=======================Electronic Edition========================
RACHEL’S HAZARDOUS WASTE NEWS #143
—August 22, 1989—
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
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NEW INCINERATION VIDEO STARS WOMEN
OF THE GRASS ROOTS JUSTICE MOVEMENT.
Greenpeace has just released a remarkable new 30 minute video
called “The Rush to Burn,” focused on the hazards of hazardous
waste incinerators. It is a powerful piece of work, valuable to
anyone trying to fight an incinerator. But what’s most
interesting about this video is that the political message and
the technical message of the film are both conveyed mainly by
women, and often by women from the South. Pat Costner, the
Greenpeace Toxics Research Director, from Arkansas, and Wilma
Subra, a chemical consultant from New Iberia, Louisiana, provide
technical criticisms of incineration, while grass roots activists
like Mardell Smith from El Dorado, Arkansas, Kaye Kiker from
Emelle, Alabama, Navie Epps and JoAnn Bickley from Talbot County,
GA, Margo Blackwell from Bloomington, IN, Hazel Johnson, Marian
Burns, and Violet Czachorski from South Chicago, IL, Madelyn
Hoffman from Bloomfield, NJ, Miriam Price and Helen Solar from
Morgan City, Louisiana, and Carol Wolf from Winona, Mississippi,
tell the political story of grass roots action.
The video was put together by Foongy Kyu Lee and Chris Bedford
from the Organizing Media Project in Washington, DC (see RHWN #101) and
it is up to their usual high standards. The visual
images are compelling and the sound track is excellent.
Pat Costner sets the background by telling us that in 1987 the
U.S. chemical industry had sales of $240 billion; they spent one
half of one percent of that (0.5%) on pollution control. U.S.
industry produces one million pounds of hazardous waste every
minute, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, or roughly 525 billion
pounds of waste each year. U.S. EPA (Environmental Protection
Agency) isn’t forcing industry or encouraging industry to make
less waste; instead, EPA is trying to force states to license and
live with 90 hazardous waste incinerators to accommodate
industry’s wasteful habits. (See RHWN #142.)
“This is the story of how communities across the country have
discovered the dangers of hazardous waste incinerators and are
fighting to stop the rush to burn,” says the narrator. Then the
video asks and answers three questions about hazardous waste
incineration: (1) Is incineration safe?; (2) Will (or can) the
government protect us from the hazards?; (3) Does incineration
promote the local economy?
The answers to these questions come from the technical experts
(Costner and Subra) and from the mouths of activists who have
fought to protect their communities from an incinerator.
Is incineration safe? Toxic heavy metals entering an incinerator
are not destroyed; depending on the temperature in the furnace,
more or less of these metals will be emitted into the atmosphere
and thus become available for the community to breathe: arsenic,
lead, cadmium, mercury, beryllium, thallium, chromium, zinc. What
doesn’t go out the stack goes into the ash, which them gets
buried in the ground, thus creating tomorrow’s Superfund sites,
to be cleaned up by our children. In the process of incineration,
new chemicals are created inside the furnace, called PICs or
products of incomplete combustion. EPA and the incineration
industry admit these chemicals are created but they don’t measure
them at any point during an incinerator’s lifetime. What they
don’t know won’t hurt you, right? If the EPA doesn’t study the
problem, they can say with complete confidence, “We are not aware
of any problems with this technology.” Typically, dioxins and
furans are among the PICs created in a large incinerator.
In actual fact, none of the toxic air emissions from an operating
hazardous waste incinerator are measured. When an incinerator is
brand new, selected chemicals are burned in its furnace under
laboratory conditions. If 99.99% destruction of those selected
chemicals is achieved, the incinerator is put into service on the
assumption that it will continue working at that level of
efficiency for at least the next five years. No measurements of
toxics are considered necessary after that because everyone has
complete confidence that no problems (like PICs) can occur. Does
this sound farfetched to you? Far-fetched or not, that’s how the
government “regulates” hazardous waste incinerators today.
Is a waste facility good for the local economy? Kaye Kiker from
Emelle, AL, explains that, in 1978 before Waste Management, Inc.,
came to town, the county’s unemployment was 5.8%; in 1986,
unemployment had climbed to 21.1%. “Our water is polluted here,”
she explains “and it’s just not the kind of place where you want
to raise your family. We’ll never site industry here again. I
believe we’ve lost it. This is a dying county,” she says.
The video ends by scrolling across the screen the names of 36
incinerators that citizens have prevented or shut down: Arvin, CA
(Arvin Environmental Services); Ione, CA (Ogden Environmental
Services); Vernon, CA (Thermal Treatment Service); Middletown, CT
(BFI); Waterbury, CT (Environmental Waste Removal); Bloomington,
IN (Westinghouse); Sedgewick City, KS (Chemical Waste
Management); Wichita, KS (Vulcan); Lawrence City, KS (Pyrochem);
Louisville, KY (BFI); Benton, KY (LWD Units 3, 4, 5); Ascension
Parish, LA (IT Corp); St. Helena, LA (Zytech); Hope, ME (Union
Carbide); Flint, MI (Berlin & Farro); Utica, MI (Liquid
Disposal); Lenawee City, MI (Augusta Development); Shakopee, MN
(ENSCO); Staples, MN (Industrial Waste Conversion); Winona, MS
(ITD); Columbia, MS (State Incinerator); Oswego, NY (Pollution
Abatement Service); Rockport, MO (Waste Tech); Castleton, NV
(Disposal Control Services); East Liverpool, OH (Chemical Waste
Management); Cincinnati, OH (City Incinerator); Reading, OH
(Pristine, Inc.); Boise City, OK (Orlandis Corp.); Hughes County,
OK (Royster Waste Recovery); Yukon, PA (Mill Services, Inc.);
Apollo, PA (Babcock & Wilcox); Rockhill, SD (Thermal Chem);
Laporte, TX (Houston Chemical Services); Iron County, UT (Rollins
Environmental Services); Cisco, UT (Co-West Incinerator);
Ritzville, WA (ECOS); Nitro, WV (Pegasus, Inc.).
Get: “Rush to Burn” for $19.95 from Greenpeace U.S.A., Video
Department, 1436 U Street, NW, Washington, DC 20009; phone Karen
Hirsch at (202) 462-1177.
Rachel search terms: hazardous waste incineration; waste
treatment technologies; air pollution; pics; regulation.