Document 6BJjvOeLO10QYqJ77415mEp3d

Belatedly, the campaign begins to control hazardous chemical wastes Irt the last 200 years, and with stag gering acceleration in the last 25, thepower, . extent and depth ofman's interventions in the natural order seem to presage a rev olutionary new epoch in human history, perhaps the most revolutionary the mind can conceive. Men seem, on a planetary scale, to be substituting the controlled for the uncontrolled, thefabricatedfor the un worked, the planned for the random. And they are doing so with a speed and depth of intervention unknown in any previous age ofhuman history. --Barbara Ward and Rend Dubos, Only One Earth introduction of these chemicals into our environment." His report was supported by a study of 32 major chemical-contam ination incidents that was conducted by the Library of Congress. The library's sur vey said these cases "represent the tip of an iceberg of truly unknown dimensions" and concluded that toxic chemicals "are f all of man's interventions in the Onatural order, none is accelerating quite so alarmingly as the creation of chemical compounds. Through their genius, modem alchemists brew as many as 1,000 new concoctions each year in the U.S. alone: At last count, nearly 50,000 chemicals were on the market. Many have been an undeniable boon to mankind, mitigating pain and disease, prolonging life for millions and expanding the economy in myriad ways, by stimu lating the creation of new products. There is, however, a price to pay for an indus trial society that has come to rely so heav ily on chemicals: almost 35,000 of those used in the U.S. are classified by the fed eral Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) as being either definitely or poten tially hazardous to human health. Al though cause-and-effect relationships be tween many chemicals and specific illnesses are still difficult to prove; the danger is clearly growing: Long con cerned about the more familiar pollution problems of nuclear wastes, dirty air and befouled lakes and rivers, the nation has only belatedly begun to recognize the threat of chemical wastes poisoning . America's earth and--more ominously --its underground reservoirs. Last week, sounding the most author itative warning yet, Julius Richmond, the Surgeon General of the U.S., declared that throughout the 1980s the nation will "con front a series of environmental emergen cies" posed by toxic chemicals that "are adding to the disease burden in a signif icant, although as yet not precisely de fined, way." Said the Surgeon General's report to the Senate: "The public health risk associated with toxic chemicals is in creasing, and will continue to do so until we are-successful in identifying chemicals which are highly toxic and controlling the so long lasting and pervasive in the en vironment that virtually the entire pop ulation of the nation, and indeed the world, carries some body burden of one or several of them." Experts may debate just how bad the problem is. Robert A. Roland, president of the Chemical Manufacturers Associ ation, attacked the Surgeon General's re port for exaggerating the threat of toxic wastes. But one thing is certain: the rap id accumulation of chemical-waste prod ucts poses one of the most complex and expensive environmental control and cleanup tasks in history. Says Douglas M. Costie, administrator of the EPA: "We didn't understand that every barrel stuck into the ground was a ticking time bomb, primed to go off." Predicts Dr. Irving Selikoff, director of the Environmental Sci ences Laboratory of New York City's Mount Sinai Medical School: "Toxic waste will be the major environmental and public health problem facing the U.S. in the '80s." The EPA estimates that the U.S. is generating more than 77 billion lbs. of hazardous chemical wastes a year and that only 10% are being handled in a safe manner. At least half of the wastes, says Gary N. Dietrich, an EPA official, "are just being dumped indiscriminately." here may be no greater threat than T the steady rise in the number of wells found to be contaminated by chemicals. Fully 50% of all Amer icans depend on ground rather than sur face water for their drinking supply. Water that may have fallen to earth as long as a century ago has percolated slbwly down through soil and porous rock to collect in vast underground, aquifers that were virtually void of chemical and bac teriological impurities. Now substances, mostly petrochemicals thought to have been harmlessly disposed of years agorare beginning to show up even in the deeper U.S. wells. This contamination will grow as those forgotten chemicals of the past steadily reach more of the underground reservoirs from which Americans will drink in the future. After two years of investigation, the New York Public Interest Research Group, Inc., a respected private organi zation, charges that 66 companies dump nearly 10 million gal. of contaminated waste water each day into eleven munic ipal sewerage systems on Long Island. Since none of these systems can treat tox ic wastes, claims the report, the drinking TIME. SEPTEMBER 22. 