIN-LIKE COMPOUNDS [EPA/600/6-88/005B] WORKSHOP REVIEW DRAFT (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, August, 1992).

[4] U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, cited above, Appendix B.

[5] Memo from William Farland, director of EPA's Office of Health and Environmental Assessment, to Brian Grant, U.S. Department of Justice, "WTI Screening Level Analysis," dated Feb. 8, 1993, attaching a 21-page risk assessment called "Screening Level Analysis of Impacts From WTI Facility," dated Feb. 5, 1993.

[6] Memo from Richard Guimond, Acting Assistant Administrator, Office of Solid Waste and Emergency response, to EPA Administrator Carol Browner, "WTI Incinerator Issues," dated January 22, 1993. 2 pgs.

[7] Sandy Davis, "Judge Halts Dioxin Burn at Vertac," ARKANSAS DEMOCRAT GAZETTE February 13, 1993, pgs. 1A, 13A.

[8] Sandy Davis, "At vertac, more waste rolls out than in," ARKANSAS DEMOCRAT GAZETTE January 24, 1993, pg. 12A.

Descriptor terms: incineration; epa; oh; risk assessment; ar; dioxin; wti; waste technologies inc; hazardous wastes; health; jacksonville; east liverpool; waste disposal technologies; waste treatment technologies;

#456: Mysterious Motives at EPA

=======================Electronic Edition========================
RACHEL'S ENVIRONMENT & HEALTH WEEKLY #456
---August 24, 1995---
News and resources for environmental justice.
==========
Environmental Research Foundation
P.O. Box 5036, Annapolis, MD 21403
Fax (410) 263-8944; Internet: erf@rachel.clark.net ==========
RACHEL-4CM = DIOXIN FOCUSED DIRECTORY Remote Access Chemical Hazards Electronic Library. Dioxinnz.com =======================Original Source========================

In 1990, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) funded the construction of an incinerator in a residential neighborhood in Jacksonville, Arkansas, to destroy dioxin-contaminated chemical-warfare wastes. At the time, EPA's decision raised eyebrows. For at least 100 years in the U.S., the basic philosophy of public health policy has been prevention. Since EPA studies show that dioxin damages the immune system and reproductive system of humans, and probably causes cancer as well (RHWN #390, #391, and #414a), no public health official favors exposing people needlessly to dioxin. At the same time, no one --not even the most ardent advocates of incineration --claim that hazardous waste incinerators break down 100% of the chemicals that are fed into them. Therefore, it seemed certain that people living near the Jacksonville incinerator would be exposed to airborne dioxins released during the burn. On the face of it, building the Jacksonville incinerator in a residential neighborhood violated long-established public health principles. This was perplexing.

EPA took the public position that there were no alternatives to building the incinerator in a residential neighborhood. On three occasions, a majority of voters in Jacksonville had voiced opposition to a dioxin incinerator nestled among their homes. One obvious alternative would have been to remove the waste by rail (a rail spur serves the site) or even by truck, to a remote location where fewer people would be directly exposed. Another obvious alternative would have been to build a reinforced concrete building on the site and store the waste in a secure fashion until better technology became available. But EPA officials said it would be too "dangerous" to move the dioxin-containing barrels of waste out of town, and too expensive to store them in a special building on-site. This didn't seem to make much sense at the time. The leaking waste drums had already been "overpacked" into larger non-leaking drums, which could have been readily loaded onto a train or a truck. And concrete buildings are not nearly as expensive to build and monitor as incinerators or landfills. (See RHWN #260.)

Arkansas governor --later U.S. President --Bill Clinton personally promoted the unpopular incinerator for 12 years. "He's been beaten up pretty badly over this," one aide told the NEW YORK TIMES. Still, Mr. Clinton persevered, insisting on building a dioxin incinerator in a residential neighborhood. (See RHWN #311.) From 1990 through 1992, citizens and government officials struggled bitterly over the incinerator as it failed its test burns but was nevertheless declared "safe" by EPA. (See RHWN #311 and #312a.) On October 27, 1992 --one week before he was elected President --Mr. Clinton took time out from his frenzied campaign schedule to sign an order officially commencing the incineration of 13 million pounds of dioxin-contaminated herbicides a stone's throw from homes occupied by families with children. The drums contained an estimated 75 pounds of dioxin --by any measure, a huge quantity of a supremely powerful poison. (See RHWN #312a.)

After he became President, Mr. Clinton's appointees continued to promote the Jacksonville incinerator. When citizens sued in federal court to have the incinerator shut down because of flagrant violations of EPA's own regulations, Mr. Clinton's EPA argued that loopholes in the law allowed them to continue burning and releasing dioxin into the neighborhood. Court documents reveal that the machine was unexpectedly emitting large "puffs" of white smoke from the boiler itself, which bypassed the pollution control system entirely --a clear indication of improper pressures inside the machine. Incinerator workers were issued gas masks, just 100 yards or so from families with children, who were not issued gas masks. Raw waste was reported bubbling through the boiler seals and baking onto the outside of the combustion chamber, creating black smoke and strong odors, which wafted offsite into the surrounding neighborhood --a malodorous caricature of how an incinerator is supposed to operate. (See RHWN #345.)

