5581
905R82112
UNITED STATES ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY
x-
PUBLIC HEARING
RE: STANDARDS FOR OWNERS
AND OPERATORS OF HAZARDOUS
WASTE TREATMENT, STORAGE
AN'D DISPOSAL FACILITIES
Thursday,.'March 11, 1982
EPA " -'- '
Waterside. Mall
401 "M"' Street, S.W.
Room 3906
Washington, D.C.
The PUBLIC HEARING in the above-entitled
matter convened at 9:00 a.m.
U.S. rr~v'r::r-"--r;
Pro' ;ct:on Agsn
605G4
Diversified Reporting Services, lac.
P.O. BOX 23S82
WASHINGTON. D.C. 20O24
(20Z) 547-8100
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APPEARANCES:
Panel Members:
GARY DIETRICH, Chairman
Director of the Office of Solid Waste
Environmental Protection Agency ;
BILL PEDERSEN
Office of General Counsel
Environmental Protection Agency
RON BRAND
Office of Policy and Resource
Management
Environmental Protection Agency
Also Present:
S. Environ;"::ni'
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Speaker
Opening Remarks by Chairman Dietrich
Honarable James J. Florio
Honarable Guy V. Molinari
Mr. Marvin Durning
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Mr. Ted Reese
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Mr. David .Fetter-
Mr. Peter Vardy
Mr. Philip Palmer
Mr. Peter N. Skinner
Mr. Ted Clardy
Mr. William Eichbaum
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Mr.
McMillan
Mr. Thomas Williams
Mr. John Schofield
Ms. Mary Kay Parker
Mr. Gregg Franklin
:Vl";, j-, r+TV-re"',''/-'.' J ,i /, ^
Ms. Khristine Hall
Ms. Jane Bloom
Robert Janereau
Mr. Barny Wander
Mr. Kenneth Walanski
Mr. Ernest Norman
Ms. Mary Rosso
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INDEX (Continued)
Mr. Lewis Bellinger
Ms. Carol Vitek
Mr. Ambrose B. Kelly
Dr. Bruce Malholt
Donald Carruth
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ADDENDUM
ADDITIONAL STATEMENTS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD;
BARNEY WANDER
ROLLINS ENVIRONMENTAL SERVICES
ANNA MILLER GRABOWSKI
PRUDENCE WIDLAK
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PROCEEDINGS;
CHAIRMAN DIETRICH: Good morning, ladies and
gentlemen. My name is Gary Dietrich, I am Director of the
Office of Solid Waste. I will be chairing this Public
Hearing.
The purpose of this hearing is to take public
comment on EPA's February 25, 1982 ninety-day extension of
the date for complying with the Agency's regulatory prohibi-
tion of the land filling of containerized hazardous wastes
that contain free liquids.
Additionally, the purpose of this hearing is to
take public comments on two petitions received by the Agency
regarding that extension.
One of these petitions was submitted by the
Hazardous Waste Treatment Council on March 1, 1982. This
petition asks EPA to administratively stay the February 25th
extension pending judicial review of that action.
On March 8, 1982, the Council petitioned the
United States Court of Appeals for the D. C. Circuit for such
judicial review.
The other petition was submitted on March 3, 1982,
by the National Solid Waste Management Association. This
petition asks EPA to immediately promulgate, on a temporary,
interim, final basis, the rule proposed by EPA on February 25,
1982.
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To provide a background for this hearing, let me
review the events that have led to the issues to be discussed
here today.
On May 19, 1980, EPA published interim final
standards applicable to existing interim status landfills.
Among these standards was a requirement that prohibited the
landfill disposal of containerized liquid hazardous waste and
containerized hazardous wastes containing any amount of free
liquid. This requirement became effective on November 19,
1981.
The principal purpose of this requirement was to
eliminate one of the several sources of water and other liquid;
that may enter a landfill and generate leachate that potential
ly can leak from the landfill and contaminate ground water.
Other requirements in the May 1980 interim status
standards are directed at controlling and minimizing other,
larger sources of leachate generation.
These other sources of leachate generation are (1)
direct natural precipitation on the landfill which infiltrates
into the waste and forms leachate; (2) natural precipitation
run-off from surrounding areas that run onto or into the
landfill and generates leachate; and (3) bulk liquids placed
into the landfill.
A second purpose of the containerized waste disposal
requirement is to minimize subsidence. Containers eventually
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will degrade and rupture, losing whatever free liquid content
they contain. These ruptured containers will usually collaps
causing subsidence. Subsidence will usually cause rupture
and deformity of the final cover required to be placed on a
landfill at closure.
Such disruption of the final cover can lead to
increased infiltration of natural precipitation through the
final cover and concommitant increased leachate generation
after closure.
Importantly, the purpose of the containerized waste
disposal requirement was not to prohibit the landfill disposal
of any type or class of containerized liquid hazardous waste,
but rather to prohibit the landfill disposal of any container-
ized hazardous wastes in free liquid form as opposed to solid
or semi-solid form.
Indeed, the Agency and many of the regulated
community foreaw that the principal means of complying with
this requirement would be the adding of absorbent material to
containerized wastes holding free liquids, in order to convert
the free liquids to solid or semi-solid form before landfill
disposal.
To the extent that this method would be employed
for compliance, the requirement would not result in lessening
or changing the types or classes of containerized waste
disposed of in interim status hazardous waste landfills.
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The Agency recognized, however, that some facility
operators would choose to comply with the requirement by de-
canting or otherwise removing free liquid from containers
and treating these liquids.
It also recognized that some generators or facility
operators would opt to incinerate or otherwise treat
containerized wastes, and thereby avoid the landfill disposal
of these wastes.
To the extent these methods would be used, the
types and amounts of containerized hazardous wastes landfilled
would be changed.
I feel compelled to emphasize the above points about
what are and are not the purposes of the containerized waste
disposal requirements.
Our data and analyses supporting this requirement
and supporting our actions of February 25th focus on the
[degree of regulation necessary to minimize leachate volume and
subsidence.
These data and analyses are not sufficient to enable
us to deal with the question of the type and classes of hazar-
dous wastes, including liquid hazardous wastes, that should
or should not be disposed of in landfills.
We recognize that this latter question is an
important one -- and perhaps a more important one — and we
did discuss this in the preamble of the February 25th
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will degrade and rupture, losing whatever free liquid content
they contain. These ruptured containers will usually collaps
causing subsidence. Subsidence will usually cause rupture
and deformity of the final cover required to be placed on a
landfill at closure.
Such disruption of the final cover can lead to
increased infiltration of natural precipitation through the
final cover and conconunitant increased leachate generation
after closure.
Importantly, the purpose of the containerized waste
disposal requirement was not to prohibit the landfill disposal
of any type or class of containerized liquid hazardous waste,
but rather to prohibit the landfill disposal of any container-
ized hazardous wastes in free liquid form as opposed to solid
or semi-solid form.
Indeed, the Agency and many of the regulated
community foreaw that the principal means of complying with
this requirement would be the adding of absorbent material to
containerized wastes holding free liquids, in order to convert
the free liquids to solid or semi-solid form before landfill
disposal.
To the extent that this method would be employed
for compliance, the requirement would not result in lessening
or changing the types or classes of containerized waste
disnosed of in interim status hazardous waste landfills.
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The Agency recognized, however, that some facility
operators would choose to comply with the requirement by de-
canting or otherwise removing free liquid from containers
and treating these liquids.
It also recognized that some generators or facility
operators would opt to incinerate or otherwise treat
containerized wastes, and thereby avoid the landfill disposal
of these wastes.
To the extent these methods would be used, the
types and amounts of containerized hazardous wastes landfilled
would be changed.
I feel compelled to emphasize the above points about
what are and are not the purposes of the containerized waste
disposal requirements.
Our data and analyses supporting this requirement
and supporting our actions of February 25th focus on the
degree of regulation necessary to minimize leachate volume and
subsidence.
