=======================Electronic Edition========================
RACHEL’S HAZARDOUS WASTE NEWS #91
—August 22, 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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WHAT WE MUST DO–PART 4: A LICENSE TO POLLUTE.
[Our series, What We Must Do (see RHWN #88, #89 and #90) is
describing the root causes of the toxics problem in America. The
waste haulers serve as frontline soldiers, disposing of toxics
for industries that produce them, so we’ve focused on the haulers
first. In coming weeks, we’ll turn to the toxics-producing
industries themselves, and finally we’ll consider remedies.]
In past articles in this series, we’ve shown that:
The waste haulers are enormous and growing like a cancer; both
Waste Management, Inc., and Browning-Ferris Industries (BFI), the
nation’s biggest haulers, are growing about 20% per year,
doubling their size every 3.5 years; together, they already
control nearly 50% of the nation’s privately-owned trash
business. A handful of companies are cornering the market for
these essential municipal services. Waste Management now owns
772 subsidiaries, most of which used to be its competitors. This
year alone, Waste Management has announced plans to buy out 100
more competitors; the Justice Department’s anti-trust division
looks the other way. “Can the antitrust division challenge each
merger that comes up? We’d be doing nothing else,” says J.
Robert Kramer III, a Justice Department attorney in Washington.
The waste industry is convincing local governments to build the
largest public works projects every undertaken at the municipal
and county level–trash incinerators with complex pollution
control systems and associated ash landfills; the debt will take
a generation to pay off; the projects themselves are often
technically ill-conceived and will be major sources of
environmental damage; the ash landfills will become the next
generation of superfund sites; since local governments are going
into these toxic landfill projects with their eyes open, they may
well be held liable for water pollution problems that are certain
to occur. They won’t be able to say, “We didn’t know.”
Leaders of the waste industry operate by a pattern of bribery,
price-fixing, bid-rigging and suppression of competition, a
pattern that government seems unable or unwilling to curb.
Government often hasn’t sufficient expertise or clout to monitor
and regulate the waste hauling industry, which has the best
expertise, and the most influential friends, that money can buy;
There’s a revolving door from government to industry, so some
government regulators may not even try to control the waste
haulers in hopes that the sleepiest regulators can look forward
to retiring on high salaries in the waste industry;
Between 1980 and 1983, Waste Management was issued 547 citations
and orders; 19 involved groundwater pollution. Since 1984,
citations have grown to 632 and the groundwater violations have
quadrupled to 88. BFI was cited 196 times between 1980 and 1983,
12 times for groundwater infractions. Since 1983, BFI’s
citations more than doubles to 464 and groundwater infractions
tripled to 36.
What’s more disturbing is that the government has become “hooked”
on ser-vices provided by the waste hauling industry. Thus even
when the industry breaks important rules of civilized society,
the government cannot “debar them,” (prevent them from taking
government contracts) because their work has become essential.
Between them, Waste management and BFI have cornered 40% of all
EPA-financed toxic cleanups, according to the Ft. Lauderdale
(Fla.) Sun Sentinel.
The federal EPA (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency) has
procedures for barring outlaw companies from getting government
contracts. But the waste giants provide essential services that
the government needs. As a result, the government levies fines
against outlaw firms–but these amount to no more than a normal
cost of doing business. “Criminal fines amount to little more
than a license to pollute,” says Laurel Price, a New Jersey
assistant attorney general. “The deterrent is not great,” she
says. Fines are bargained away; when the government sought $2.2
million from Waste Management for dumping hospital waste
illegally, they finally collected $423, after two years of
haggling.
Even when the EPA temporarily barred Waste Management from
accepting waste at one of its leaking landfills in California
back in 1984, other government agencies (Department of Defense,
for example) sent 8,300 tons of cleanup wastes to the site while
the EPA looked the other way.
“They have facilities located in areas where we need to use
them,” says Elaine Stanley, who directs an EPA enforcement
branch. “We don’t have too much of a choice in some cases.”
“If we blacklist hazardous waste haulers in an area where they
are the only haulers, we put ourselves in a bad situation. We
need someone to move that waste,” says Bob Meunier, compliance
chief for an EPA grants division. The EPA has no workforce of
its own to handle chemical cleanups.
The EPA does have its own laboratory facilities but they are too
small to analyze all the samples required by law. Instead, the
government relies on the waste haulers to hire private labs, or
to set up labs of their own. The labs report the results to
government and the government takes them at face value. One of
the private labs used most often by Waste Management, Inc. was
started by Doug Costle after he finished his term as head of EPA
under President Carter. When former EPA officials run a lab, it
lends unwarranted credibility to the clients of that lab. And it
further tightens the already-snug relationship between the
regulators and those they regulate.
In 1985, EPA found Waste Management was filtering water samples
before it sent them off for lab testing. The EPA said this
practice could make pollution look less serious that it was. The
company disputed this claim, according to the Ft. Lauderdale
(Fla.) SUN SENTINAL, and the company continues to filter samples
at more than 100 landfills it operates. Furthermore, the EPA did
not alert state governments to the problem. “You can look at
that as a flaw in the system if you want. I guess it is,” says
Fred Haber, who monitors labs for an EPA office in Edison, NJ.
The EPA is about to lose even more control over Waste Management.
The giant hauler is spending $20 million constructing a new
laboratory to test samples from its 117 landfills, where it will
have complete control over all the analytic results.
THIS SERIES IS BASED ON 25 ARTICLES THAT APPEARED IN THE FT.
LAUDERDALE (FLA.) SUN SENTINEL DURING DECEMBER, 1987. WE’LL
MAIL YOU THE 25 ARTICLES FOR $12.00.
–Peter Montague, Ph.D.
Descriptor terms: haulers; chemical production; chemical
industry; bfi; wmi; msw; antitrust; j. robert cramer; doj;
incineration; ash; landfilling; sara; hazardous waste industry;
federal; revolving door; groundwater; water pollution; lawsuits;
arrests; regulation; monitoring; epa; laurel price; organized
crime; corruption; lawyers; illegal dumping; leaks; ca; dod;
elaine stanley; enforcement; doug costle; jimmy carter; fl; fred
haber; laboratories;