By this time Greenpeace chemist Pat Costner had demolished EPA's decade-old claim that incinerators can destroy 99.9999% of the dioxin fed into them. (See RHWN #280, #312a, and #318.) Internal EPA memos, leaked to the press, revealed that EPA's staff agreed with Costner's analysis. (RHWN 312a) EPA's own monitoring data showed that the Jacksonville incinerator was emitting 800 times as much dioxin as EPA recommends as "safe." However, in court EPA argued that no court had a right to shut them down until after the burn was completed. A federal judge in Arkansas ordered the incinerator shut down as a public health hazard, but EPA appealed and won on the basis that citizens can't claim in court that they are being poisoned by a Superfund cleanup until after the cleanup is completed. (RHWN #345.)

In the summer of 1993 it was revealed that the Jacksonville incinerator had done such a poor job destroying waste that the residual incinerator ash --heaps of salt, 43% larger in volume than the original liquids fed into the incinerator --were so contaminated with dioxin that they could not legally be removed from the incinerator site. EPA's incinerator had burned 9600 barrels of dioxin-contaminated liquid waste and in the process had created 13,730 barrels of dioxin-contaminated salts. (REHW #325)

EPA then built a 30,000-square-foot secure concrete storage building on the Jacksonville site to house the 13,730 drums of incinerator waste --a solution which EPA had previously rejected as prohibitively expensive.

In February 1995, EPA shut down the Jacksonville incinerator down, even though not all the waste had been incinerated. The remaining 3260 drums of heavily-contaminated dioxin wastes are now being loaded onto trucks and driven across Oklahoma to a Westinghouse incinerator in Coffeyville, Kansas --an alternative that EPA had previously rejected as too dangerous.

In this story, Mr. Clinton's EPA would appear to be guilty of malfeasance, misfeasance and nonfeasance --all the 'feasances' possible. But there is more.

Despite all the problems at the Jacksonville site, a study funded jointly by EPA and by the federal Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) was released May 2, 1995, showing that dioxin in the blood of people living near the Jacksonville incinerator had actually DECREASED between 1991 and 1994. In other words, while the incinerator was releasing dioxin into the neighborhood, the dioxin levels in the blood of people living nearby had gone down, not up.

From this study, EPA officials immediately drew optimistic conclusions about incinerators in residential neighborhoods. The ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH reported, "The Environmental Protection Agency says the new study proves that dioxin could be burned safely at Times Beach." [1] Jacksonville went so well that it should be repeated in Times Beach, Missouri, EPA is now saying.

The ATSDR pulled together a "peer review panel" of outside "dioxin experts" who agreed that the new study showed that dioxin levels had gone down in people living near the Jacksonville incinerator.

Then Greenpeace chemist Pat Costner of Eureka Springs, Arkansas, sent a Freedom of Information Act request for the data and let it be known that she would be providing an independent analysis of the findings. With that, the EPA-funded researchers sharpened their pencils and examined their data again. A month later they announced they had discovered that their first conclusion was false; now they said dioxin levels in the blood of families living near the incinerator had gone up, not down. It turned out that the principle researcher, Dr. Morris Cranmer, had done his arithmetic wrong and ATSDR's peer review panel of "dioxin experts" had failed to notice the huge mistake. [3]

Pat Costner's 28-page analysis, published this month, leaves the Cranmer study in tatters. [4] For example, the incinerator had been burning for 8 months before the "pre-burn" blood samples were taken--and these were probably the "dirtiest" 8 months of burning because the incinerator was new and the company had never operated an incinerator before. The "control" group was selected from the town of Mabelvale, only 25 miles from Jacksonville. EPA says air pollution from an incinerator travels at least 50 kilometers (31 miles) --so the "control" group was almost certainly exposed to dioxin from the Jacksonville incinerator. In addition, there are several other incinerators that pollute Mabelvale with dioxin--one of them operated by EPA itself in Jefferson, Arkansas. A worse "control group" could not have been found.

Furthermore, the selection of the study group itself biased the study's results. Youngsters under 18 and people over 65 were excluded --the very people most likely to spend time at home and be most affected by the Jacksonville incinerator. People who had elevated levels of dioxin in their blood to begin with were excluded; these were the people who had been most-exposed by the site in the past and therefore would be most likely to be impacted by the incinerator, which was built directly on the old site.

In sum, the Cranmer study seems to have been DESIGNED to reach false or misleading conclusions. Dr. Cranmer was well-qualified for conducting such a study. In 1988 had been convicted by a federal judge of bilking the federal government out of $9.5 million dollars. He appealed his conviction and lost. While he was serving his sentence of "community service" he was hired to do the Jacksonville study. [2]

Costner offers many additional criticisms of the Cranmer study. And she shows that the data reveal a dioxin increase of 22% in the blood of the Jacksonville residents who participated in the study.