These data and analyses are not sufficient to enable
us to deal with the question of the type and classes of hazar-
dous wastes, including liquid hazardous wastes, that should
or should not be disposed of in landfills.
We recognize that this latter question is an
important one -- and perhaps a more important one — and we
did discuss this in the preamble of the February 25th
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proposed rule, and indicated that we have studies underway to
address this natter. Importantly, we do not now have suffi-
cient data to support restriction of land disposal of
containerized free liquid waste for purposes other than
minimizing leachate volume or subsidence.
Consequently, it will be very difficult, if not
impossible, for us to take action on the matters before us
today for the purpose of restricting or not restricting the
types of containerized wastes that are lar.dfilled.
For example, it would be difficult for us to take
action to prohibit or continue the prohibition of solvents
being land disposed for the reason that they are solvents and
are toxic solvents.
The reason we would deal with that, at this point
in time based on the data analyses we have, is that those
solvents are or would be in liquid form and would add to
leachate volume.
Following promulgation of the containerized waste
disposal requirement in May 1980, EPA received, in response
to its request for public comment, numerous comments princi-
pally objectina to the ?Vringency of the rule; that is,
objecting to the prohibition of the landfill disposal of
containerized wastes containing any amount of free liquids.
This issue was also raised by several of the
petitioners in the Shell Oil_Company vs. EPA litigation of
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the May 1980 regulations. Both commenters and objecting
petitioners contended that the requirement was difficult and
expensive to implement because it required landfill operators
to open and inspect virtually all containers of waste to
determine if they contained free liquids in any amount.
They further claimed that the requirement was
overreaching; that it was not necessary to eliminate all
containerized free liquids but only necessary to minimize
containerized free liquids within some reasonable limit to
control leachata generation and subsidence for the purpose of
adequately protecting human health and the environment.
EPA carefully considered these public comments.
It also met with the litigation petitioners to better under-
stand their concerns, to obtain relevant information from them
on this issue, and to seek their agreement with a proposed
resultion.
The Agency has typically met with litigation
petitioners in the Shell Oil Company vs. EPA case and other
cases to resolve litigation issues in order to avoid expensive
and time consuming litigation on technically complex issues
in the Courtroom.
After consideration of the public comments and
discussions with the petitioners, the Agency recognized that
the containerized waste disposal requirement was difficult to
implement and unnecessarily stringent.
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It concluded that a more practical but environmental-'
ly protective requirement would be one that limited the free
liquid content of individual containers of hazardous wastes
to approximately ten percent by volume.
Under such a requirement, the contribution of
containerized free liquids to leachate generation from all
sources would still be very small and far exceeded by the
leachate resulting from natural precipitation.
Also, under such a requirement, subsidence would
be minimized and within managable limits. The Agency
presented this ten percent proposal to the litigation
petitioners. While agreeing with this objective, they pointed
out that the requirement would still be difficult to implement
because it would require the opening and inspection of
virtually all containers of waste to determine free liquid
content in order to comply with the requirement.
Several of the litigation petitioners proposed a
different approach which they claimed would achieve the same
environmental objective, would be more practical to implement
and enforce and, in addition, would deal more precisely with
the subsidence problem.
EPA carefully studied this alternative and ultimate-
ly concluded that, with a few changes, it would serve as a
sufficient requirement. This modified alternative was proposed
in the Federal Register on February 25, 1982, with a request
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for public comments. Also in that proposal, the Agency
solicited comments on the ten percent approach it had pro-
posed to the litigation petitioners.
Given that the Agency had concluded that the prohi-
bition requirement was unnecessarily stringent and difficult
to implement, it faced the question of whether that require-
ment should remain in effect or be temporarily extended while
rulemaking on the proposed alternative requirements was being
undertaken.
The Agency concluded that it was unreasonable to cause
the regulated community to bear the burden and cost of comply-
ing with such a requirement that might well soon be changed.
Therefore, the Agency decided that it was justified
and reasonable to extend the effective date of the prohibition
requirement for a short time, ninety days, while corapletina
the rulemaking on the proposed alternatives.
We believe that we had good cause under the
Administrative Procedures Act to take that action without
notice and comments. In taking that action, the Agency did
not believe that it would significantly lessen protection of
human health or the environment.
It concluded the amount of containerized free liquids
that would be allowed to be disposed of in landfills over the
ninety-day extension period would not significantly increase
leachate generation or subsidence nor cause or significantly
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increase ground water contamination over that which otherwise
might occur.
The decisions described above — both to propose
alternative requirements and extend the effective date of the
prohibition requirement — were tentatively made in early
November of 1981 when it was thought that they might be pub-
lished in the Federal Register on or before November 19, 1931,
the effective date of the prohibition requirement.
Unfortunately, the press of other business delayed
their final approval and publication in the Federal Register
until February 25, 1982.
EPA recognizes that this delayed action, particularly
with respect to the extension, has left the impression that
the Agency was reacting to noncompliance or avoided compliance
with the prohibition requirement which did, indeed, become
effective on November 19, 1981.
Apparently, the regulated community, having know-
ledge about the Agency's resolution of this issue with the
litigation petitioners, and expecting early publication of the
proposed change, largely chose to store containerized wastes
pending the forthcoming relief.
I can assure you, however, that in its publication
of the proposed alternative requirements and the extension of
the effective date of the prohibition requirement on
February 25, 1982, the Agency was not reacting to compliance
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problems, but instead was completing action on decisions made
early in November 1981.
As I've already stated, today's hearing is to focus
on the Agency's temporary extension of the effective date of
the prohibition on landfill disposal of containerized free
liquid wastes and on the two petitions received by the Agency
regarding that extension.
The Agency hopes to obtain information and data
which will help it in acting on these petitions and in taking
any one of the following actions or any other possible action
that miaht be suggested today.
One, leave the extension in place until May 26,
1982, by which time the Agency expects to take final action on
the proposed alternative requirements.
Two, remove or stay the extension, thereby causing
the prohibition requirement to again become effective until
final action is taken on the proposed alternative requirement.
Three, promulgate either of the alternative require-
ments in interim final, immediately effective form, but
continue to take comments towards taking final action on them
at a later date. This action would concurrently revoke the
prohibition requirement and the February 25th extension of
the effective date thereof.
The basic questions before us today are two in
number: Will the withdrawal or stay of the February 25th
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extension result in unreasonable disruption of the orderly
management of containerized hazardous wastes and in possible
harm to human health or the environment because of such
destruction?
Two, will the continuance of the extension or the
promulgation of either of the proposed alternative requirements
result in management of containerized hazardous waste which
cause potential harm to human health or the environment?
In addressing these questions, it should be kept in
mind that the Agency is concerned about these effects over the
next three months, during which time the Agency hopes to act
on the proposed rule.
In addition, there are underlying questions about the
amount and types of containerized hazardous waste currently
being landfilled, the landfill practices likely to be followed,
and the alternative management practices, such as 'incineration
or treatment, that might be used to manage these wastes.
We are hopeful that today's hearing will address these
questions.
Today's hearing is an informal hearing. I will
invite persons wishing to make comments to do so and will
invite members of this panel to ask clarifying questions or
ask questions to elicit more information from those persons.
Many persons have already indicated their desire
to comment. I have scheduled these persons in an orderly
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fashion and, in some cases, with consideration of their travel
schedule. If others wish to make comments, they may give
their names to Gerri Wyer who is at the table immediately
outside this room, or may wait until I open this hearing for
comments from the floor. At the end of this hearing, time
permitting, I will entertain rebuttal comments if there are an
All oral statements taken today are being recorded
and a transcript of today's hearing will be placed in our
docket as soon as it is available.
Additionally, if persons commenting have copies of
their prepared comments or have other supporting materials, we
will be glad to have these and will place them in the docket
immediately following this hearing.
Generally, we would like to obtain all public
comments on this matter today in order to make expeditious
findings and a timely recommendation to the Administrator.
However, we will keep the record of this hearing open through
the close of business Monday next, March 15, 1982.