1980 PCB-ARCH-EXT0377925 A vivid illustration of the problems facing many connaualttes throughout the U-Sj: thousands of drams containing toxic wastes are scattered across water for some 3 million residents is "in danger of deteriorating into a severely contaminated industrial sewer.'' , In a lovely wooded area of New Jer sey known as the Pine Barrens, more than 100 wells have been poisoned by chemi cals leaching from the 133-acre Jackson Township dump. James McCarthy, who had drunk well water for ten years, had one kidney removed in 1977, and now has trouble with the other. Tara, his daughter, died ip 1975 of a kidney cancer when she wast nine months, old. A 16-year-old nei^iborilost a kidney to cancer, another neighbor is on dialysis for kidney prob lems; a third also has a kidney ailment. No scientific link has been established be-. tween the chemicals and the illnesses, but, McCarthy says, "you can't tell me that all our kidney problems and the poisons in our water aren't connected." Water supplies in 22 Massachusetts towns have been contaminated by chem icals. In Michigan, inspectors.have found 300 sites where wastes have polluted ground water. Residents of some- 90 homes near Muskegon now use bottled' water supplied by the county. The. pol luted water there, says Tom Spencer* a county health official, "looks just like brick beer. It even has a head on it." Coal-tar residues have drained into an aquifer under the metropolitan area, of Minneapolis and St. Paul. While tfie Twin Cities draw water from the Mis sissippi River, many of their suburbs de pend on the threatened underground supply. Near Charles City, Iowa, some deep wells 30 to 40 miles downstream from a chemical dump have shown traces of contamination. At the waste heap, state analysts have found some 6 mil lion lbs. of arsenic, as well as large quan tities of other dangerous chemicals! Says Larry Crane, director of the Iowa de partment of environmental quality: "It's an organic chemists' cauldron." Growing recognition of the menace of chemicals has produced a series of state laws that make the casual disposal of wastes a criminal offense. Under a 1979 New Jersey statute, for example, offenders can be fined up to S50,000 a Storing chemicals In Idaho missile silo "You don't want them near you--nor do I." day for every day they leave wastes un protected and may get jail sentences of up to ten years. As a result of such new rules, careless dumping has been declin ing--until recently: The reason for the upsurge: a tough set of federal regula tions that will go info effect on Nov. 19 requiring dangerous chemical wastes to be tracked "from cradle to grave"; each person or company receiving any chem ical wastes on the list will have to ac count for what happens to them and will be held responsible if the substances are not properly handled. To beat the deadline, some companies have been tak ing chemical refuse they have stored, on their property for months or even years and simply getting rid of the stuff as swift ly and as surreptitiously, as they can, often dumping by night and running. One day a field in Illinois was empty; a week or so later, it contained 20,000 bbl. of dumped wastes. Kentucky state police staked out a site just outside Daniel Boone National Forest, where some 200 contain ers loaded with dangerous solvents had been discarded. They arrested three Ohio truck drivers. Hundreds of toxic drums were found on three sites near historic Plymouth, Mass. State troopers and other authorities set up roadblocks to stop ille gal dumping operations in New Hamp shire, which, like the other New England states, has no legal disposal site. Declared New Hampshire acting Attorney General Gregory Smith: "We know toxic waste is being hauled through the state. We have to find out where and when." The upcoming federal regulations and new state laws will surely help, but what 60 ?=~\ TIME, SEPTEMBER 22,1980 PCB-ARCH-EXT0377926 haunts the EPA's Costle and other envi tles pose no threat to health. But to an ronmentalists is the scope of the problem. alarming degree, petrochemicals that are In 1941 the American petrochemical in far less benign but just as durable have dustry produced 1 billion lbs. of synthetic for years been discarded as casually as chemicals. By 1977 that rate had soared to .household garbage. Many bear mystifying 350 billion Its. ' names: trichloroethylene, tetrachloroeth- In evolutionary terms, the rapidity ylene, dichloroethylene, dibromochlo- and scale of this chemical creativity are romethane, polychlorinated biphenyls frightening. Through the ages, most of the (pcbs). These, and many more,, are sus earth's varied organisms, from single cells pected of contributing to the rising inci to plants, animals and early humans, usu dence of cancer in the U.S. But experts ally had ample time to adapt to the pace in the field are quick to admit the dif of natural change. They evolved protec ficulty of proving .the harm caused by tive mutations to meet the gradual shifts chemical wastes. Says Mount Sinai's Sel- in the earth's vital balance between acids ikoff: "When it comes to chemicals and ill and alkalines, in the salinity of water, in ness, it's hard to prove cause and effect, levels of oxygen in the atmosphere: But though we certainly have our suspicions." man cannot patiently wait through the centuries for his body to develop a genetic defense against these chemicals if, indeed, such a defense is possible.