=======================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
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CORRUPTION OUT OF CONTROL IN ARKANSAS
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.
[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;
IMPORTANT INCINERATOR MEETING OCTOBER 15-17
The Citizen’s Clearinghouse for Hazardous Waste (CCHW) and Ralph
Nader will co-sponsor a strategy session October 15-17 in
Washington, D.C.: “Smoke and Mirrors: Ending the Bad Science of
Incineration.” Phone Mike Williams at CCHW: (703) 237-2249.
Descriptor terms: incineration; meetings; calendar; cchw; ralph
nader; washington; dc; mike williams;