Submission of material may be made to our Docket
Clerk whose name, address and phone number are now different
from that identified in the Federal Register notice announcing
this hearing, primarily because of a personnel shift and a
chanae in our office. The Docket Clerk is now Robert Axelrad.
He is located in Room S-269 at this address and his phone
number is 202-382-4487.
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Serving on the panel with me are Bill Pedersen,
from our Office of General Counsel, who is on my immediate
left and Ron Brand, of our Office of Policy and Resource
Management.
MR. PEDERSEN: Let me just make two additional
comments. First, I count twenty-two people who wish to make
a statement. We want, if all possible, to enforce a rule
that your direct statement not take longer than 15 minutes.
I hope that many of you will be able to keep it to
less than that. It's faster to read the statement, which I
know many of you have in prepared form, than it is to sit here
while it's read into the record.
The second comment is as we question people who make
statements, if any of you want to pass up a written question
for us to consider asking, feel free to do so.
CHAIRMAN DIETRICH: Without further ado, we will
proceed with the comments. We are honored today to have the
Honorable James J. Florio, Congressman from New Jersey,
Chairman of the Subcommittee on Commerce, Transportation and
Tourism, of the Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce
of the House of Representatives.
Congressman Florio has been a firm supporter of
this program and we appreciate his taking the time from his
busy duties to be with us today. Congressman?
CONGRESSMAN FLORIO: Thank you very much.
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Statement of The Honorable James J. Florio
CONGRESSMAN FLORIO: I welcome the opportunity to
address this public hearing on the Agency's action suspending
the ban on landfilling of containerized liquids.
I regret the fact that I am addressing this body
after the fact. I would have preferred having the opportunity
to address someone with regard to the merits of lifting the
ban before the ban had been lifted.
In ntany respects, the action that is going to flow
from this hearina will already be too late to stop some of
the problems that are resulting from the lifting of the ban.
It is my understanding that someone is going to
testify this morning that some 220,000 gallons per day of
containerized liquids are being disposed of, perhaps inappro-
priately, as a result of the lifting of the ban.
The Agency's actions in this matter are raally just
the latest manifestation of a policy direction that I find
very difficult to live with, that really has had some, in ny
opinion, adverse impacts upon the public health and the
public commitment to environmental protection.
The net effect of the actions that are the subject
of today's hearing will be to allow unqualified disposal of
liquid and ianitable wastes into landfills for the next ninety
days; to permit containerized liquid wastes to account for
25 percent of future landfill capacity; to eliminate any
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requirement for liners or leachate collection systems at
landfill facilities; to disrupt the incentives for proper
recycling and incineration of liquid wastes; and to give the
wrong signal to the regulated community and to the American
people, each of whom have a stake in a sound and reliable
waste management system; and lastely, to shift the burden of
uncertainty and risk to future generations who derive no
benefit from current land disposal practices.
The ironies and the inconsistencies of the Agency's
actions in this matter abound. The Agency justifies the
immediate lifting of the ban on the grounds that severe market
disruptions would occur if the ban were not lifted.
However, if the consequences of the ban on disposers
and landfill facilities were expected to be so severe, why did
it take the Agency some 89 days until after the imposition of
the ban to modify it?
I heard today in the opening statement that there
were other pressing matters of concern that allowed inaction tc
take place from November until February. I'm just not siire I
can identify what the sense of priorities is that allows other
matters of concern, whatever they are, to allow this period of
time to pass without appropriate opportunities for comment and
before action was taken.
Furthermore, the Agency's expressed concern with
market disruptions is limited to land disposal facilities and
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their clients. Why is it that alternative methods of dis-
posal do not merit similar consideration?
The Agency states that it was forced to immediately
lift the ban because of the significant environmental hazards
that would occur when large quantities of accumulated drums
were inspected prior to their disposal.
Such concern I suppose is laudible, but why is it
the Agency is not similarly concerned about the environmental
hazards of containerized liquids once they are actually placed
into the landfill?
The statement in the opening presentation, I think
by way of preliminary explanation, indicated all of those
environmental problems associated with the disposal of
containerized liquids that are inappropriately disposed of.
The Agency now claims that any environmental damage
will be minimal because the rate of leakage for landfills will
be slow, dispersed and contained within the landfill, yet as
recently as February 5, 1981, the Agency stated, and I quote:
"Leachate inevitably leaks out of the land disposal
facilities and migrates into the underlying soils and ground-
water, unless a containment system is constructed and
permanently maintained. . . SPA seriously questions whether
such systems can be maintained and operated for long periods
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of time."
The Agency cites the fact that only ten percent of
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landfill wastes are containerized, yet most of the Superfund
sites are landfills and the primary problem at those landfills
is groundwater contamination from containerized solvent wastes.
The Agency accurately states that some wastes are
difficult to dispose of by alternative means. But, in
accommodating this concern, the Agency simply decided to
allow all wastes to be landfilled, rather than issuing
exceptions for certain problem wastes, which would have been
a much more thought-out approach to the problem.
The Agency and certain elements of industry claim
that only a small amount of containerized liquid would ever
be placed into landfills. If that's the case, then why allow
25 percent of future landfill capacity to be reserved for such j
wastes?
The Agency now claims that liners and leachate j
collection systems "... will not provide significant addition-
al protection against migration of these liquids into the
environment." The fact that both the disposal and the
chemical industries recommended that they be required was
ignored in this latest action.
The Aaency likewise states in connection with this
action that it is not responsible for determining the economic
consequences of its policies. Apparently, economics and
proper administrative procedure only matter when a regulation
nay actually profit, or protect public health, or prevent a
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disaster, but not when the action will continue to give
landfilling a free ride.
The folly of this decision is a symptom of a much
larger problem. I call attention to other recent and
disturbing developments which can only signal a further retreat.
from protective management policies.
The policy reflected in the containerized liquid
decision will likely govern the expansion of existing interim
status landfills, which will be allowed to expand by fifty
percent of existing capacity. This too was a product of EPA
industry negotiation.
There is every reason to believe -- and I have good
reason to believe — that these same standards will also
govern the court-ordered final standards for existing land
disposal facilities.
The Agency has moved to suspend the liability
insurance requirement for hazardous waste facilities, thus
leaving innocent third parties with no recourse in the case of
an accident.
The Agency has also moved to suspend final standards
for existing incinerator facilities, thus delaying permit
review of these facilities.
The Agency is also on the verge of weakening the
groundwater monitoring requirements at land disposal facilities;
in a manner that would reauire reporting only when a violation
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was detected by the operator. Under this system, the Agency
v/ill not know whether contamination problems either do not
exist or that simply they were not reported.
In light of the recent findings of the GAO
regarding the alarming rate of non-compliance with safe
drinking water standards, such a move would only further
weaken controls on groundwater contamination.
Enforcement under RCRA continues to be almost
non-existent. The resources for permitting and state grants
are plummeting precisely when they are needed the most.
No new wastes have been listed or included in the
system since November of 1980. Yet, deiistinc and exempting
petitions continue to be granted at a rapid rate. No action
is in sight on the listing of waste oil.
Any one of these actions, taken seoarately, is
disturbing; taken collectively, however, they present a
demolition of virtually all past progress in moving towards
addressing the larger problem of hazardous waste disposal.
Perhaps the single most disconcerting aspect of this
entire matter is the total lack of any national policy on land
disposal and groundwater protection.
While previous Agency policy recognized the risk
of land disposal and attempted to limit its growth, the new
EPA, according to the Administrator, would have the public
believe that landfilling is "the lowest risk option currently
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available for dealing with large quantities of hazardous
wastes." That's a quote from a letter from the Administrator
to Congressman LaFalce.
While individual states are approaching landfilling
as a method of last resort, the new EPA views it as "a common
sense alternative to the indiscriminant practices of the
past."
The Administration has set disgracefully low goals
for itself in this matter, and is meeting them. Until the
Agency addresses the issue of land disposal policy and ground-
water orotection, it will continue to react to one crisis afteif
!
another without any sense of direction or protection of public
health and the environment.
