Document rpmxR8Q4nKZZa780jkZZqMQJJ

ni uiaiiuir^w^w^ EPA scientist, becomes .critic A n i o -A /o x 3 -- ---O'V P i r x__z_M_ 1 By DAVID GOELLER WASHINGTON (AP) -- Con gressional critics of a proposed En vironmental Protection Agency rule on disposal of hazardous waste in landfills have found a new ally: an EPA scientist who helped write the controversial proposal. He is Michael Burns of the staff of the Office of Solid Waste, who says many other technicians and lawyers at EPA share his concern that the proposal fails to meet Congress' stringent mandates for protecting the public. "EPA's proposed land disposal re strictions program will ... virtually trample the concept of`protection of human health and the environment,'"he wrote in a 27-page letter to Rep. James Florio, D-N.J. Florio chairs the House commerce, transportation and tourism sub committee. He is one of several key Senate and House members who have denounced the EPA plan for implementing the Hazardous and Solid Waste Amendments of 1984. ministrator J. Winston Porter said the proposal complies with the con gressional mandate that land dis posal be fully protective of human health and the environment. But Burns told Florio there is deep division in the ranks of EPA over whether the draft rule will protect people and whether it is indeed legal under the terms ofthe 1984 law. He said EPA proposed the rule "over the written objections of many of its regional office directors and despite the deep concerns of many of the technical and legal personnel who pa rti cip ate d in its d e velopment." Burns said the toxic-effect "screening model" used as a basis for the draft rule "is fundamentally flawed" and that to use it, EPA had "to adopt a creative interpretation of the statutory no-migration stan dard." He said agency advocates of the model saw it as a "way to make the land disposal restrictions program `reasonable.' ... Critical decisions tainties and fails to account for so many factors known to pose serious risks in land disposal that state ments labeling the screening levels it establishes as `fully protective'are questionable at best and, at worst, purposefully deceptive." He wrote that concerns expressed by EPA staffers about the approach " have been largely ignored. ... Suggestions that the ... approach be abandoned are met with the respon se that `this is the way (EPA Admin istrator) Lee Thomas decided to do it' when presented with alternative program options in the spring of 1985." Bums predicted that EPA adopti on of the rule "is likely to result in expensive litigation in which the agency's own attorneys acknowl edge a slim likelihood ofprevailing." Florio and other lawmakers already have threatened a court challenge. Asked for comment on Bums' let ter, EPA spokesman Dave Cohen said: "Mike is expressing his own views and not those ofthe agency. We are now in the middle of a (public) A central section of the 1984 law that were made in the course of the comment period on a difficult and bans disposal of u n tre a te d haz model's development were designed controversial rule. We will be taking ardous waste in landfills unless a specifically to make the screening into consideration many of the types dump operator can prove to EPA the levels less stringent." of concerns he has raised as well as materials won't leak from the site Bums said "the modeling scheme other concerns before a final rule is "for so long as the wastes remain is fraught with so many uncer- issued." hazardous." EPA, in what Florio and other au thors of the law say is a clear vio lation ofcongressional intent, is pro posing to allow untreated wastes to be put in landfills if toxic migration doesn't extend more than 500 feet from the site. ; in recent testimony before Florio's subcommittee, Assist