Document O3VOynJ0RaRBNZ6M8bVyvzmKM

wmmo.oW,W5M* SPtCJMOit DAILY llti.QOO MAY 5 1973 7/9/79 FYI M. Klaus J. Weber 9. Wood J. Ortiz F. Provorny Waste disposal ft '< fjscx> Americans. ' From Newsday SINCE THE revelation of Illness and birth defects at Love Canal, Americans are terrified of hazardous indus trial wastes. But they appear more terrified of proper disposal of those wastes. . While environmentalists are calling for sophisticated regions! disposal faciliics, community after community is blocking the proposals. "Plants must be built. It's that or nothing," said Anne Sldbury of the National Wildlife Federation waste project. "But as soon as the public hears of a plant locating, they raise holy hell. It's alw ays the same: We don't want it In our backyard. They don't realize that the world is our backyard." A prime example of the hazards of uncontrolled dump ing versus the fenr of regulated disposal Is the controver sy over the destruction of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) that has raged for 14 months in El Dorado, Ari?;, community whose major employers are Mons'enio chemical, Phillips Petroleum and Uon Oil. *- PCBs, used to insulate electronic components, have been found to cause Illness, birth defects and death in laboratory animals. Licences About ISO-million pounds (68.181,000 kilograms) are dispersed Into the environment; 290-millioa pounds (13j 118,000 kilograms) are buried in leaky municipal Ian dfills; 158 million pounds (3-14,545,000 kilograms) are in commercial use in power transformers, air conditioners, microwave ovens, TV sets and oilier products. Since April 1978. federal law has required that liquid PCHs be destroyed by incineration. Solid PCBs will haw to be burned after Jan. 1,1980. Three sophisticated waste disposal plants have sought burning licences. None has gotten the licence, in p.ui because of the trouble in El Dorado. When Enrrgy Systems CO. (ENSCO), one of the United State's leading disposal firms, sought an Incinerate :i li cence from the ll.S, |'.nvtninim'nl;il Protection Agency, El Dorado's 2S.OOO residents flew into a fury, terrified that PCBs might spill from tank trucks or railroad cars on their way to ENSCO. ENSCO pointed out that residue ash from burning would contain less than 1 pari per million of PCI's and would be buried in a secure disposal site, while the U S. Food and Drug Administration permits s ppm in chickens and 10 ppm in milk and cheese sold for human consump tion. For two years ENSCO bad safely incinerated herbi cides that are vastly more toxic and difficult to burn than PCBs. But the county banned the transport of PCBs for disposal. Sites rejected After extensive legal wrangling, a judge recently cleared the way for a test burn on which the Arkansas licence will hinge. In 1975, Minnesota had to return a Sa.T-millJon tPA grant to build a chemical waste landfill after the public rejected more than a dozen sites. The state has no disposal facilities and cannot account for 57 percent of (he 128,000 tons a year of hazardous waste generated within its borders. Mark Norgaard, a planner with the Minnesota Pollu tion Control Agency, said: "You've got to get the peopic to agree there's a problem." Twenty waste exchanges across the country are at tempting to put waste producers and waste users togeth er. Sixteen are information centres, while four buy and sell wastes. An Oregon waste exchange, run under state contract by Resource Conservation Consultants of Portland, for example, puts a firm making electronic parts producing a silica sludge together with another firm that uses the sludge for reflective beads on roadside signs. According to an Oregon waste exchange official, only about 10 per cent of the 80 by-products listed bimonthly are transferred. However most are not hazardous, a re cent General Accounting Office report said only i per cent of all wastes have a potential (or transfer and reuse, t HONS 006593