Document GKarK6OevDnE1oZ3Ddxn2Lwym

October 7,1978 PCB-ARCH-EXT0378741 The waste that wouldn't go away Marc Leepson Marc Ltcpson lives on a farm in Woodbridge, Va. his is a story about a midnight mover. Not Burns $75,000 to dispose of 33,000 gallons of T a guy who skips out on his rent in the mid PCB oil. / dle of the night. Not a late night disco The nearest legal PCB chemical waste landfill dancer. Our midnight mover is a clandestineis located in Livingston, Ala., about 650 miles waste hauling operator who empties toxic chemi from Raleigh. According to police investigators, cal cargoes illegally, under the cover of darkness. Transformer Sales didn't take the PCB oil to the Midnight movers operate in every state of the Alabama landfill. Instead, sometime during'the union.They've dumped toxics in sewers, streams, night of July 28, it was dumped along a network lakes, rivers, oceans, old quarries and in forests, of secondary roads in 15 North Carolina coun fields and trenches. Some even dump their poi ties located between. Raleigh and the Virginia sons along roads. state line. On Aug. 31, Robert Burns, the owner of Trans The PCB oil looked like ordinary road oil, and former Sales Co. of Allegany, N.Y., and Burns' it would have gone unnoticed if a chemist who two sons Randall and Timothy were arrested happened to be vacationing in North Carolina and held without bail in New York on fugitive hadn't become suspicious about its peculiar odor. from justice warrants filed by the state of North He scooped up a sample, analyzed it and notified Carolina. Burns and sons were charged with North Carolina authorities when he discovered dumping 3 3,000 gallons of transformer oil con what it contained. Witnesses recalled seeing an taining the industrial pollutant PCBs (polychlo unmarked truck with New York license plates rinated biphyenyls), Jong known as. one of the spreading the oil along the highway. most toxic substances^ ever synthesized. The Nearly a month later New York State police three also tace federal charges stemming from impounded a 24 foot truck containing an oil the incident. tank. The truck, painted white with no identify Burns' Transformer Sales Co. is in the busi ing marks, is equipped with a switch near the ness of salvaging PCB oil from transformers, and driver's seat enabling someone inside the cab to it has been identified as the largest PCB transpor release the contents of the tank. Burnsadmitted tation, storage and resale firm in the country. that he owns the truck but insists that his com Sometime this summer, Bums was contacted by pany was not involved in the dumping. He can ac an old business associate, R.E. "Buck" Ward Jr., count for every drop of Ward's PCB oil, he said. who owns Ward Transformer Co. in Raleigh, North Carolina authorities arc now debating N.C. According to newspaper reports, Ward paid what to do about the spill--and who is going to 4/Knvironmental Action PCB-ARCH-EXT0378742 pay for the cleanup. State Highway Division lons of PCB oil stored in 500 steel drums were workers, protected by rubber suits and masks, discovered in a Youngsville, Penn, warehouse sprayed the oil with activated charcoal, soapy water and emulsified asphalt soon after the spill also leased to Burns. According to Youngsville Borough Manager George Probst, some of the was discovered. The idea was to deactivate the drums were leaking, and scientists from the Penn PCBs before the state removed the soil so the PCBs "won't be absorbed into the soil or wash sylvania Environmental Resources Department were called to check the community water sup away,'' said Dr. Martin Hines, an epidemiologist ply for possible PCB contamination. The PCB with the North Carolina Department of Human oil will be removed, he said. Burns has admitted Resources. The state estimates that the cost of possessing even more PCB oil. He told police in removing some 40,000 cubic yards of PCB con vestigators that some 4,000 gallons are sitting in taminated soil could reach $2.5 million. a tank truck parked in a lot near Jamestown, N.Y. After collecting dirt samples, North Carolina Burns, however, claims that the press has ex Agriculture Commissioner James Graham warned aggerated the dangers of PCBs. There's a general against "any direct human consumption" of misunderstanding about PCBs and what they do, crops within 100 yards of the spill. "This would he says. "Without doubt, based on government also apply to pasture and hay for feed," he said. information, PCB is a bad oil. If you drank a "In corn for silage, we recommend that the first glass of it, it wouldn't do you any good." But five or six rows be left and plowed under." PCB is not "something like chlorine gas, where Area residents reported attacks of nausea, you get one whiff and you're dead," Burns said. dizziness and cramps soon after the oil was "I have worked around PCB for 15 years. . . . dumped. State officials say there is no serious I have breathed it, I have had it on my hands, I health problem, but signs have been posted warn have had it dumped on me" without ill effect. ing pedestrians' to keep off the sites. And local Burns offered to demonstrate his conviction that school officials are considering re-routing school PCBs aren't particularly harmful. "I would be buses around the spills. "In general, we want to willing to go before television cameras or