The very fact of this hearing, coming after the
action and after the public outrats that's been manifested,
reinforces the idea of action and reaction to the action
being the only precipitating cause of modification of Agency
policies.
This Agency's new-found love affair with landfillinq
must come to a rapid end. It must structure its policies so
that land disposal reflects its true cost to society; only
then will there be true competition between acceptable
alternative technologies; and only then will we begin to
move away from the sorry status quo that's caused us so many
problems over this land.
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I would urge the Agency to reverse the actions it
has taken by reimposing general restrictions on the disposal
of containerized liquids in landfills and allow some variance
for those wastes that currently have no other feasible
means of disposal.
With regard to land disposal and groundwater
protection policy, the Agency has a real opportunity to make
a positive statement when it issues final standards for land
disposal facilities pursuant to the District Court order.
I hope that the Agency makes good use of that opportunity.
Our system of hazardous wastes management cannot
change overnight; that's fully acknowledged. But change it
must and it must change in an approved direction.
In the weeks and months ahead, my Subcommittee will
be conducting hearings on the reauthcrization of the Resource
Conservation Recovery Act. In the course of that reauthori-
zation set of hearings, we will be examining land disposal and
groundwater protection in depth with the aim of rekindling
constructive change in current policies and practice.
I welcome the contribution of the Agency if the
Agency is committed to move forward in a progressive way.
I am hopeful that they are and look forward to working with
those members of the Agency who are committed to move in that
direction as well as to the general public.
I appreciate the opportunity to say some words to
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you this morning, and it goes without saying that I'm looking
forward to working with the Agency towards the ends that I've
enunciated.
CHAIRMAN DIETRICH: Thank you, Mr. Congressman.
We also have the honor of having The Honorable
Guy V. Molinari, Congressman from New York and a member of the
Committee on Public Works and Transportation.
Statement of The Honorable Guy V_. Molinari
CONGRESSMAN MOLINARI: Good morning.
According to the Environmental Protection Aqency,
the purpose of this hearina today is to determine if the re-
laxation of restrictions on the disposal of containerized toxiq
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wastes is in the public interest.
I an horrified that EPA feels that they are serving
the public interest by conducting such a hearing, after they
have already made the decision to allow operators to start
dumping toxic materials, without considering the possible
effect on the public before they did so.
I find the action to be the equivalent to the
opening of all jails for a period of ninety days to determine
if the criminals within could possibly pose a threat to the
public on the outside.
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In ray opinion, the public is not being served by
EPA's actions, but industry certainly is getting the benefit.
Allowina the manufacturers and disoosal corncanies to aet rid of
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millions of gallons of their unwanted wastes to the ultimate
detriment of the rest of the population.
EPA is charged, by law, with an oversight responsi-
bility to protect the public from the dangers of hazardous
materials. In my view, you have failed in that responsibility.
By relaxing the dumping regulations, you have placed
the oversight responsibility on the backs of the very people
who have the most to gain by not complying with the law. EPA
has not only changed the rules, but has charged the dumpers
with listing the contents they are dropping into the earth,
by simply filling out manifests that won't be checked for
their accuracy.
This, to companies that are trying frantically to
get rid of millions of tons of highly toxic waste, that would
otherwise be very costly to destroy.
What is even more incredible, EPA announces that
they are well aware of the possibility that the containers
will corrode, spilling their dangerous contents into the
ground.
And even though EPA calls for some precautions, they
admit that seepage would certainly result from such spillage.
How can we trust EPA, or industry, when they say
"Trust us, we will do the right thing"? Upon what record can
we base the trust that you are asking us to give?
Here is what the recent oast has shown: Under the
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very noses of EPA and the New York State Department of
Environmental Conservation, unscrupulous waste material
handlers have illegally dumped toxic waste containing deadly
PCBs in areas close to public residences. I say this only
so that I can illustrate what we can expect by way of over-
sight by EPA by referring to actions that have occurred in ray
own Congressional District.
DEC and EPA have allowed the transfer of those
materials along public highways, across state lines, by a
company that was already under indictment for illegally
dumping toxic materials in two states. That transfer was
accomplished under a manifest, such as the one that you
propose that we trust to allow dumping under your current
prooram.
In the incident to which I refer, the company listed j
the contents as ordinary "waste oil". That material was later
identified as toxic waste containing PCBs, and large quantities,
I night add. It was then mixed with other oil products, and
then it was shipped back to New York, where it was listed on
the manifest as "home heating oil". They were sold to the
unsuspecting public, who still suffer from its toxic effects.
So much for unchecked manifests and the "Don't worry, you can
trust us" theory.
How does EPA's oversight work? Your Agency has
25 |
already issued a preliminary approval for the construction of
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a coal and refuse burning plant in my home District on
Staten Island. Incredibly, the tower of that proposed plant
will be cooled by the waters from the Arthur Kill, the most
highly polluted stretch of water in the country.
That approval, by the way, came after it was
discovered that forty million gallons of highly toxic waste
had been dumped into the Kill over five years, from one source
alone.
The Arthur Kill, which experts have shown has an
extremely high concentration of dangerous chemicals and tons
of raw human waste containing enough deadly bateria to read
like a medical science dictionary -- that water will become
vapor and will spread over Staten Island and surrounding
areas like a toxic blanket. Oversight by EPA? What
oversight?
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission is currently
looking into the reactivation of the largest liquid natural
gas tanks in the country, again in my District. The project
falls once again within the oversight of the EPA.
For eleven years -- for eleven years -- unscrupulous
operators, once again under the very noses of EPA, and maybe
I should interrupt at this point to make a statement that I
certainly don't intend to classify all the interim status
generators as being in this category. I am saying this only
to illustrate the failures of EPA in the oversiaht area.
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But, for eleven years, unscrupulous operators,
once again under the very noses of EPA, have been dumping
enormous quantities of highly toxic waste into a garbage dump
in my district; as a matter of fact, five garbage dumps in the
City of New York that we know of.
Experts have told me that those chemicals are
seeping into the water surrounding Staten Island at the rate
of 4,000 gallons a day. This is another source. Those
waters will be used at that power plant that I mentioned.
In N'ew Jersey, industry has been illegally dumping
enormous quantities of toxic chemicals in landfills and the
waters nearby to say nothing of the noxious chemical fumes
that pour over into New York.
Is this the same kind of oversight that EPA clans to !
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utilize to protect us against the millions of gallons of filth j
that they are allowing to be dumped all cx^er America? So
much for oversight. And now, EPA conducts hearings to deter-
mine if the public health might be threatened by their most
recent action — hearings held after they have opened the
flood gates.
Has EPA formed an unholy alliance with the very
people that they are supposed to guard us against? What
indeed was the prime motivating factor that caused EPA to
relax the regulations on dumping? An action, by the way,
that has been called by toxicologists that I've contacted all
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over the country, "an act of lunacy". It appears that Shell
Oil Company sued EPA for a relaxation of the rules, and the
Agency's reaction was to settle out of court; in fact, they
went further, to say that the Courts couldn't handle these
difficult, technical, complex questions. That's quite an
indictment of the judicial system in this country.
By reducing the requirements on dumping for a very
generous ninety days, whose suggestion did EPA take to rectify
the problem that industry finds so hard to face? The
suggestion, so easily agreed to by EPA, came from the chemical
industry itself, the very people who are affected most by your
action.
I have personally written letters of complaint to
the President, with copies to you at EPA. I'm sad to say that
to this day, I haven't even received the courtesy of an
acknowledgment that those letters were received.
Do you now understand why more and more members of
Congress are questioning your decisions and lack of decisions?
I demand that you immediately reinstate the regulations that
were scheduled to go into effect last November.
But you'd better do it now, because even as we meet
here, the trucks are rolling into 900 landfills all over
America, carrying a deadly legacy that our children and grand-
children have no choice but to accept.
