=======================Electronic Edition========================
RACHEL’S ENVIRONMENT & HEALTH WEEKLY #403
(formerly RACHEL’s HAZARDOUS WASTE NEWS)
—August 18, 1994—
News and resources for environmental justice.
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Issue===
EDF PROPOSES INCINERATOR ASH DUMPS
The waste industry and the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) have
held a series of private meetings since June to develop a
proposal to change federal law, to remove the term “hazardous”
from all ash produced by municipal solid waste (msw)
incinerators. The proposal would require that all msw ash be
placed in special dumps (called “monofills”) designated for that
purpose. The 13-page EDF-industry proposal was released publicly
without fanfare August 12.
The two largest corporations in the msw business are Ogden
Martin, and Wheelabrator, a subsidiary of WMX Technologies
(formerly Waste Management, Inc.). EDF is an environmental
organization that in recent years has adopted a strategy of
making alliances with corporate polluters in hopes of modifying
their behavior.
The few grass-roots activists who have heard of the EDF-industry
ash proposal expressed outrage at both the substance of the
proposal, and the secretive process by which it was drawn up.
Paul Connett, co-editor of WASTE NOT and co-director of Work on
Waste USA said, “We see this is as a complete sabotage of all the
grass-roots efforts that have gone into defeating 280
incinerators since 1985. [EDF has] come in and rescued this
technology.” Judi Enck of the New York Public Interest Research
Group (NYPIRG) said, “If I was an incinerator company, I would
just jump at the opportunity to get this legislation because it
makes the picture much rosier for them.” We were unable to
locate any grass-roots activists who favored the EDF-industry
approach. EDF’s executive director, Fred Krupp, said he was
“bewildered” by the “assertion that EDF’s position has been
formulated without any discussion with other groups that work on
this issue,” citing phone discussions with NYPIRG, U.S. Public
Interest Research Group (US PIRG), Sierra Club, and others. Both
NYPIRG and US PIRG oppose the EDF-industry proposal. Sierra Club
has not yet taken a position on the proposal.
The 160 msw incinerators operating in the U.S. produce about 8
million tons of ash each year containing, by rough estimate, some
18,000 tons of lead, plus lesser quantities of other potent
toxins such as cadmium, arsenic and dioxin. [1]
The joint EDF-industry proposal, titled “The Ash Management and
Utilization Act of 1994,” covers ash from municipal solid waste
incinerators, not hazardous waste incinerators. The incinerator
industry hopes Congress will pass the law this term, which would
require extraordinarily rapid action on capitol hill. The
proposal would amend RCRA (the Resource Conservation and Recovery
Act), the nation’s basic waste-management law. The EDF-industry
proposal has the following features:
** Msw ash would not have to be tested for its toxicity;
** No msw ash would ever be designated a “hazardous waste” but
would all be called “special waste;”
** All ash would have to be put into a double-lined dump designed
specifically for ash (termed a “monofill” because only one
substance –ash –could go into it); industry would have to
monitor such dumps for 30 years, after which the taxpaying public
would assume responsibility for monitoring, maintenance, and
eventually cleanup.
** EPA [U.S. Environmental Protection Agency] would be required
to issue a finding in 36 months that ash is, or isn’t, suitable
as a base for road building. Other commercial uses of ash would
be regulated by EPA.
** Within 7 1/2 years, the msw industry would be required to
place all its ash in monofill dumps. Until monofilling began,
the industry would be exempt from liability for any problems its
ash might cause.
The joint EDF-industry proposal follows on the heels of an EDF
victory in the U.S. Supreme Court in early May. The Court ruled
May 2 that msw ash is not exempt from RCRA, the nation’s
hazardous waste law, which requires that wastes be tested for
toxicity; wastes that flunk the test must be placed in
officially-designated hazardous waste dumps. The incineration
industry fears that some of its ash will have to be designated a
hazardous waste –a severe psychological deterrent to expanding
the industry, as well as a considerable expense. Hazardous waste
can cost up to $300 per ton for burial at a legally-designated
hazardous waste dump. Judi Enck of the New York Public Interest
Research Group estimates that ash can be placed in an “ash
monofill” for only $70 or $80 per ton.
For its part, EDF fears that most ash will NOT have to be
designated hazardous waste and will be released directly into the
environment.
May 24th, EPA held a briefing for the incinerator industry,
describing how EPA will react to the Supreme Court decision. EPA
said that within a few months they plan to issue rules that:
** Allow incinerator operators to mix fly ash and bottom ash.
Bottom ash makes up 90% of the ash generated by an incinerator;
fly ash is 10%. The bottom ash usually contains about 2000 parts
per million (ppm) of lead; the lead concentration in fly ash is
usually at least twice that. EPA’s plan would allow dilution of
the more toxic fly ash with less toxic bottom ash, to diminish
the overall concentration of toxins in the combined ash. This
runs contrary to most other EPA rules, which do not allow
dilution as a solution to pollution.
Ash containing 2000 ppm lead is contaminated at a level more than
5 times as high as the “level of concern” EPA recently set for
lead in soil.
** EPA will required msw ash to be tested only 4 times each year.
The average incinerator produces 137 tons of ash per day.