Despite these remarkable revelations, EPA today is still insisting in public that burning dioxin-contaminated wastes in residential neighborhoods is entirely safe, and is good public policy, pointing to Jacksonville and the Cranmer study as evidence. Today EPA is promoting dioxin burns in Times Beach, Missouri, in Holbrook, Massachusetts, at the Crab Orchard site in southern Illinois, and at other sites around the country.

What could possibly be motivating this $7 billion-per-year bungling behemoth? Why in the world is EPA eager to burn powerful poisons, releasing the residuals directly into neighborhoods where families live? If readers can suggest possible EPA motives, we'd be pleased to hear them. We are perplexed.

                                                                        
--Peter Montague

===============

[1] Tom Uhlenbrock, "Researcher Reports Drop in Level of Dioxin in Blood," ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH June 10, 1995, pg. 4B. The POST-DISPATCH missed the actual public meeting May 2 but U.S. EPA officials made available to the paper's reporter a transcript of the hearing.

[2] Sandy Davis, "Defrauder still able to collect federal funds," [Little Rock, Arkansas] DEMOCRAT-GAZETTE July 8, 1995, pgs. 1B, 3B.

[3] Tom Uhlenbrock, "Dioxin Findings Reversed; Neighbors of Incinerator had Higher Blood levels," ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH July 12, 1995, pg. 1B.

[4] Pat Costner, "The Incineration of Dioxin-Contaminated Wastes in Jacksonville, Arkansas: A Review of the Inhalation Exposure Study" (Greenpeace: Eureka Springs, Arkansas, August 7, 1995).

Descriptors: epa; dioxin; incineration; jacksonville, ar; arkansas; bill clinton; lawsuits; der; destruction and removal efficiency; ash; landfills; hazardous waste; above-ground storage buildings; ok; oklahoma; aptus; ks; kansas; coffeyville; westinghouse; agency for toxic substances and disease registry; atsdr; morris cranmer; hazardous waste incineration; superfund; malfeasance; misfeasance; nonfeasance; holbrook, ma; massachusetts;

#312a: New EPA Memo Says All Hazardous Waste Incinerators Fail To Meet Regulations

=======================Electronic Edition========================

RACHEL'S HAZARDOUS WASTE NEWS #312
---November 18, 1992---
News and resources for environmental justice.
------
Environmental Research Foundation
P.O. Box 5036, Annapolis, MD 21403
Fax (410) 263-8944; Internet: erf@igc.apc.org ==========
RACHEL-4CM = DIOXIN FOCUSED DIRECTORY Remote Access Chemical Hazards Electronic Library. Dioxinnz.com =======================Electronic Edition========================

An internal memo sent to all 10 regional offices of EPA [U.S. Environmental Protection Agency] by Sylvia Lowrance, EPA Director of Solid Waste, confirms that hazardous waste incinerators cannot meet EPA requirements for near-total destruction of hazardous wastes. (See RHWN #280.)

EPA's incinerator regulations require 99.99 percent destruction of all hazardous wastes and 99.9999 percent destruction of especially-hazardous wastes such as PCBs and dioxins. The Lowrance memo dated Sept. 22, 1992, and interviews with Sonya Sasseville of Ms. Lowrance's staff, confirm that the agency possessed scientific information as early as 1984 showing that hazardous waste incinerators cannot destroy some of the most dangerous wastes as completely as the regulations require.

EPA possessed this information but chose to ignore it when hazardous waste incinerator regulations were established for dioxin in 1985.

These new revelations cast doubt on the safety of all hazardous waste incinerators, and could conceivably lead to charges of criminal wrongdoing by some EPA officials. The agency has been touting incineration as "safe" for more than a decade. When asked, agency officials define "safe" as "in compliance with all regulations." In sum, the agency established regulations in 1985 knowing no incinerator could comply, and now the agency's own logic forces the conclusion that no hazardous waste incinerator can be operated safely. It would appear to expose the agency to liability claims by anyone believing they have been harmed by incinerator emissions.

EPA's acknowledgement of its malfeasance surfaced during an incinerator battle in Jacksonville, Arkansas. For the past decade Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton and the citizens of Jacksonville, have been battling each other over the Governor's plan to burn dioxin-contaminated chemical warfare agents in a residential neighborhood of Jacksonville. (See RHWN #311.) EPA officials in Region 6 (Dallas, Texas) supported the Governor's plan.

The Jacksonville wastes contain an estimated 75 pounds (34 kilograms) of pure dioxin, a poison that kills laboratory animals such as guinea pigs exposed to only a few micrograms, making it one of the most powerful poisons ever found. From 1988 onward, federal and state environmental officials in Jacksonville said publicly on numerous occasions that an incinerator could destroy dioxin with 99.9999 percent efficiency, thus eliminating all health threats to the surrounding community. The Lowrance memo makes it clear that Region 6 EPA officials were either lying or were kept ignorant by officials at EPA headquarters in Washington who knew the truth.