I thank you for the opportunity to present my views
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here today.
(Applause.)
CHAIRMAN DIETRICH: Thank you, Congressman.
Next, I'm going to call on Mr. Marvin Durninq, who
is representing the Hazardous Waste Treatment Council, of
Washington, D.C.
Statement of Marvin Durninq, Esq.
MR. DURNING: Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Members
of the Panel. At the outset, I would like to turn over to
your Docket Clerk for entry in the record a copy of my
statement today together with the technical appendix referred
to in the statement and a copy of the brief of the Hazardous
Waste Treatment Council for Motion for a Stay Pending Appeal
or Summary Reversal in the Court of Appeals for the D.C.
Circuit. By doing that, ws can eliminate all discussion of
our legal arguments and perhaps save you considerable time.
In addition, I would submit for che record a letter
just received by Mr. Ed Kleppinger, an Environmental
Consultant who has also assisted the Counsel from the Texas
Department of Water Resources, concerning the Department of
Water Resources' policy prohibiting containerized liquid waste
in landfills in Texas and their lack of difficulty in
enforcing that prohibition. I'd like ro submit that for
the record.
The Hazardous Waste Treatment Council, a nonprofit
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corporation, is a recently formed association of firms which
primarily treat or destroy hazardous wastes as opposed to
disposing of them in landfills. The Council now has six
members; many other firms are considering joining the Council
at this very time.
EPA's action lifting the ban on landfilling of
drummed hazardous wastes threatens public health and the
environment. Hazardous wastes are just that — they are
hazardous to humans and to other living things when they are
improperly manaced.
They include poisons, cancer-causing substances,
substances which can sicken, burn, explode, and kill. Hundred^
of thousands of drums containing millions of gallons of liquid
hazardous wastes are generated each year in America.
In the past, they have been dumped in landfills and
covered up at thousands of sites. By the bitter experience
of Love Canal and hundreds of other sites, we have learned
that drums decay, whether they decay quickly or later and
slowly, they deteriorate. The liquids leak out, threatening
wells, aquifers and neighboring homes.
EPA does not dispute this; indeed, its February
25, 1982 Notice in the Federal Register says: "SPA strongly
believes that introduction of containerized free liquids in
landfills should be minimized to the extent possible, if not
orohibited.. . "
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Notwithstanding this, EPA has lifted its ban on
disposal of drummed liquid hazardous wastes, both ignitable
and non-ignitable, in landfills and has thereby increased the
threat to public health and the environment.
EPA's action lifting the ban on drummed hazardous
liquids in landfills was unlawful. It was unlawful when it
was made; it's unlawful today; it remains unlawful every day
that the ban was not in effect.
In the Resource, Conservation and Recovery Act of
1976, Congress directed the Administrator of the Environmental
Protection Agency to adopt regulations tracking and controlling
the generation, transportation, storage, treatment, and dis-
posal of hazardous wastes. Over five years have passed and
that regulatory system is not yet in place.
On May 19, 1980, EPA adopted its Interim Status
regulations, providing in general that firms storing, treating
or disposing of hazardous wastes could obtain interim status
and the right to continue in operation until final standards
were adopted and permits issued by notifying EPA of their
activities and carrying out a prescribed course of monitoring
to detect health or environmental problems.
In these interim status regulations, EPA recognized
the urgency of acting with regard to two classes of especially
dangerous hazardous wastes, liquid hazardous wastes and
ignitable hazardous wastes. For these two classes, EPA
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adopted substantive rules.
Recognizing the overwhelming evidence of danger
from placing liquids in landfills, the interim status
regulations specifically restricted landfilling of bulk or non-
containerized hazardous liquids, and prohibited, after a
transition period, placing drums of hazardous liquids in
landfills.
The transition period was set at 18 months to allow
time for generators to get ready and for the development of
facilities employing environmentally safe alternate technology.
The ban on putting drummed hazardous liquids in landfills was
set for November 19, 1981.
The interim status regulations said that ignitable or
reactive hazardous wastes could not be placed in landfills
unless they were first rendered non-reactive or non-ignitable.
This ban on putting ignitable or reactive wastes
in landfills was to take effect November 19, 1980. The
effective date was later postponed for containerized liquid
ignitable wastes to May 19, 1981 and then again postponed to
November 19, 1981,
In the 22-month interval since 'lay 19, 1980, members !
of the Council and others have invested millions of dollars in
facilities to incinerate, chemically treat, or chemically fix,
liquid hazardous wastes.
This hearing is held because on February 13, 19S2,
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the EPA abandoned the requirements of RCRA and the
Administrative Procedures Act and, without a public record,
without notice, without opportunity for comment, lifted the
ban on landfilling drummed liquid and liquid ignitable hazard-
ous waste for ninety days; that is, until May 26, 1982.
As an aside, the lifting of the ban was made
effective February 18; and the day May 26th is really 97 days |
rather than ninety and all of the figures I'll use later should
be increased by seven days.
At the same time, EPA simultaneously proposed a new
rule to allow 25 percent of the volume of the landfill to be
used for drummed hazardous liquids, both ignitable and non-
ignitable. This is all the more dangerous, because EPA has
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also recently substantially weakened and proposed to weaken the
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monitoring requirements for landfills. j
Ten days aero, on March 1, 1982, our Council
petitioned the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia
Circuit to review the lifting of the ban concerning both
ignitable and non-ignitable liquids, and asked EPA to restore
the ban pendincr judicial review.
Three days ago, on March 8, 1982, we asked the
Court of Appeals to order reimposition of the ban, pending
their hearing the matter on its merits.
EPA's action lifting the ban on February 18, 1982
was unlawful. Our reasons and authorities are set out in our
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Request for an Administrative Stay and in the Brief to the
D.C. Circuit which I have given you, so I will skip over them
here.
EPA1s response to date has been to call this hearing
We understand, however, that yesterday in a hearina before the
Subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight of the House
Committee on Public Works and Transportation, Mr. Christopher
Capper, Acting Assistant Administrator of EPA and Mr. Gary
Dietrich, Director of the Office of Solid Wastes, said that
lifting the ban was a mistake.
It was indeed a mistake -- a serious and a dangerous
mistake -- a mistake which created an open season for putting
drummed hazardous liquids in landfills.
Let us take an example. The National Solid Waste
Management Association in a letter dated October 16, 1981 to
Gary Dietrich of EPA, the letter is appended to the Associa-
tion's petition to EPA in this matter.
In that letter, the Association said that its member
firms "...receive over forty million gallons of containerized
liquid hazardous waste annually", and estimated, "...the annua
receipts of containerized waste with some free liquid to be
630,000 drums or approximately forty million gallons."
This estimate is but a part of the total, for it
excludes on-site disposers and some off-site disposers,
Assuming the figures to be correct, EPA's promise to lift
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the ban, which resulted in three months of storage from the
promise, and its subsequent lifting of the ban for ninety,
really 91, days, means that a minimum -- a minimum — of
315,000 drums containing twenty million gallons of hazardous
liquids could move into landfills in the ninety-day period
between February 25 and May 26, 1982, an averacre of about
3,500 drums, or 220,000 gallons per day, and it would be
perfectly lawful under federal law.
EPA's admitting it has made a mistake is not
enough. Calling a hearing is not enough. Thousands of drums,
containing millions of gallons of hazardous liquids have
already gone or can go to landfills while we talk and await
EPA's decision.
EPA should immediately restore the ban, subject to
simple technical interpretation which will avoid any real
problems in its implementation.
The proposed 25 percent of the landfill volume rule
is unsafe. It is really just a continuation of past and
present bad practices.
The rule proposed by EPA on February 25, 1982, to
allow 25 percent of the volume of landfills to be used for
drummed liquid wastes would be merely a ratification of past
bad practices in its practical effect.
The rule, by allowing 25 percent of the landfill
cell to be containerized liquids, simply creates a ratio of
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thrsa parts of fill or other waste to one part drummed liquid.