- The most sinister side of the chemicalwaste threat may be the very uncertainty of its ultimate impact. Adding to the di lemma is the fact that past disposal prac tices have been so haphazard that no one knows just how much chemical garbage must be cleared up--or even where it is. The producers, the users and the ultimate disposers of the chemicals have not been required to keep records on what they did with waste material. Most companies stack it in barrels on back lots. Some pay haulers to cart it to reprocessing plants, high-temperature incinerators or landfills where thick clay linings prevent chem icals from leaching into the earth. But all too many waste handlers have merely tossed the refuse into leaky burial pits, or carted it off to municipal dumps to mix with household garbage, or paid farmers small fees to let them hide 55gal. drums on unused land, often by dark of night. Some haulers have pumped liq uid wastes into tank trucks and driven down rural roads with the pet cocks open, releasing the chemicals into ditches. Some of the companies that paid middlemen or haulers to get rid of the refuse asked no questions about--and- did not want to know--where the chemicals went. As a result, the poisons have turned up in surprising places. Not far from home plate at. New York City's Shea Stadium, a festering pond containing PCB, toluene, benzene and DDT turns red,, blue or green as the mixture of the waste changes. The mess is. so flammable that the pool has caught fire twice in the past year. In the marshes around New Jersey's Meadowlands sports complex, home of the pro football Giants, some 200 tons of mer cury residues have contaminated Berry's Creek, causing Selikoff to declare, "On a bad day, breathing in the Meadowlands may be as dangerous as driving at In dianapolis." The abandoned shafts and tunnels in the hills above Pennsylvania's Susquehanna River lure illegal chemical dumpers. So much poison has been poured for so long into one deep hole near Pittston that Republican Senator John Heinz insists, "This is more dangerous than ot only is the pace quickening, N there is also a basic difference in the quality of change that modem chemicals make in the air, earth and water. Petrochemists have assembled the molecules contained in coal, oil and gas in new ways, producing compounds that do not exist in a natural state. These compounds are essential to such products as pharmaceuticals, plastics, insulation, textiles and food additives. But unlike many natural Chemicals, most petro chemicals do not decay rapidly under the assault of such natural forces as bacteria, sun, wind and water. That puny plastic bottle once full of household bleach may well outlast the mighty pyramids. So far as is now known, bleach bot PCB-ARCH-EXT0377927 Environment Three Mile Island because we don't real ousness of the problem last year with the ly know what's down there." Six New Jer revelation of the horror that had occurred sey men, including Russell Mahler, pres in New York's Love Canal. Contamina ident of Hudson Oil Refining Corp., have tion from a landfill laced with chemicals been indicted in Pennsylvania on charg seeped into the area on the outskirts of Ni es of illegally tossing chemicals into the agara Falls. A total of 1,200 houses and a shaft, thereby polluting the river. school had been built near the site. Alarmed by studies of damage to the res o accurate count of all the toxic- idents' health, the Federal Government Nwaste dumps is possible. Many re finally paid for the temporary evacuation veal themselves only when a flash of families. At present, 710 families have flood or gradual erosion exposes been declared eligible to move, and about rusting and cracking drums. Searchinghafolrf have left the area. Researchers are clandestine sites, some 100 EPA agents are continuing to probe the residents' high in tracking down reports of midnight dump cidence of cancer, birth defects and respi ing, or seeking out acrid odors permeat ratory and neurological problems. ing wooded acres or strange colors stain The Love Canal story emerged grad ing rivers and streams. So far, the EPA ually, but three events this year in the estimates that there are some 50,000 sites New York City region demonstrated sud where chemicals have been dumped. The denly and spectacularly just how heed EPA believes that 2,000 of these dumps lessly the chemical compounds have been may pose serious health hazards. stored. In April, residents of Elizabeth, The public got an inkling of the seri N.J., and nearby Staten Island, N.Y., were jolted by explosions from a dump containing