EPA's regulatory failure was discovered when an independent researcher, chemist Pat Costner of Greenpeace, analyzed government data from the Jacksonville incinerator as it was being tested before startup. In early 1992, Costner analyzed government data collected during an October, 1991, trial burn in Jacksonville. Her analysis revealed that instead of 99.9999 percent ("six nines") destructiuon, the Jacksonville incinerator had achieved only 99.96 percent destruction of dioxin. Federal and state officials confirmed her analysis. At that rate the Jacksonville incinerator would release 400 times as much dioxin as the regulations say it should.

How the Regulations Work

EPA's hazardous waste regulations require the owner/operator of a new incinerator to select several POHCs (principal organic hazardous constituents)--chemicals to be destroyed. The selected POHCs must be harder to burn than dioxin. The POHCs are "surrogates" for dioxin--they "stand for" dioxin or "represent" dioxin during the test. During a "trial burn," the POHC surrogates are fed into the incinerator in nearly pure form under ideal laboratory conditions, and the incinerator's ability to destroy them is measured. If a destruction/removal efficiency (DRE) of 99.9999 percent is achieved with the POHCs, then EPA allows the owner/operator to assume that 99.9999 percent of dioxin will also have been destroyed. It is this assumption that EPA has known since 1984 is false.

The trial burn procedure was followed precisely in the Jacksonville case, with one exception. The owner/operator inadvertently burned some actual dioxin along with the POHCs during the trial burn and dutifully reported the DRE for the POHCs, but did not analyze the data to establish a DRE for dioxin. Costner did the calculation for dioxin and revealed that dioxin was not destroyed with an efficiency anywhere near six nines.

Since Region 6 officials had been promising for several years that the Jacksonville incinerator would destroy dioxin with six nines efficiency, Costner's analysis made them look like fools or liars or both. Region 6 called headquarters for guidance and on September 22, Sylvia Lowrance sent out a memo telling regional EPA offices how to handle this embarrassing situation.

The Lowrance memo says, in part, "The low dioxin DRE in this recent [Jacksonville] case was consistent with our current body of incinerator performance data, which show a very clear trend of decreasing DRE for hazardous constituents with decreasing incoming concentration of the constituents in the waste feed. (That is, the lower the constituent concentration in the waste, the lower the DRE.) The data show that a properly operating incinerator, which reached 99.99% DRE (four nines) on higher concentrations of POHCs, will often achieve less than four nines when the concentration of a POHC (principal organic hazardous constituent) in the waste is less than 1000 ppm [parts per million]. At this time we have not established a definitive scientific explanation for this phenomenon," the memo says.

The Lowrance memo goes on to point out that, in establishing regulations for incineration of dioxin-contaminated wastes, in 1985, EPA relied on risk assessments in which the agency assumed that 99.9999 percent destruction was routinely achieved. "For this reason, the risk assessment calculations performed in the course of the rulemaking may not be representative in some cases," the Lowrance memo says. In sum, the entire superstructure of regulations created for dioxin incineration in 1985 was based on assumptions that the agency knew at the time were false. Indeed, in an internal EPA memo dated October 24, 1985, Robert A. Olexsey, who was at the time an employee of EPA's Hazardous Waste Environmental Research Laboratory, wrote "We have a problem with the 'surrogate POHC' approach for the determination of the dioxin destruction efficiency. In our incinerator and boiler field tests, we found a consistent relationship.... In essence, across the entire test program, POHC DRE increased with increasing POHC concentration in the feed. If this relationship holds for dioxin (we see no reason why it would not), reporting the DRE for the dioxin material as being identical to that of the higher concentration surrogate will result in overstating the DRE for the dioxin waste." Olexsey went on to recommend that dioxin itself be measured during incinerator tests, to check the efficiency of destruction, rather than testing a POHC and assuming that it revealed something about dioxin. Olexsey's advice was not followed.

During 1984-1985, John C. Kramlich of the Energy and Environmental Research Corporation (Irvine, Cal.) completed a contract study for EPA, analyzing the failure of hazardous waste incinerators to destroy wastes. EPA did not publish the Kramlich study until 1989. Kramlich wrote, "[Our] results indicate that current technology has difficulty meeting the licensing regulations when the waste represents less than 1000 ppm [parts per million] of the feed stream. This finding has significance with respect to waste streams contaminated by low concentrations of extremely hazardous materials (e.g. dioxin or chlorophenol contaminated pesticides)."[1]

EPA's data reveal that all incinerators fail in the same way, but the public health hazard seems especially great at sites burning wood-preservative wastes, pesticides, PCBs, pulp and paper mill sludges, or dioxins. All contaminated-soil incinerators, all Superfund cleanup incinerators, and all of the Army's proposed chemical weapons incinerators are also cast into doubt by EPA's recent admissions. Furthermore, all of the agency's risk assessments and rulemakings regarding hazardous waste incinerators are now known to have been based on false assumptions. In short, the entire regulatory structure intended to guarantee the protection of public health and safety from hazardous waste incinerators has now been thrown into grave question.