Combined with the expansion of landfills, and we've heard
there are some 800 or 900 interim status landfills, combined
with the expansion of landfills allowed under the interim
status regulation, this proposal would not restrict any land-
filling of liquid wastes.
The ratio proposed by EPA is the existing practice ofj
landfill operators engaged in the burying of drummed liquids.
Its promulgation by EPA will not change any existing
practices. Adoption of a "paper" restriction such as this
proposal would be -- it would be, let's say disingenuous.
It would be "dumping as usual", repeating the mistakes of
the past.
Adoption of the proposed rule as an interim final
rule would also be illegal, for all of the reasons the
suspension of the ban itself is unlawful. The Council will
immediately seek judicial review of any such "paper"
restriction put into effect as "interim final".
If EPA wishes to change the Agency's direction,
this years long determined direction, on this issue, in a
basic and fundamental way, the law requires that all procedural]
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safeguards be adhered to and that the affected public have the
right to comment on the shift. We do not believe that the
public will tolerate such a shift and a return to "dumping as
usual".
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Incidental liquids in di mir.imis amounts and
voids in drums, both of which are problems which have been
mentioned in implementing the ban, these problems can be
addressed by technical amendment to the May 19, 1980
regulations and can come into effect with the restoration
of the ban.
The issue of incidental liquids in containerized
solid wastes can be addressed without any suspension or
revision of Section 265.312(b) or 26-.314(b), provided the
incidental liquids are really incidental and they are de
minimis in amount.
The Council has submitted to EPA in its technical
appendix which I handed to you a proposed technical amendment
which would interpret the containerized liquid ban to allow up
to five percent free liquids in an individual drum.
This technical interpretation is based on the
actual practice in several states that restrict free liquids.
In addition, our suggested technical amendment would
allow up to ten percent void space in a drum. The void space
allowance is important to allow for safe transportation of the
containers.
This technical amendment could be put into effect
simultaneously with restoration of the ban. The Council's
oroposal would implement the ban and overcome any real oroblems-
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percent of the landfill rule.
The suggested technical amendment is a minor change,
carrying out the goal of the May 19, 1980 ban, clarifying the
intent and removing ambiguity. It can, therefore, be
implemented immediately.
The 25 percent of the landfill rule, or any other
rule allowing more than de ininimis amounts of liquids and
voids, would frustrate, rather than implement, the policy of
the May 19, 1980 ban and, therefore, cannot be put into
effect without prior notice and comment.
There is sufficient capacity to safely treat
drummed liquid hazardous wastes. In its February 25, 1982
Federal Register notice of the proposed 25 percent rule, EPA
said that it did not find compelling merit in comments
received about difficulties in meeting the November 19, 1981
deadline or lack of capacity in alternate technologies.
EPA pointed to incineration, deep well injection,
solvent recovery, other recovery, wastewater treatment, de-
watering technologies, chemical absorbent processes, and
keeping liquid and solid wastes separate at the generation
point.
We agree with EPA. Present alternate technology
facilities have excess capacity. Moreover, capacity will
increase if there is a demand for services.
Whether there are oroblem liauids for which there is
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no alternative to landfilling is unclear, but the burden of
showing this should be on the generator or the disposer.
Some have said that there are problem wastes for
which no alternative to landfilling exists. If so, EPA should
place the burden of demonstrating this fact on the generator
or the disposer.
It is unconscionable to allow wholesale landfilling
of all drummed liquids because it is alleged by somebody that
a few problem wastes may exist.
Such problem wastes, if any, can be addressed
immediately through the provision for rulemaking petitions in
40 C.F.R. §260.20. In the longer term, EPA could propose and
adopt an appropriate procedure for case-by-case variances
from the drummed liquids and lanfills rule. Several states
already have procedures of this type.
Landfilling of all highly persistent and extremely
toxic wastes should be prohibited. The Council also urges
EPA to restrict other types of hazardous waste from being
lar.df illed.
Highly persistent and extremely toxic wastes should
be restricted from land disposal, just as liquid hazardous
wastes should be. EPA should not and need not wait until
1984 or 1935 before it begins to consider additional
restrictions.
Several states have restrictions which provide an
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immediate and effective place for EPA to start. The Council
is developing a detailed submission on this issue which we
will be acting on within the coming weeks.
Gentlemen, time is of the essence. More than five
years after enactment of the Resource Conservation and
Recovery Act, there are now no federal restrictions on drummed
liquid hazardous wastes being put in the around and covered up.
EPA has made a serious mistake in lifting the ban
which was finally effective after many delays on November 19,
1981. There is a simple and quick way to immediately restore
the ban while clarifying it and removing any real problems.
The clarifying technical amendment suggested is based on
successful practice in several states.
Today and every day — thousands of drums of
hazardous liquid wastes are placed in the ground -- adding
to the already serious threats to public health and the
environment.
We respectfully urge you to immediately restore
the ban on placing drummed liquid wastes, both ignliable and
non-ignitable, in landfills, while adopting the technical
amendment we have proposed.
EPA is responsible to all the American people.
They are depending on you. And, they are watching you.
Thank you.
CHAIRMAN DIETRICH: Thank you, Marvin. I would
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like the record to show that neither Chris Capper or myself •
made any statement: yesterday suggesting the lifting of the ban
was a mistake.
If you can produce a copy that we indeed did say
that, I would appreciate receiving it, but 1 don't recall us
saying that.
Let me understand. You are suggesting that; we
could lift the suspension, but we could implement the
prohibition by allowing up to five percent. I'm not sure
how we would do that without going first through proposed
rulemaking.
The ban seems to say zero to me. How do you allow
a five percent or ten percent variance without going through
some sort of proposed rulemaking?
MR. DURNING: Your Counsel, Mr. Pedersen, will of
course advise you on this matter; however, the EPA has
implemented other regulations — an example is the incinerator
regulation — by technical amendments and interpreting.
As we understand the law, if a technical amendment
is clarifying ambiguities, is implementing the policy and goal
of the regulation as opposed to reversing it or frustrating
it, that it can be upheld lawfully and I would be pleased to
submit to you authorities on that point.
j If, on the other hand, the 25 percent rule, for
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iexample, would be a reversal. It's really business as usual
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instead of a ban. That would not be possible by technical
amendment.
If the Agency preferred, and we do not argue against
this, it could restore the ban, implement the technical amend-
ment and also take comment on whether the rule should be
five percent, ten percent, whatever the rule should be.
It would, however, be able to immediately restore
the ban. It has been alleged that there are problems from --
I think what you called almost a ridiculous rule about the
prohibition on drummed liquid wastes.
Several states are implementing such a rule by
some common sense rules of interpretation. Incidental
liquids are liquids only incidentally present in something
which is otherwise not liquid. If you keep it down to a very
small amount which truly has come about because you've shaken
it up in transportation or something where some liquid has
formed since it left the generator, why, that's just da minimi
problems, if it remains di minimis.
I would say, gentlemen, if the EPA of the United
States can't overcome that, they're in even worse shape than
I thought. Several states are doing it.
MR. PEDERSEN: Well, I don't want to get into a
long debate on Administrative Procedure, but there are a
couple of things that I do want to say. The first is that I
think that the Environmental Protection Agency, and I would
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hope and I'm beginning to expect most of the people here have
an interest in being able to clarify expeditiously what is
meant by the term "free liquids", number one, which in turn
implies some kind of a test procedure; second, that they have
an interest in examining whether a no free liquids test, with
all the problems that that entails of getting down to an
absolute zero, is really the proper way to go, certainly in
the interim and for the long term.
I would hope that we could get agreement with a
proposition that I adhere to that simply for practical reasons,
under a rule of necessity in the short term, we could adopt
some regime to deal with these questions of test procedure
and of zero.
But, I do not think I agree with Mr. Burning's
comment that on a permanent basis, a test procedure could be
adopted without comment just because it furthers the intent
of the rule.
It seems to me that which of a number of hypo-
thetical test procedures could be adopted is the sort of thing
that notice and comment was made for.