at. least 50,000 chemical-filled barrels. The blasts rattled windows in Manhattan skyscrapers ten miles away. On July 4, an industrial-paint-manufac turing company that stored chemical wastes in its backyard flamed into a fouralarm blaze that spread toxic fumes over the city of Carlstadt, N.J. Three days lat er, storage drums at a chemical disposal plant in Perth Amboy, N-J-> erupted in a barrage of explosions and a roaring fire that wiped out seven buildings and 16 businesses in an industrial park. Nearby residences were evacuated for several hours because no one knew how toxic the spreading smoke might be. After the Love Canal and New Jer sey headlines, an ABC News-Harris poll found that 76% of those surveyed con sider the dumping of toxic chemicals "a very serious problem," and despite a growing antagonism toward Government The Toxicity Connection / Michigan State University's new Center for Environmental Toxicology, that "this substance is toxic to the bacteria in the cow rumen." Such toxicity did not show up in tests with rats. D uring the Viet Nam War, Air Force planes sprayed the Another strategy is to study groups of people who have- dioxin-laced defoliant Agent Orange on dense jungles been exposed to specific chemicals, either on the job or in ac to strip the ground of coven American soldiers got sprayedcidents. By this means, scientists have established some too, and now thousands of veterans are sure that the ex cause-and-effect links--for example, between prolonged in posure has caused them skin rashes, neurological disorders, halation of asbestos particles and mesothelioma (cancer of Cancer and birth defects in their of&pring. Residents of the the lining of the chest or abdomen). But often the results of Love Canal area of Niagara Falls, N.Y., are no less dis such epidemiological studies are not entirely convincing. The tressed. They are convinced that the toxic wastes buried problem: scientists must trace effect back to probable cause there have led to nerve damage, miscarriages and other ail rather than identifying cause and looking for effects. Says ments, including mental retardation among their children. Dr Irving Selikoff, of Manhattan's Mount Sinai Medical Says Housewife Cynthia Bassett: "It's as if we're all Center, who established the asbestos-cancer connection: mutants." "You're always working backward in this field." If contemporary toxicologists were to conjure up a cause- Researchers are also confronted with the task of iso and-effect grammar for lethal chemicals, asbestos would lating the factors that might have contributed to an illness. stand for lung cancer, benzene for leukemia, Kepone for ste The chemical dioxin can produce the skin condition chlor- rility; vinyl chloride for cancer of the liver. The links be acne, but allergies and plants produce conditions with sim tween these chemicals and certain ailments are now clearly ilar symptoms. Benzene can cause leukemia, but so does limned, in medical circles as well as in popular mythology. radiation. Many diseases take a long time to show up. Work But the connections with diseases for other substances are ers exposed to vinyl chloride at a B.F. Goodrich plant in Lou merely suspicions and likely to remain so for a long time. isville did not develop angiosarcoma, a rare form of liver The dismaying fact is that while toxic chemicals unques cancer, until 15 to 20 years later. Says Selikoff: "There is no tionably affect human health, there is usually no way of classic set of symptoms for chemical diseases." knowing who will become ill in any given population or what Still another difficulty is that chemicals may behave to ailments will be caused by the exposure. Scientists might be tally unpredictably. Some act synergistically--one enhanc able to find out by giving selected people precise amounts of ing the toxicity of another. By contrast, others interfere with chemicals for specific lengths of time and comparing these one another. Michigan researchers have found that both human guinea pigs with a control group that has not been ex polybrominated biphenyls (PCBs) and dioxin seem to pre posed. But such experiments would raise vent kidney damage from chloroform, but proper howls of indignation. So the disease de they are hardly beneficial. Another problem tectives must rely on less direct methods. for the researcher: determining the level, or One alternative approach is to expose lab threshold, at which a chemical will begin to oratory animals or even individual cells to do its damage. chemicals. Often such experiments will pro Faced with all these uncertainties, scien duce unwelcome changes--say, mutations in tists are understandably cautious. Says Hook: bacteria or bladder cancer in rats (as was the- "We know that ingesting these things is prob case with the animals fed huge amounts of ably not good for you. At the same time we .ccharin). But what causes problems in one should not go shooting our mouths off and species may not be dangerous to another. In scare everyone." Still, few scientists would dis