--Peter Montague, Ph.D.

===============

[1] John C. Kramlich and others, EXPERIMENTAL INVESTIGATION OF CRITICAL FUNDAMENTAL ISSUES IN HAZARDOUS WASTE INCINERATION (Springfield, VA: National Technical Information Service [NTIS], September, 1989.) This is EPA document No. EPA/600/2-[89/048] available from NTIS for $26.00; phone (800) 553-6847 and request NTIS document No. PB90-108507. See pgs. 5-1, 5-2.

Descriptor terms: hazardous waste incineration; epa; waste disposal techologies; waste treatment technologies; dre; regulations; jacksonville; ar; studies; sylvia lowrance; dioxin; health;

#280: All Hazardous Waste Incinerators Fail to Meet EPA Regulations, EPA says

=======================Electronic Edition========================

RACHEL'S HAZARDOUS WASTE NEWS #280
---April 7, 1992---
News and resources for environmental justice.
------
Environmental Research Foundation
P.O. Box 5036, Annapolis, MD 21403
Fax (410) 263-8944; Internet: erf@igc.apc.org ==========
RACHEL-4CM = DIOXIN FOCUSED DIRECTORY Remote Access Chemical Hazards Electronic Library. Dioxinnz.com ========================Original Source========================

Hazardous waste incinerators, and the web of regulations intended to make them operate safely, have come under withering criticism from government scientists, private researchers, and the WALL STREET JOURNAL during the last 60 days. Officials of EPA (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency) and private research scientists now admit that hazardous waste incinerators emit hundreds of times more dioxins and other toxic air pollutants than is allowed by EPA regulations, and the JOURNAL revealed a record of malfunctions, including explosions and major releases of toxins, that incinerator operators have tried to cover up and that regulatory officials seem powerless to understand, much less curtail.

Scientists employed by U.S. EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) admitted last month that modern hazardous waste incinerators simply cannot comply with existing federal regulations because they cannot destroy all chemicals with 99.99% destruction/removal efficiency (DRE), which is the efficiency required by federal law. Federal law further requires that certain wastes of "special concern" such as dioxins, furans, and PCBs must be destroyed with 99.9999% DRE. EPA scientists said last month that they have known since at least 1985 that hazardous waste incinerators could not meet any of these regulatory requirements.

The story broke when Pat Costner, a chemist and research director for Greenpeace, published an independent analysis of dioxin emissions from the Jacksonville, Arkansas incinerator.[1] The Jacksonville incinerator has begun burning 16.5 million pounds of herbicides (2,4,5-T and 2,4-D) left over from the Vietnam war. These wastes are known to be contaminated with total dioxins and furans at concentrations ranging from to 3 to 40 parts per million (ppm).

Costner's analysis revealed that the Jacksonville incinerator was only achieving 99.96% destruction of the dioxins entering the incinerator, thus emitting 400 times more dioxin into the community than the law allows. An official with the Arkansas Department of Pollution Control and Ecology (DPC&E) acknowledged in telephone interviews that Costner's calculations are correct. He also said the department had no intention of shutting down the incinerator despite its continuing emissions of dioxin directly into a residential community. He said the department did not know what the total dioxin emissions into the population of Jacksonville would be, but, he said, no matter what the total may be, it is safe.

The Jacksonville incinerator is a key demonstration project, established with the cooperation of EPA Administrator William Reilly and Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton to show that dioxin-containing wastes can be incinerated in a residential neighborhood over the objections of the community.[2] In a city-wide referendum in March, 1986, the people of Jacksonville voted two-to-one (1383 to 656) to stop the project but government officials simply ignored the vote and have overridden all objections ever since. Costner's analysis clearly showed that residents of Jacksonville are being exposed to levels of dioxin contamination that exceed federal health and safety standards by a wide margin. This is the first systematic dioxin experiment on humans using a residential population. Previous dioxin exposures of humans have occurred during industrial accidents and in the industrial manufacture of chemical-biological warfare agents. Dioxin is now known to cause cancer in humans and to disrupt normal growth and development of fetuses and infants at low levels of exposure.[3]

About 100 waste sites in the U.S. contain substantial quantities of dioxin,[4] and the U.S. has stockpiles containing billions of pounds of chemical-biological warfare (CBW) agents the government has said it wants to incinerate. If the Jacksonville dioxin experiment can be maintained despite ethical and public health objections, government agencies will be able to claim they have a green light to incinerate just about anything just about anywhere.