On the other side, it seems to me that we want to
consider at least the possibility of other interim regimes
that could be put into place expeditiously.
For example, I noticed that in your statement,
Marvin, you referred to the possibility that there were wastes
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that might pose particular problems for landfilling. I wonder
what your thought would be on establishing a procedural
mechanism to recognize that possibility and establishing it
very quickly.
MR. DURNING: Are we speaking of the problem waste
issue?
MR. PEDERSEN: Whether we could, on an interim
basis, without comment, establish a procedure to deal with
wastes that may fall in that class.
MR. DURNING: Bill, I would like to have a sound
legal opinion on that, but I haven't gotten one and I
therefore won't go beyond what I actually have.
As for the principals that I would think we'd have
to consider, they would be that the burden of showing that
there really is nothing else that can be done with the waste
should be on the party wishing to landfill it, not on the EPA
or others. We've have to hear about it case by case.
Now, whether that can be done — you say immediate-
ly or quickly — there's a difference between quickly and
immediately. Quickly, I would hope this whole thing —
MR. PEDERSEN: Nothing happens immediately.
MR. DURNING: Perhaps notice and comment could be
taken quickly and the decision could be made after notice
and comment.
MR. MOTT: Marvin, there is an emergency provision
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in the Administrative Procedures Act, which certainly, if the
problem waste met the emergency test, we wouldn't sue.
MR. DURNING: That was Mr. Randy Mott of my firm
and one of the Counsel for Hazardous Waste Treatment Council.
CHAIRMAN DIETRICH: I have a couple of questions.
We have information on some of the problem wastes, and I
would like to get an opinion from you if, indeed, over the
next ninety days or certainly in the near future, whether
some of these problem wastes in fact can be dealt with by
alternative treatment or incineration techniques and is
there a capacity out there.
One is the several wastes from the electroplating
industry which are treatment sludges, bath sludges, stripping
and cleaning bath sludges. There are about 9,000 generators.
They are generating about 100,000 drums of these wastes a
month. Are there treatment techniques to deal with these and
is there a capacity to deal with these if they cannot ao into
a landfill?
MR. DURNING: I'd like to call on Mr. George Kush
of SCA Chemical Services, to answer you briefly on that issue,
MR. KUSH: We certainly have developed treatment
technology to go ahead and treat the wastes from the electro-
plating industry. If you recall, in your visit to our
newer plant, we showed you the construction of a drum head
facility to which you could go ahead and off-load those
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particular materials and put those through a treatment
process. Naturally, the cost is approximately some value
higher than landfilling.
It depends upon the amount of metals in, but you
can remove the metals in treatment, go ahead and press those
out as a filter cake and if you have, in fact, over ten
percent of chrome and copper, you can go ahead and ship those
to a smelter for recovery.
CHAIRMAN DIETRICH: George, is there capacity, do yov,
think, for —
MR. KUSH: In the case of our newer plant, we're
only operating at about 25 percent capacity.
CHAIRMAN DIETRICH: What is that capacity? I mean,
we have 100,000 drums a month. Let's say they are 55-gallon
drums. You're talking about five million gallons a month.
MR. KUSH: We certainly have capacity in that plant
to handle all the waste that's generated from the electro-
plating industry in the Northeast area.
CHAIRMAN DIETRICH: How about the rest of the
country?
MR. KUSH: I do not know the capacity of the
entire country. That, I think, is something you could have
obtained if you had gone ahead and had the annual report
submitted last March and this March.
(Laughter)
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CHAIRMAN DIETRICH: Well, they'll get you one way
or the other.
(Laughter)
CHAIRMAN DIETRICH: Another problem waste comes
from the paint and coating industry. A large amount of their
wastes do indeed go to incineration or resource recovery, but
they are left with wastes with high solid content that are not
well handled or, indeed, are almost impossible to be handled
in the treatment facilities, or in liquid injection incinerators
MR. DURNING: I'd like to call on Mr. Jack McCoy.
CHAIRMAN DIETRICH: Is there capacity in the
rotary kiln incineration area to handle those wastes?
MR. DURNING: First, I'd like to call on Mr. McCoy
of TWI.
MR. McCOY: Thank you. My name is Jack McCoy and
I operate a relatively small incinerator in Sajay, Illinois,
just across the river from Downtown St. Louis. I have the
good fortune of being able to look at all the pending .
proposed federal regs for new incinerators when I designed
my system.
I received my operating permit in October of 1979
and I had been going through my permitting process until today.
In February a year ago, I ran a stack test on still bottoms
that were generated from the recovery of solvent from the
paint waste industry.
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The still -bottoms I tested were loaded with heavy
metals. As an example, in one given hour, I put a million,
two hundred and fifty thousand parts per million of lead
through my incinerator and as measured out my stack, my
emissions ranged between 24 and 42 parts per million.
After running that rather expensive still bottom
test and demonstrating that the tension in my system and my
ability to meet all the latest rules and regs, within one
month, that particular waste stream moved into the secondary
fuel market and I have not had the opportunity of incinerating
one gallon of it since.
The technology to destroy paint waste with the
so-called heavy metal pigments exists in this country. The
capacity is probably not such that it could handle the entire
industry, but as long as the secondary fuel market is allowed
to go unregulated, you are totally discouraging appropriate
facilities doing a job to all the regulations because we
don't know whether we have a market or not.
Have I partially answered your question?
CHAIRMAN DIETRICH: Yes, partially. I think I'm
thinking about a waste that will not either be able to go to
the fuel market — will not be able to go to the fuel market
or liquid injection incinerators.
Is there enough rotary kiln capacity to deal with
the recovery bottoms, the various semi-solid and solid
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residues, sludges from solvent recovery that are generated
by the paint industry? I mean, if we remove the ban and we
have hazardous wastes, what are we going to do? That's my
question.
MR. McCOY: I will cite my case again. I have been
in business for three years and I am at the 25 percent
capacity and I am scratching to build my business in order to
make a profit.
I am not knowledgeable about the entire industry
across the United States, but I would say that if the capacity
does not exist and if private money can see the opportunity
for a market and if there is some intelligence used in the
incineration regs, that the capacity can be in existence in
less than two years.
Now, there is capacity that has not been utilized
and I would like to add one more point. In my part of the
country, and I operate in Illinois, by checking with the
hazardous waste landfills that I am aware of, just for the
record, my incineration fees are less per drum than the fees
to go in for a hazardous waste landfill.
So, nobody can plead financial hardship on incinera-
tion versus landfilling. Again, I must — Charlie, do you
have anything to add?
MR. ROBERTSON: My name is Charles Robertson,
INSCO, Little Rock, Arkansas. Prior to the lifting of the ban
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we had committed the funds to double the kiln capacity of our
rotary kiln incinerator.
This should be on line by the latter part of this
year. We currently operate with one rotary kiln and will be
operating two rotary kilns.
CHAIRMAN DIETRICH: But, what are we going to do
in the next ninety days?
MR. ROBERTSON: I am burning no paint waste now,
I am not asked to burn it.
MR. KUSH: According to a report given at the
conference sponsored by — or the symposium sponsored by the
EPA this week in Cincinnatti, the Cincinnatti incinerator is
only operating at 50 percent capacity.
We have not been able to develop enough of a market
to fill our rotary kiln which goes on line 1 May 1982 in
Chicago. My understanding is that Rawlins is going to testify
that they, in fact, have not fulfilled all their rotary kiln
capacity.
So, it seems that everybody who>is in the business,
the commercial business of operating a rotary kiln, has, in
fact, not filled to capacity. I also understand that the
Volcanis didn't fill its capacity when it went out to sea.
So, there seems to be excess capacity.
MR. PEDERSEN: Since we're talking about capacity,
we have a statement at his request from a member of the
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audience, Mr. Ted Reese, who is President of Cadance
Chemical Resources, but who is not affiliated with the
Hazardous Waste Treatment Council.