what keep kids out of these sites, not because there's ever and stand in a barrel of it," he said on an immediate risk of picking up a great amount," Aug. 29. said Dr. John MacCormack, head of the Com Burns may be willing to immerse himself in a municable Disease Department of the N.C. Divi barrelful of PCBs, but others who have been un sion of Health Services, "but because it's better wittingly exposed to the chemical haven't been to be more conservative than not conservative quite so fortunate. In 1968, for example, 1,000 enough." Japanese suffered severe reactions to PCB con taminated rice oil. And in other instances, PCB, eanwhile, back in western New York, a suspected carcinogen, has caused severe skin M Burns and his Transformer Sales Co. are and eye irritations and has been linked to repro i in more legal hot water over other-inci ductive disorders, kidney damage and liver ail dents of alleged mishandling of PCBs. On Aumge. nts in humans. 24, a 24 hour police guard was posted on a shed in Allegany owned by Transformer Sales. Inside hile Burns plans his public PCB bath, were 5,000 gallons of PCB transformer oil stored in 55-gallon drums. After an emergency meet ing, the Cattaraugus County Health Department W the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is in the process of setting up two separate regulations governing the disposal told Burns to remove the oil. The oil was trucked of hazardous wastes--one specifically for PCBs to an approved disposal site in Porter, N.Y. near and the other for all other hazardous wastes. But Niagara Falls, and county officials say they'll EPA is far behind schedule. Why? Primarily be bill Burns for the cost of the move. . cause Congress has been reluctant to fund EPA's The health department was concerned with costly program to police the nation's toxic chem reports that some of the PCB oil was leaking into ical supply. Furthermore, the job has been infi a well located about 400 feet from the shed. The nitely more complex than originally anticipated. well is a major source of drinking water for Al There are approximately 70,000 chemicals legany's 2,700 residents, and Mayor Nicholas manufactured or processed right now in over Amato ordered the well closed pending tests of 115,000 chemical plants across the country. the water supply. EPA's job under the Toxic Substances Control The day after the police guard was posted Act of 1976 is to test and prevent dangerous around the Allegany shed, 27,500 additional gal chemicals' from entering the market, as well as to oversee the removal of existing hazardous chemicals. The law also ordered EPA to end U.S. produc tion and marketing of PCBs and to set up meth ods of disposing of the chemical. PCBs are no longer being made in this country; Monsanto, the Ta$t American PCB manufacturer, voluntarily stopped producing them last year. But that doesn't mean there aren't any PCBs around. Millions of tons of PCBs can be found inside many electrical products, and companies stuck with PCBs are now trying to figure' out what to do with them. Many are taking the easy way out and selling their PCBs to midnight mov ers who can dispose of them legally at only four sites--Grand View, Idaho, Arlington, Ore., Liv ingston, Ala., and Porter, N.Y. All are privately run chemical waste landfills that have met EPA requirements for PCB disposal which went into effect last April. Although high temperature in cinerators could be used to safely dispose of the chemicals, as yet none has met EPA standards. Regulations for disposal of all other hazard ous wastes come under the 1976 Resource Con servation and Recovery Act (RCRA). When set in motion, the law will establish a comprehensive system to track hazardous chemical wastes from the time they leave the factory through their burial or incineration. But EPA has yet to implement any of the waste disposal regulations under RCRA. The law called for the regulations to be established by April 21,1978, but four of the seven regulations have not yet been proposed, and EPA officials say they won't be until early next year. This means that the RCRA tracking system and waste disposal regulations won't take effect until mid- 1980 at the earliest. Convinced that EPA was mired down need lessly in regulatory reviews of the situation, En vironmental Action and the Environmental De fense Fund recently brought suit against the agency to force it back on schedule. The law^ suit, if successful, will lead to EPA regulations both defining what a hazardous waste is, forcing companies to identify wastes, package them properly and reveal the details of their produc tion to disposal cycles (see box, page 7). Are the long delays contributing directly to the growing use of midnight movers? Chemical Week magazine reported earlier this year that "there are indications that illegal traffic in haz ardous wastes is big business." Since the chemical industry generates some 35 million metric tons of wet hazardous wastes a year, another question is: will chemical companies and other waste gen erators try to unload great quantities of the haz ardous wastes on midnight movers in anticipa tion of costlier EPA regulated sites? Since there is plenty of time between now and 1980 for more Robert Burnses to turn up around the country, the answer will undoubted ly be yes. I 6/l:nvironmcntal Action PCB-ARCH-EXT0378744