However the Jacksonville experiment has brought to light information that could derail the entire U.S. incineration program. In preparing her analysis of dioxin exposure of the Jacksonville populace, Costner uncovered a government study showing that tests in 1984-85 by private researchers, under contract to EPA, revealed that hazardous waste incinerators cannot be expected to achieve 99.9999 percent destruction of wastes that occur in concentrations lower than 10,000 parts per million, and cannot be expected to achieve 99.99 percent destruction of wastes that occur in concentrations lower than 1000 ppm. EPA published the 1985 data in 1989.[5]

When this information came to light, a news reporter from the ARKANSAS DEMOCRAT-GAZETTE, Sandy Davis, interviewed Bob Hall, chief of the EPA's Combustion Research Branch in Research Triangle, North Carolina, and he confirmed what the EPA report had shown. "The fact is that you run into problems with your DRE [destruction/removal efficiency] when a low concentration of wastes is fed into the incinerator," Hall said. "Our data clearly shows that," he said. Davis asked Hall why EPA hasn't changed its regulations since it knows existing incinerators cannot comply with the regulations. Hall said, "I don't know why that hasn't been changed. It's a regulatory issue. I'm in research."[6] Costner uncovered a second EPA report,[7] published in 1984 but never widely circulated, showing that, among eight major hazardous waste incinerators studied, none could achieve 99.99% DRE. Sandy Davis interviewed the author of that report, Drew Trenholm of the Midwest Research Institute in Research Triangle, North Carolina, who said incinerators simply cannot achieve the DRE required by federal law. "The trend is very strong in the data that this is the case," Trenholm told Davis.

At public hearings over the past decade, dozens of EPA officials have stated for the record that incinerators can achieve the legally-required DREs, in what appears to be a coverup of public health information of astonishing proportions.

Many of the most dangerous toxins such as dioxins, furans, and PCBs occur in wastes at low concentrations. If low-concentration chemicals cannot be destroyed effectively, this means all sludge incinerators, all contaminated-soil burners, and all wood-treatment-waste incinerators will fail to meet federal regulations and will emit illegal quantities of potent toxins into surrounding air.

Ongoing failure to achieve the required destruction efficiencies is not all that plagues incinerators. WALL STREET JOURNAL reporter Jeff Bailey pointed out March 20 that federal, state and local regulatory officials pay close attention to hazardous waste incinerators but they can't be everywhere at the same time and they often learn about accidents, explosions and violations from tips phoned to them anonymously by insiders.[8] For example, Chem Waste, the nation's largest hazardous waste hauler, is not considered a fly-by-night operator. According to Joan Bernstein, vice-president for environmental policy and ethical standards at Chem Waste, "Environmental compliance is what drives this company."

If this is true, then Chem Waste's ongoing record of accidents, explosions, leaks, releases and coverups involving their incinerators must mean that even the wealthiest companies that have written down their best intentions on a piece of paper still cannot operate hazardous waste incinerators in a fashion that any reasonable person would call safe.

[To be continued.] #281

--Peter Montague, Ph.D.

===============

[1] Pat Costner, THE INCINERATION OF DIOXIN IN JACKSONVILLE, ARKANSAS: A REVIEW OF TRIAL BURNS AND RELATED AIR MONITORING AT VERTAC SITE CONTRACTORS INCINERATOR, JACKSONVILLE, AR (Washington, DC: Greenpeace Toxics Campaign, January 29, 1992).

[2] Stephanie Arbanel and others, "Toxic Nightmare on Main Street," FAMILY CIRCLE August 14, 1990, pgs. 77-80, 120-128.

[3] Karen F. Schmidt, "Puzzling Over a Poison; On closer inspection, the ubiquitous pollutant dioxin appears more dangerous than ever," U.S. NEWS & WORLD REPORT April 6, [1992,] pgs. 60-61.

[4] Peter A. Johnson and others, DIOXIN TREATMENT TECHNOLOGIES: BACKGROUND PAPER [OTA-BP-O-93] (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1991). 80 pages. $4.00 from U.S. Government Printing Office, P.O. Box 371954, Pittsburgh, PA 15250-7954 or phone your order to (202) 783-[3238.]3238.

[5] John C. Kramlich and others, EXPERIMENTAL INVESTIGATION OF CRITICAL FUNDAMENTAL ISSUES IN HAZARDOUS WASTE INCINERATION (Springfield, VA: National Technical Information Service [NTIS], September, 1989.) This is EPA document No. EPA/600/2-89/048 available from NTIS for $26.00; phone (800) [553-6847] and request NTIS document No. PB90-108507.

[6] Sandy Davis, "Incinerator can't do job, engineer says," ARKANSAS DEMOCRAT-GAZETTE March 14, 1992, pgs. 1A, 15A.

[7] A. Trenholm and others, PERFORMANCE EVALUATION OF FULL-SCALE HAZARDOUS WASTE INCINERATORS. VOL. I. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY. [EPA/600/2-84/181A]. (Washington, DC: U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 1984). Available from NTIS as document No. PB 85-129500. $17.00. Phone 800/553-6847.

[8] Jeff Bailey, "Concerns Mount Over Operating Methods Of Plants That Incinerate Toxic Waste," WALL STREET JOURNAL March 20, 1992, pgs. B1, B5.