Michigan, researchers found that cows that agree with Selikoff when he urges an imme licked bam wood treated with the preserva diate cleanup of the chemical mess. Says Sel tive pentachlorophenol were starving to ikoff: "We're fouling our own nest, and we death. It turned out, explains Jerry Hook of Selikoff: seeking the link can't survive if we continue." TIME, SEPTEMBER 22,198i 63 PCB-ARCH-EXT0377928 Environment regulation, 93.6% wanted "federal stan: dards prohibiting such dumping made much more strict than they are now." Is the public unduly alarmed? Federal of ficials charged with enforcing the long-in adequate laws against unsafe disposal practices do not think so. Declares Dale Bryson, an EPA deputy chief in the Mid west: "Every time we go into these cases, we find it's worse than we thought." Some Dantesque examples: ELIZABETH, NJ. On a small peninsula between New Jersey, and Staten Island, the charred re mains of what had been a collection of about 50,000 drums, some stacked four high, adjoin a bnck-and-steel building once owned by the now bankrupt Chem ical Control Corp. The containers had nearby Edison, N.J.: the man was incin erated so quickly that he died with his hand on his gearshift. State officials have identified a horrific arsenal of chemicals at the site, including two containers of ni troglycerine; two canisters of a chemical similar iri effect to mustard gas; barrels full of biological agents; cylinders of phos gene and pyrophoric gases, which are so volatile they ignite when exposed to air; wastes contaminated by lead, mercury and arsenic; plus a variety of solvents, pes . ticides, plasticizers, including dangerous vinyl chloride and even picric acid, which has more explosive power than TNT.. Toxic wastes are trucked to New Jer sey's single licensed toxic-waste inciner ator in Logan Township, where the chem icals are burned at more than 5000 F. After months of work, an 80-man crew New Hampshire state police stopping truckers to check for Illegal loads of toxic wastes "We didrt't understand that every barrel stuck into the ground was a ticking time bomb. been left to rot for nearly a decade. Many of the drums had never been properly la beled; others were so seared by the ex plosive fire in April that neither the man ufacturer nor the nature of the chemicals they contain can be determined from out side markings. Some barrels are leaking unidentified chemicals into the ground. Unknown wastes seep into an adjacent stream called the Arthur Kill and even tually ooze into the Hudson River. A huge tank holds a fluid laced with 4,000 parts per million of PCB, a chemical that has been linked to birth defects and nervous disorders. Explains George Weiss, coor dinator of the cleanup from New Jersey's department of environmental protection: "No one knows what to do with that. No one even knows if we can touch it." Wearing a respirator and a suit like an astronaut's to seal out fumes, the operator of a front-loader cautiously picks up one drum at a time. He is well aware of the fate of a bulldozer driver who hit a container of flammable phosphorus at a landfill in has removed all but 700 drums from the site. Once the barrels are all gone, metal detectors and aerial photography will be used to uncover evidence of any addition al buried wastes. The contaminated top soil must be hauled away. Probing for pos sible poisoning of the. underlying water will come later. How was the mess created? Chemical Control Corp. had signed contracts with some of the state's chemical companies and factories to dispose of their wastes. The company was supposed to solidify nontoxic materials for safe burial in land fills and detoxify the poisonous chemicals for similar disposal. Instead, the corpo ration' just stacked the drums out back. Reacting to the fears of Elizabeth resi dents, state officials seized the site in March 1978 and began the slow cleanup. The companies, whose barrels were clear ly labeled, included the 3M Co. and Union Carbide; the firms had no legal obliga tion to retrieve their drums but promptly did so when notified by the state. "We don't have any choice about cleaning this place up,'' says Jerry Eng lish, a lawyer who heads New Jersey's de partment of environmental protection. "We simply cannot allow a situation like this to continue." Wearing a white vinyl coverall over her fashionable suit, yellow plastic bootees over her high-heeled shoes, a respirator and protective gloves, Engfish recently climbed on a rooftop and looked out over the sea of barrels. She broke into a wry laugh, grandly swept an arm toward the rubble and declared. "Some day, my son, this will all be yours:" SEYMOUR, IND. A neat stone wall graces the entrance to Freeman Field Industrial Park in the otherwise rustic small town of Seymour (pop. 13,100), about 70 miles southeast of Indianapolis. But in the park,' there is a dry, mud-caked ditch, and the trees along its banks are dead. Inside a wire fence, an acrid scent brings tears to visitors' eyes. Some of the tidily stacked barrels bear household names: General Electric, Dow Chemical, Shell Oil, Monsanto. Paint sludges collect in sticky red and green pools on the porous ground, and such chemicals as arsenic, benzene, toluene, trichloroethylene and naphthalene ooze from rusty barrels. Near by, two former dairy trucks, one still bearing the faded in vitation DRINK REFRESHING MILK, con tain dangerous chemical wastes. . Over a period of twelve years, some 60,000 drums of waste were heaped on this site by Seymour Recycling Corp., which, like Chemical Control Corp., contracted with its corporate clients to get rid of their wastes safely. After the company failed to comply with a state order to dispose of the chemicals, a court appointed a custodian: William Vance, an easygoing small-town lawyer and president of the Jackson County Bar Association. He inherited the mess in February. Says he: "Like most of the citizenry, I wasn't that concerned be fore--but I am now." In March, hydrogen gas began rising from a shed on the property where 25 bad ly corroded drums of chlorosilane had been stored next to 100 bbl. of flammable solvents. Rain soaking the chlorosilane created a smoky chemical reaction. Fear of an explosion caused city officials to or der the area vacated for several hours. Says Vance: "We had a 13-acre keg of dy namite." Firemen rushed to separate the drums. Now, Vance frets, "every time we have a thunderstorm I think, `My God, don't let lightning hit out there!' " Vance is even more concerned about the future, He fears that the ground water beneath the sandy soil has been polluted, and this will show up later in wells. "It's a perfect setup," he says. "We think what they did with some of the chemicals was just pour 'em out on the ground. Glub. glub, glub." When state and local officials failed to get results, the federal EPA de clared a water emergency and took over the cleanup chore. So far, it has spent 64 TIME.SEPTEMBER 22.1980 PCB-ARCH-EXT0377929 Environment nearly $1 million arid estimates that com plete removal of all hazardous wastes at the site could cost more than $12 million. "They couldn't have located that dump in a worse place," says Roland Kasting, a farmer who lives near by. "There's a vast underground reservoir right underneath us. There have to be laws on this chemical waste. It's going to get' worse and worse --it's going to be everywhere." " />.//,// " ' . K///7/P7_es7ticides7 r /7 7 7/7 //t'7/^. 7/XT V; 7V77 V '/'// Well -rr 7^:/ 7 '.'U 7 /7 , Chemical Dump 7 / 7 ' ' ' . ! '! ' 7 1 I 7 ' /7 7> 7 '// 7 '' '/ '/ >7 7 7 / /'/ / >' ' ////'/!'/. 7 , 7 7 7, / 7 ' , 'Lagoon" of '/ /J Industrial Wastes77 //. / / /, / MONTAGUE, MICH. It took years of local agitation and a lawsuit filed by the State of Michigan, but something now is being done by Hooker Chemical Corp. (which also left contam ination at Love Canal) to help dispose of some 1.2 million cu. yds. of chemical waste, drums and contaminated soil on its 880 acres of property on the edge of Montague. The cleanup may be too late to satisfy many residents in the commu nity, a small town (pop. 2,396) of gracious, shaded houses along the shores of White Lake. State water officials estimate that some 20 billion gal. of ground water have been laced with deadly chemical wastes in an underground flow of contamination that is half a mile wide and more than a mile long. Moreover, each heavy rainfall propels some 800 lbs. of chemical resi dues daily into the lake, which, in turn, drains into Lake Michigan. Children used to play in the dump be hind the Hooker plant, where rusting drums sometimes leaked a tarry substance as sticky as soft asphalt. The site still con tains at least 100 different compounds, many produced by spontaneous reactions among the discarded chemicals. They in clude hexachlorocyclopentadiene, more conveniently known as C-56. ToxiColo gists have found a C-56 derivative in the flesh of White Lake fish. As a result of a lawsuit filed by the . state. Hooker agreed to build a huge vault to contain its wastes. It has dug a hole 18 ft. deep and 300 yds: long. The bottom and sides of the excavation were formed of coarse beach sand, which would have allowed chemicals to filter down to the aquifer lying 80 ft. or less below the sur face. Therefore, Hooker is lining the vault with lO-ft.-thick walls of compacted clay. The vault will rise five stories into the air. "A monument to stupidity," snorts Marion Dawson, a leader in the long fight to force Hooker to clean up its act. Hooker officials do not deny their mis takes, though they rightly point out that they were made before the hazards were fully understood. The company is spend ing some $15 million to correct the prob lems, including sinking a series of "purge" wells designed to draw water from the aquifer, decontaminate it and pipe it back into the ground. Hooker has also built a $100,000 pipeline to carry uncontaminat ed city water to houses on Blueberry Ridge, where wells are threatened. In ad dition, the company is paying the month ly water bills of these residents. Says Ken Hall, the Hooker official S3 