=======================Electronic Edition========================
RACHEL’S HAZARDOUS WASTE NEWS #75
—May 2, 1988—
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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ANNOUNCING NEW WEEKLY SOURCE OF INFORMATION FOR WASTE ACTIVISTS.
The grass roots environmental movement has just gained an
excellent new source of information on incinerators, landfills,
and recycling: WASTE NOT, a weekly publication of
Work on Waste
USA, Inc., edited by Ellen and Paul Connett.
Waste Not discusses technical issues in language anyone can
understand. It also announces new reports as they appear. For
example, people concerned about incinerator ash and landfill
problems will want to know about the following: “THE HAZARDS OF
MUNICIPAL INCINERATOR ASH AND FUNDAMENTAL OBJECTIVES OF ASH
MANAGEMENT” available from Dr. Richard Denison, Environmental
Defense Fund, 1616 P Street, NW, Washington, DC 20036; phone
(202) 387-3500. And: “INCINERATOR ASH ALERT” from New York
Public Interest Research Group, 9 Murray Street, NY, NY 10007;
phone (212) 349-6460. And: “GREENPEACE REPORT ON THE DIOXIN
LEVELS IN THE SOIL OF THE COMMUNITY NEAR PHILADELPHI’S N.W.
INCINERATOR AND IN THE INCINERATOR ASH.” Available from Ben
Gordon, 1017 West Jackson, Chicago, IL 60667; phone (312)
666-3305.
Because Paul Connett is a chemistry professor, WASTE NOT gives
insight into solid waste that you cannot find anywhere else. For
example, WASTE NOT #3 gives information about the chemistry of
landfill ash-information that can help citizens see through false
arguments by the federal EPA (U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency). The ash issue is crucial to the future of incinerators.
Today Americans produce about 160 million tons of MSW each year.
About 15 million tons of this (9%) are currently incinerated in
about 140 incinerators and these incinerators produce about 4
million tons of ash annually. By the year 2000, Americans will
be producing 190 million tons of MSW, available landfill space
will have diminished (because old landfills are filling up, and
new ones can’t be sited because the public now knows that
landfills leak and pollute drinking water), the cost of
landfilling municipal solid waste (MSW) will have increased
greatly–and so, according to EPA, several hundred new MSW
incinerators will be needed. Incinerators reduce the volume of
garbage that has to be dumped.
Unfortunately, there is considerable evidence that MSW ash is
more toxic than the garbage from which it was derived.
Incinerators reduce the volume, but they increase the hazards.
Heating garbage in an incinerator does two things to increase the
hazards: it concentrates the toxic metals, and it produces new
chemicals that weren’t in the garbage to begin with (or were
there, but in smaller amounts). Dioxins and furans are examples
of chemicals created inside an incinerator.
In the late 1970s, the EPA developed a test for deciding whether
a particular waste is toxic or not. It is called the “Extraction
Procedure Toxicity Test” or “EP Tox Test” for short. The test is
simple: slightly acid water (intended to simulate natural rain
water) is poured onto the waste; water that trickles through the
waste (called leachate) is tested to see what it contains. If it
contains any chemicals covered by the Safe Drinking Water Act
(SDWA, a federal law) in amounts 100 times higher than the
permissible drinking levels established in the SDWA law, then
that waste is declared officially toxic and must be disposed of
in a hazardous waste landfill, not an ordinary landfill.
Disposal in a hazardous waste landfill is very expensive.
For years, people have been dumping MSW ash into ordinary
landfills without doing the EP tox test. However during the last
two years, the Environmental Defense Fund and others have
gathered evidence that about 30% of all MSW ash cannot pass an EP
tox test. This means that about 1/3 of all MSW ash should be
disposed of in hazardous waste landfills at great expense. If
MSW ash has to be disposed of as a hazardous waste, the economics
of municipal incineration cease to make sense. Since banks and
waste companies like Waste Management, Inc., have billions of
dollars at stake in the move toward MSW incinerators, the
toxicity of MSW ash is a tremendously important political issue.
The EPA is in a bind. Their job is to protect the natural
environment, yet EPA is an executive agency run by political
appointees. Clearly, it is in the interests of politicians
everywhere to push ahead with solid waste incinerators. The
companies that get the huge contracts to build and operate such
incinerators will make campaign contributions and cooperate with
local officials in other important ways.
Furthermore, if incinerating MSW becomes too expensive, and if
landfill space runs out because people won’t allow siting of new
landfills in their backyard for fear of being poisoned, then
there will be no choice left: we will have to begin to look at
the individual items in municipal garbage and stop manufacturers
from using the most toxic chemicals. Such meddling in industrial
decision-making is the last thing this government wants to start.
For these reasons, the EPA needs MSW ash to appear to be
non-toxic so that the economics of municipal incineration will
continue to be accepted by taxpayers.
Thus EPA administrator Lee Thomas, President Reagan’s man at EPA,
needs to have us believe that the EP tox test makes MSW ash look
worse than it really is. Mr. Thomas testified before Congress
April 13 that the EP tox test “may overestimate the amount of
metals” that would actually leach out of MSW ash under real
landfill conditions. Mr. Thomas argues that the EP tox test
simulates acid conditions in a garbage landfill, but that ash in
a landfill all by itself, not mixed with garbage, would not be in
an acid environment and therefore would not release metals as
much as the EP tox test indicates.
In WASTE NOT #3, Paul and Ellen Connett give evidence that
reveals the fraudulent nature of the EPA’s argument. They cite
two studies showing that MSW ash is so alkaline (from the
limestone added to the pollution scrubbing system) that normal
water leaches out more metals than does acid water. In other
words, the Connetts give chemical evidence that the EPA’s EP tox
test doesn’t overestimate the hazards of MSW ash, it
underestimates those hazards.
When the EPA sets out to prove a point for political purposes,
science takes a back seat. Without people on our side who know
chemistry, where would we be? Misled by our government but
unable to understand how. Hats off to Paul and Ellen Connett and
their new publication, WASTE NOT. Subscribe! It’s $25/yr from
Work on Waste USA, 82 Judson St., Canton, NY 13617; phone (315)
379-9200. (If you can, send an extra $50–help them expand.)
–Peter Montague, Ph.D.
Descriptor terms: information services; incineration;
landfilling; recycling; waste not; work on waste usa, inc.; ellen
connett; paul connett; ash; particulates; richard denison; edf;
dioxins; ben gordon; epa; msw; drinking water; water pollution;
groundwater; toxicity; furans; ep tox test; toxic wastes;
leachate; legislation; enforcement; sdwa; edf; wmi; epa;
corruption; polititicians; lee thomas; reagan;