Descriptor terms: hazardous waste; incineration; regulation; wall street journal; epa; dioxin; air pollution; accidents; federal; furans; pcbs; pat costner; greenpeace; ar; pesticides; health; birth defects; cbw; sludge incineration; cwmi; jacksonville;

#311 Jacksonville

=======================Electronic Edition========================

RACHEL'S HAZARDOUS WASTE NEWS #311
---November 12, 1992---
News and resources for environmental justice.
------
Environmental Research Foundation
P.O. Box 5036, Annapolis, MD 21403
Fax (410) 263-8944; Internet: erf@igc.apc.org ========== RACHEL-4CM = DIOXIN FOCUSED DIRECTORY Remote Access Chemical Hazards Electronic Library. Dioxinnz.com. ========================Original Source========================

On Tuesday, October 27, one week before his election as President of the United States, Governor Bill Clinton of Arkansas gave the final order to start burning dioxin in an incinerator in a residential area of Jacksonville, Arkansas, a community of 29,000 people 15 miles northeast of Little Rock. The incinerator was built in the residential neighborhood with state funds for the purpose of burning 30,000 barrels of mixed hazardous wastes abandoned in Jacksonville by a company called Vertac Chemical, which manufactured pesticides and herbicides there from 1948 to 1986.

The NEW YORK TIMES (Nov. 2, 1992, pg. B11) reported that the Governor made the decision himself to start the burn: "Mr. Clinton, who has overseen the investigation and cleanup at Vertac most of the last 13 years, gave final approval on Tuesday to a plan to burn the chemical wastes in an incinerator...." The TIMES said (Oct. 28, 1992, pg. A14), "No other environmental issue in Arkansas has so dominated the public debate during Gov. Bill Clinton's 12 years in the Governor's Mansion as the chemical contamination in Jacksonville and what to do about it."

Over the years the Vertac site was used for manufacture of DDT, aldrin, dieldrin, toxaphene and the chemical warfare defoliants 2,4-D, Silvex, 2,4,5-T, and Agent Orange. In 1979 state and federal investigators discovered dioxin on the Vertac property and in the soil and water several hundred yards from the site. Official surveys subsequently found dioxin from the plant in Jacksonville's central city park, making its once-popular swimming and fishing lake off limits to the public.

Almost immediately, citizens began pressing for a thorough, safe cleanup of the Vertac site. In what has now become a familiar story, state and federal authorities delayed cleanup. According to the NEW YORK TIMES, "Since 1979... Vertac's toxic wastes and what to do about them have been the source of considerable strife in the community and have dominated the attention of Gov. Bill Clinton and his environmental advisers." (Oct. 30, 1992, pg. A16.)

In 1986, Vertac declared bankruptcy and willed its 93-acre site to the people of Arkansas. Vertac's executives abruptly left town and have never been successfully traced. The NEW YORK TIMES said, "Vertac abandoned the plant leaving behind roughly 30,000 barrels of chemical wastes, along with acres of contaminated soil, tanks filled with toxic materials, and miles of poisonous piping. The EPA [U.S. Environmental Protection Agency] considers the site one of the country's worst hazardous waste sites, not only because of [the] extent of the contamination but also because the plant is only a few blocks from a day care center, a hospital, and hundreds of houses." (Oct. 28, 1992, pg. A14.)

By 1989 state and federal officials had made firm plans to build an incinerator in a residential neighborhood of Jacksonville to burn some 22 million pounds of Vertac's dioxin-laced wastes.

On at least two occasions a majority of the citizens of Jacksonville expressed, through referendums and public meetings, that they did not want the incinerator built. Many local people considered it a dirty, dangerous way to "get rid of" the wastes. They pointed out that cleanup teams had already packed the 30,000 barrels in special drums, which were not an immediate threat. The real threat was the wastes already released into the community, the ground and the groundwater. Incinerating the 30,000 barrels would be a cosmetic gesture that did not address the residual problems. State and federal officials ignored these expressions of sentiment and forged ahead with their plan to burn the visible evidence, to make Jacksonville look clean again. The real cleanup of soil and water would have to wait for a later time.

In 1990, Marco Kaltofen, a chemical engineer with the National Toxics Campaign presented Governor Clinton with a White Paper outlining alternatives to incineration, including chemical destruction (dechlorination), and above-ground storage in steel-reinforced concrete buildings.[1] Subsequently in 1991 the U.S. Office of Technology Assessment (an arm of Congress) released a report called DIOXIN TREATMENT TECHNOLOGIES, in which they reported the successful destruction of dioxin-containing wastes by chemical dechlorination processes. Chemical dechlorination occurs inside a closed container, releasing nothing to the surrounding environment. Jacksonville has two other Superfund dumps besides the Vertac site, and OTA reported that a chemical dechlorination technology called BCD had been shown to successfully detoxify soils from these other sites. "Test results confirmed that BCD is a candidate technology for the cleanup of halo-carbon-contaminated liquids and soils in an environmentally acceptable manner (closed system)," OTA said.[2] The term "halo-carbon" in this case referred specifically to 2,4,-D, Silvex, 2,4,5-T, and dioxins, which were successfully destroyed by the BCD process. The U.S. Navy has selected BCD technology to clean up its contaminated sites, and has built a BCD decontamination machine which is in use now to clean up PCB-contaminated soils in Stockton, California. State and federal officials in Arkansas turned a blind eye to these alternative technologies.