Water-bearing rocks, sand 23 and gravel TIME Diagram by Karan Karlsaon Deep Concern: Ground Water At the very top of the environmental scientists' list of concerns about pollution k damage is something that most Americans probably believe to be safely be yond the reach of contamination: ground water: This is water that lies buried from a few feet to a half mile or more beneath the land's surface in stretches of permeable rock, sand and gravel known as aquifers. In the U.S. there is five times as much water in such subterranean reservoirs as flows through all its sur face lakes, streams and rivers in a year. While most ground water is believed to re main pure, concern is rising because it is one of nature's greatest nonrenewable resources. Unlike surface water or the air, ground water is all but impossible to purify once it has become chemically polluted. Ground water is not exposed to the natural purification systems that recycle and cleanse surface water; there is no sunlight, for example, to evaporate it and thereby remove salts and other minerals and chemicals. Nor can ground water be counted upon to clean itself as it moves through the earth, for it scarcely "flows" at all. Says Eckardt C. Beck, the EPa's assistant administrator for water and waste management: "Ground water can take a human lifetime just to traverse a mile. Once it becomes polluted, the contamination can last for decades." In the past, ground water was kept pure because the soil at the earth's surface could be counted on to act as a filtration system, a kind of geological "kidney" that would scrub out bacteria and other insoluble contaminants placed on or in the ground before they could seep down to the water table, the ground water's upper limit. But this filtration system does not reliably screen out the waste chem icals that now leach into the soil from a variety of sources, including cropland that has been sprayed with pesticides, and industrial dumps like the pools into which liquid chemicals are placed so that the water they contain will evaporate. The EPA has located 181,000 such "lagoons" at industrial and municipal waste disposal sites around the country. In a study of 8,200 of them, the agency found that 72% werejust holes in the ground, not lined with concrete or other ma terials to prevent the chemicals from leaching into the soil; 700 of these unlined la goons were within a mile of wells tapping ground water. Bacterial wastes, such as the effluent from the nation's estimated 16.6 million residential septic tanks and cesspools, can be filtered fairly simply out of drinking water. But chemical contaminants are another matter. Says EPA Administrator Douglas Costle: "We are not even sure if, not to mention how, chemical contaminants can be removed. It takes sophisticated testing just to determine if there are chemicals present at all." The most serious cases of grotmd-water pol lution confirmed so far have been in the North east states, where the problem is largely the re sult of surface dumping of industrial wastes, and in California from agricultural chemicals, But awareness of the vulnerability of ground water is still so new that epa officials do not really know how far the fouling of the aquifers has spread. Says Costle: "We cannot even begin to say how much of our drinking water, actual or potential, may have been contaminated. We are EPA Official Douglas Costle going to be doing a lot of detective work. " TIME, SEPTEMBER 22.1980 PCB-ARCH-EXT0377930 Environment handling the cleanup: "You haves to be careful about judging the 1950s by 1980s standards. I grew up thinking that if you put something in the ground it was safe. But that thinking was in error! If you don't do something about it now, you'll have an esterhal problem." Indeed, much of the : unsafe dumping occurred before the com-. panies had a firm idea of how serious the waste problem was, and many disposed of material in ways they thought were safe at the time. . , - ! : The chemical industry generally ap proves the new federal regulations that, will require the tracking of all toxic chem icals to the point of final disposal. Vio lators can be fined up to $25,000 a! day and jailed for a year for a first offense. Says Robert A. Roland, president of the Chemical Manufacturers Association; "We don't want irresponsible disposal. This is a perfectly reasonable thing for the Federal Government to do." posal facilities in the U.S:, including in cinerators arid detoxification plants, to handle the toxic wastes, if the companies Would go to the trouble and expense of using them. But as federal regulations goveming the dumps become more stringent, and as the volume, of wastes increases, the nation will need additional sites. Where to put them? "Everybody is in fa vor of safe disposal," says Costle. "They say, sure; let's have a safe landfill; but not in my town." Howard Tanner, chief of Michigan's Department of Natural Re sources, goes even further. "We have tech nical solutions for these wastes," he says, "but we don't, have social solutions, You