Sampling all this ash only 4 times per year is guaranteed,
mathematically, not to give a very reliable (consistent) estimate
of the actual concentration of pollutants in the ash. Findings
that are not reliable cannot, mathematically, be valid
(accurate). So EPA’s proposal is guaranteed not to give a true
picture of the contaminants in ash.
** EPA will test ash by the Toxicity Characteristic Leaching
Procedure (TCLP). This test does not identify the actual
pollutants contained in the ash; it only identifies those
pollutants that leach out under certain specific conditions.
Since, sooner or later, all of the ash will be released into the
environment (even ash that is monofilled), it is the total
pollutant content that will affect communities, not merely what
leaches out under TCLP conditions. Therefore the TCLP test gives
a misleading estimate of the ash hazard.
** EPA will allow –and may even encourage –ash producers to
“treat” their ash before subjecting it to the TCLP test, to
reduce its chances of flunking the test. For example, by
treating ash with phosphoric acid, the toxic lead can be
converted to lead phosphate, which will not leach out in a TCLP
test. This would allow the ash to pass the TCLP test without
diminishing the long-term hazard of the toxic metals in the ash.
A memo from EDF to several grass-roots leaders dated August 11
refers to ash monofills as “state of the art” technology for
protecting the environment against ash. But in a phone call
August 11, EDF senior scientist Richard Denison said that
communities would only be “a little better protected” by ash
monofills than by the present system. He stressed that the big
benefit would be control of “ash utilization” –schemes to mix
ash into concrete, or put it beneath road surfaces. Ash
utilization is presently unregulated.
Grass-roots activists say the EDF-industry proposal removes a
major point of public debate about msw incineration. Paul
Connett said, “When the ash issue is examined it underlines the
total absurdity of spending billions of dollars destroying
resources that we should be sharing with the future. This is
where the craziness of this whole [incinerator business] breaks
down. You give them a convenient toilet and there’s no [longer
any] question of absurdity. We’re just going to have ash
monofills all over the place.”
EDF’s Karen Florini, an attorney and lobbyist on capitol hill,
expressed surprise that grass-roots incinerator fighters might be
concerned about the proposed legislation. “We didn’t
intentionally not check with [grass-roots activists] about this
stuff, it’s that we didn’t realize that issues relating to
federal legislation on this would be of profound concern to you,”
she said.
The waste industry has demonstrated profound concern for these
issues. According to the Center for Responsive Politics in
Washington, D.C., during the period 1991 to 1994, Ogden, Foster
Wheeler, and various subsidiaries of WMX Technologies contributed
$825,695 to election campaigns of certain members of Congress.
Particularly favored by waste industry contributions were Sen.
Frank Lautenburg (D-N.J.) and Rep. Al Swift (D.-Wash.) who head
the two committees that will review the EDF-industry ash bill.
Fred Krupp said EDF had 3 goals in proposing the legislation:
(1) Immediately limit ash utilization until and unless federal
regulations are developed;
(2) Immediately replace the flawed TCLP-test-based system with
one that imposes baseline requirements on all ash;
(3) Phase in, as quickly as possible, state-of-the-art disposal
requirements for ALL ash.
EDF’s Richard Denison said, “The intent is to try to deal with an
existing problem, which we see as massive and which we see as
needing to be addressed.”
Judi Enck of NYPIRG said she appreciates all the good scientific
work EDF has done on incinerator ash over the years. However,
she thinks they have made a profound error in their proposed ash
legislation: “Ash won’t be a problem any more if the bill passes.
The regulators, the industry, the politicians are going to
dismiss any legitimate concerns about toxicity in ash. They’re
going to say the EDF agreed that we just need to put this in
monofills. What does this mean for our day-to-day organizing
work? It means that we’re going to get monofills sited with the
blessing of a national environmental group and the whole
opportunity to fight with the regulators about ash toxicity, the
[TCLP] test, the [phosphoric acid] treatment, the mixing, it will
all vanish. And there will be a legitimate way to dispose of huge
quantities of ash which you know and I know a good percentage of
which is really a hazardous waste and in 5 or 10 or 20 years will
probably be a Superfund site.”
To tell Congress what you think about the EDF-industry ash bill
contact: Honorable Al Swift, U.S. House of Representatives, 1502
Longworth House Office Building, Washington, DC 20515. Phone:
(202) 225-2605; fax: (202) 225-2608.
To give EDF your opinion of its ash bill, write or phone Fred
Krupp, executive director, 275 Park Avenue South, New York, NY
10010; phone (212) 505-2100; fax: (212) 505-2375.
To contact opponents of the EDF-industry ash bill, call Judi Enck
at NYPIRG: (518) 436-0876.
                
                
                
                
    
–Peter Montague
===============
[1] Assuming the 8 million tons are 90% bottom ash containing
2000 ppm lead and 10% fly ash containing 4000 ppm lead.
Descriptor terms: waste industry; edf; environmental defense
fund; ash monofills; landfilling; dumping; ogden martin; wmx
technologies; wmi; waste management inc; wheelabrator; lead;
cadmiun; arsenic dioxin; rcra; epa; regulations; incineration;
ash; tclp; testing; monitoring; center for responsive politics;
frank lautenburg; al swift; congress; fred krupp; paul connett;
judi enck; richard denison; karen florini;