At public meetings throughout 1989 and 1990 --some of which we attended--state and federal environmental officials insisted repeatedly that the Vertac site incinerator would emit zero dioxin into the surrounding community.

A trial burn was conducted during October, 1991. State and federal officials examined the data and declared the incinerator a resounding success. But Greenpeace chemist Pat Costner analyzed the trial burn data and published her own analysis, showing that the incinerator had not achieved the required 99.9999% destruction of the wastes, but had in fact achieved only 99.96% destruction. This meant that the incinerator was releasing 400 times as much dioxin as the regulations intended.

State and federal officials studied Costner's analysis and subsequently admitted that she was right. Costner then calculated that the incinerator would release somewhere between 150 and 800 grams of dioxin into the community during the two-year burn. Is this a lot of dioxin? EPA has established a "safe" level of dioxin as 0.000001 micrograms of dioxin per kilogram of body weight per day. If you ate this much dioxin every day for a lifetime and retained it all in your body, you would accumulate a body burden of 1.79 micrograms of dioxin. (A microgram is a millionth of a gram, and there are 28 grams in an ounce.) So we'll call 1.79 micrograms an "EPA safe" dose.

If we say, somewhat arbitrarily, that 10 times this amount represents an "EPA unsafe" dose, we can calculate that the Vertac incinerator will emit somewhere between 8 million and 45 million "EPA unsafe" doses of dioxin into the community of Jacksonville during the two-year burn. State and federal officials say the proposed burn does not violate any state or federal laws and thus should be allowed to proceed. One Arkansas health department official excused the dumping of 150 to 800 grams of dioxin into the community saying, "You have to appreciate how much dioxin there is in this community already." Pat Costner points out that this will be the largest intentional release of dioxin that has ever been executed.

Officials of the Arkansas Health Department say they had nothing to do with choosing incineration to get rid of the Vertac wastes. However, they have made careful plans to take advantage of the experiment by gathering data about dioxin levels in human tissues in Jacksonville residents before and after the burn. The pre-burn study of dioxin in blood and urine of Jacksonville residents will be released some time during the next month or so. After the experimental burn is over, new samples will be taken and comparisons will be made to see what levels of toxins (if any) have lodged in the tissues of the human subjects of the Jacksonville dioxin experiment. "I can say without fear of contradiction, we will have the best database on [dioxin in tissues of] the general population of the U.S. that has ever been developed," Dr. Morris Kranmer, principal investigator of the study, told us. No long-term followup of health effects in the community has been planned.

Despite massive pressure from national environmental groups and local community organizations, one week before the election, Bill Clinton gave the final order to begin the Jacksonville dioxin burn experiment. The NEW YORK TIMES noted, "Unfavorable publicity about the Vertac project contributed to Mr. Clinton's reputation as a leader with a less than sterling environmental record, his aides said. 'He's been beaten up pretty badly over this,' said Kenneth L. Smith, Mr. Clinton's top environmental advisor." (Nov. 2, 1992, pg. B11.)

The TIMES went on: "The Vertac project has become typical of toxic waste cleanups around the country in which costs escalate amid interminable delays caused by Federal rules aimed at gaining public trust. Mr. Smith said the Governor believed that unless changes were made in the rules and the public began to accept some degree of risk, fewer toxic-waste cleanup projects could proceed or ever larger sums of money would be siphoned from the Government's budget for all environmental programs."

No sooner had the Governor given the go-ahead than a coalition of five organizations--including the Washington-based Government Accountability Project--sued in court to stop the experiment. Judge Stephen M. Reasoner ruled October 29 that the experimental burn could go ahead for three days, during which the state must test the incinerator's ability to destroy dioxin with 99.9999% efficiency. If anything less than 99.9999% is achieved, "the Court orders that the burning be stopped immediately," said Judge Stephen M. Reasoner.

The experimental burn occurred over the weekend, but by that time Governor Clinton's attention had been swept up by other matters, namely a nation to which he has solemnly promised that things will now be different.

--Peter Montague, Ph.D.

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[1] Marco Kaltofen and Sanford J. Lewis, A WHITE PAPER ON THE FEASIBILITY OF ALTERNATIVES TO INCINERATION OF WASTES AT THE VERTAC SITE IN JACKSONVILLE, ARKANSAS (Boston: National Toxics Campaign Fund, October 27, 1990).

[2] U.S. Congress, Office of Technology Assessment, DIOXIN TREATMENT TECHNOLOGIES--BACKGROUND PAPER [OTA-BP-O-93] (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, November, [1991).]1991).

Descriptor terms: jacksonville; ar; hazardous waste incineration; dioxin; alternative treatment technologies; president clinton; ota; hazardous waste treatment technologies; hazardous waste disposal technologies; incineration; vertac chemical; pesticides; herbicides; chemical weapons; agent orange; superfund; remedial action; ntcf;