don't want them anywhere near where you live--nor do I." Looking for new waste sites, a private that generate the wastes. The Carter Ad ministration expects a compromise will be reached on the bill this year, possibly before Congress recesses for the Novem ber election: Even if passed, this act Would be only a start. The epa estimates the eventual cost of a national cleanup would be as much as $22 billion. , Insists Costle: "We can't afford not to clean up. All we'd be doing would be pushing the cost over to the next gener ation." He notes that When the Life Sci ence Products Co., a chemical plant in Hopewell, Va., was found to be; contain-., mating the James River With Kepone in 1975, the source of pollution could have been cleaned up at a cost of $250,000. The company delayed and since has paid out $13 million in damage claims. Now, ex he industry is more worried about the epa's new rules requiring that only sites meeting federal stan dards be used. The companies are fearful that EPA standards will be so strict that an insufficient number of sites will be created. If that happens, predicts Roland, "companies will have two choices: they will either have nowhere to dump and they, will close down, or they will go out and break the law." Conceding that "the EPA is between a rock and a hard place, with an enormous task to confront," Ro land contends that the agency too often acts on the basis of insufficient informa tion. The industry, for example, insists that the EPA has not carefully evaluated the hazards of various chemicals and that its regulations are needlessly complex and burdensome. Up to a point, the epa's Costie agrees. "I know that things aren't perfeet with us," he says. "But just imagine how they would be without us." . On its own, the chemical industry has set up a hazardous-waste response center in Washington, where state and local of ficials who are worried about an aban doned disposal site can get expert advice about how serious the threat may be and how the dump could be cleaned up. The industry has also written a model wastedisposal-siting law for the guidance of state legislatures. Irving S. Shapiro, chairman of Du Pont, reports that his company is recy cling waste material to reduce the dispos al problem and keeps a watchful eye on the contractors it uses for disposal. The most critical problem, as he sees it, is to clean up widely scattered "orphan waste sites" that no one has supervised. Says lie: "Let's start with today, not worry about who did what in the past. Govern ment and industry should work together rather than get emotional. We've got to get going rather than sitting around try ing to figure out who's Wearing the black hat and who's wearing the white hat." Right now there are enough safe dis A pollution device at Love Canal monitoring the air for contaminants near boarded-up houses A high incidence ofcancer birth defects and respiratory and neurologicalproblems. company has purchased Obsolete Titan I perts estimate, it. will cost at least $2 bil missile silos in an Idaho desert. Near lion to purify the. river. Contends Costle: Grandview, three 160-ft-deep holes, lined "In a misguided sense of thrift, we can With 6-ft.-thick concrete walls and 13-ft.- save ourselves broke." thick concrete floors, are each being; used Some officials charged with protecting to store some 1.5 million cu. ft. of wastes. water, supplies fear that much of the Several European companies are using in chemical damage already done to under cinerator ships to bum chemical wastes at ground reservoirs is irreparable. Says New sea. Costle feels that U.S. private industry, Jersey's English: "What's in the ground rather than Government, should devise is there. It's too late to do anything about safe disposal techniques. Says he: "It's it." Perhaps so. Yet the growing public smarter mid can do the job more efficient concern, the increasingly cooperative at* ly than the Government." , titude of the chemical industry and the If the future remains a problem, so toughening resolve of federal and state does the past. The immense task of clean governments reflect a new willingness of ing up the accumulated wastes still re the nation to grapple with one of modern mains. A bill is slowly working its way ; technology's least understood and poten through Congress to create a "superfund" tially most insidious threats to health. to be used by the EPA to neutralize haz . The circle must be made complete. . ardous waste spills and dumps as they The society that created the plethora of occur or are discovered.. The legislation, new chemicals that so enhanced human now in various forms, could create a fund life must now use its scientific genius of up to $4 billion in the next six years. to make sure that those creations work But there are bitter fights under way over safely for mankind. --EyEdMagnuson. just how to split the costs between the gen Reported by Peter Stoier/Now York and eral taxpayer and the various industries J. Madeleine Nash/Chicago TIME, SEPTEMBER 22.1980^^ 69 PCB-ARCH-EXT0377931