Statement of Mr. Ted Reese
MR. REESE: Thank you for this opportunity to make
a brief statement. I am President of Cadance Chemical
Resources, Incorporated, with offices in Michigan City,
Indiana. Cadance, along with its processing partners, we
have the capacity to convert hazardous flammable and energy-
bearing waste materials that go in the landfills, we have the
capacity to convert that into our chem-fuel product.
It's ironic that we're in Washington today and at
noon, we will be receiving a national award from the Environ-
mental Industry Council. It is a national award for our
accomplishments and our achievements in converting hazardous
waste materials into our chem-fuel products.
During the past two years, Cadance and its processin
partners converted 17.8 million gallons of flammable and
energy bearing hazardous wastes which contained lead,
chlorides and sulfides and so forth, from the paint industry,
the printing industry, the chemical industry; practically all
general industries use solvents and chemicals of some sort for
cleaning.
We have some portion of by-products as well as the
solvent recovery plants that we recover solvents; they have
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byproducts that we're able to utilize into our chem-fuel
product; 17.8 million gallons was converted into 17 million
gallons of chem-fuel.
Today, we have eight processing plants between
ourselves and our processing partners in the States of
Indiana, Illinois, Kentucky, Ohio, Connecticut, Michigan,
Alabama, New Jersey, and these plants right today are
converting 1.2 million gallons a month.
These are hazardous energy-bearing liquid wastes
that are shipped into our plants and back in drums. Today,
we are converting 1.2 million gallons a month into our
chera-fuel product.
In our plants, we have the capacity today at these
eight facilities to convert between five to six million
gallons a month; that's approximately 60 to 72 million gallons
per year of these kinds of materials.
The hardware and everything is in place. This
development project started in about 1975 and we have been
very busy in improving the technology with our in-use
application to be commercial and operate 24 hours a day, seven
days a week, 365 days a year.
Our business is limited and hurt by the fact that the
landfills are now opening up to receive materials that have
been scheduled to go into our processing plants, our eight
processing plants; we have four more scheduled.
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MR. PEDERSON: I have a number of questions by
way of conclusion, but before that, I'd like to make a
request of you and your group, and whoever else you think
would be useful — we have gotten your — you may not agree
with this — but, what I would call your preliminary and
somewhat personal statement as to alternate capacity other
than land filling for these wastes.
It would be helpful if you could provide us, for
the record of this hearing, a written statement that swells
out why you — how much non-landfill treatment capacity
exists for what kind of wastes this year and in the coming
years.
I am sure that whatever you come up with will
not be universally agreed to, but it's certainly a body of
data that we should begin acumulating.
MR. MOTT: EPA made a finding on February 5th,
1932,that compliance with the November '31 date was feasible.
Maybe you could elaborate on the basis of the Agency's
finding.
MR. PEDERSON: I think I will just renew my
request for a table of those who are clearly in the best
position to provide it.
MR. DUR1IIMG: Excuse me, Bill, our group will,
of course, work with you as quickly as we can and provide
such information we can and without debating because I
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feel that we're not debating. We're looking for information,
We would ask you to help us by saying what information you
had when you concluded that there was no merit in the criti-
cism that somebody was making to you — I can suspect who.
It was not capacity that was unfeasible to meet
the deadline, which you concluded in your preamble to the
February 25 notice — that that was not — there was no
compelling merit in those statements.
Maybe we can combine the information and then
maybe we can take up an agenda of items so that the EPA
won't get itself in this spot again like getting back to
requiring the annual statements and reports that the statute
contemplated and then we can ask you instead of you asking
us.
But we will work with you as rapidly as we can.
As soon as we leave here, we will caucus and see what we
can do to be of help.
CHAIRMAN DIETRICH: Do you think you can provide
any — at least some of that data to us by the closing of
this record?
It would be helpful, even among the membership,
to have some sense of what the — of what capacity you have
for burning some of the problem wastes that we're talking
about,
MR. DURMING: We would do our very best to get as
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much — Monday is the closing?
CHAIRMAN DIETRICH: We would like to close this,
yes, on —
MR. DURNING: We will do our very best and then —
that's all we can do. Do our best.
CHAIRMAN DIETRICH: I would appreciate it.
MR. PEDERSON: Two other points: on page 6 of
your statement you say that the 25 percent ration proposed
by EPA is the existing practice of landfill operators.
What is the basis of that statement?
MR. DURNING: I'd like to ask Mr. Kush and some
others here to address that question.
MR. KUSH: That statement is based upon what's
in the marketplace. We've had several extensive market
studies done in regard to these materials.
It's also the statement, I believe, that the
National Solid Waste Territorial Directors are going to make
and I think they're probably are more knowledgeable than
any of us in regard to what is the existing practices
around the country.
It represents the approximate percentage of liquids
that go into landfill containers versus solids. From what
we understand is the data we've got — some confidential
market surveys that we had done in the Northeast part of the
countrv.
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1 CHAIRMAN DIETRICH: I would point out that if it
2 were not the existing practice, it would still be an unwork-
3 able rule insofar as having any effect for a strip land-
4 filling; for in order to put more drums, one would only have
5 to dig deeper to create more volume or add more fill and
6 other material around it.
7 And there is a large quantity available of space —
8 space out there so that if you have to meet a three to one
9 rule, it could be done. The existing flow of drums could,
10 nevertheless, go to the landfills.
11 And that's our point. The 25 percent doesn't
12 really change the real world.
13 MR. PEDERSON: The proposed de minimis rules that
14 suggest, the 5 percent and 10 percent rule, you say it is
15 based on actual practice in several states.
16 ! Could you provide for us a listing of exactly
17 ! which states those are and the requirements — and the exact
18 requirements that they impose.
19 \nd if it's possible, I think, we would — well,
20 maybe you can name them here. That would really be best,
21 because then later people could comment on them.
22 CHAIRMAN DIETRICH: I'd ask Mr. Mott to address
23 your question. We would prefer to give it to you by checking
24 out — we haven't called every state, but — and they're all
25 representative of states here.
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There will be testimony from the Association of
State Solid Waste Management Officials. Perhaps they would
have that data.
Otherwise, I will ask my group, is there anyone
here who can name the states? All the states?
MR. MOTT: Not all — New York and Texas — Texas,
we provided a letter. New York will be here.
MR. PEDERSON: Could you speak into the microphone.
I want to be sure we get this one on the transcript.
MR. MOTT: New York, Texas and Ohio, I understand,
and there may be additional states.
EPA's May 1930 promulgation of the liquid ban
indicated 11 states restricted contanerized liquids. The
statements — they'll be made on the record today and will
indicate that many states just adooted the May '80 rule as
their regulation and are living with that rule.
And I think it is premature to take a representa-
tion of a lawyer representing a client about whether that
rule can work in practice when there are people here who have
been practicing it for almost two years now.
MR. PEDERSON: Well, let me pursue it one step
further. I was asking for the — for some states that had
what amounts — what approaches the precise de minimis rule
that you suggest so that we could check out who it really
does work.
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1 And your statement is that New York, Ohio and
2 Texas have such a rule that you are urging us to adopt
3 nationally.
4 MR. MOTT: Very similar percentages, yes.
5 MR. PEDERSON: Okay.
6 MR. DURNING: And I think a representative of the
7 State of New York is present and can perhaps better describe
8 the New York situation.
9 CHAIRMAN DIETRICH: On that score, George Kush,
10 do you know how the testing of that requirement of 5 or
n 10 percent requirement indeed is accomplished by your
12 facilities in New York and I believe you said you might be
13 doing that in South Carolina.
14 MR. KUSH: In the case of New York?
15 CHAIRMAN DIETRICH: What kind of test procedures
16 do you use?
17 MR. KUSH: In the case of New York, we use the
18 centrifuge method, this is the one that New York Department
19 of Environmental Conservation requires us to go ahead and
20 do-
21 We actually centrifuge it for — in fact, I can
22 go ahead and submit for the record the exact times and
23 different procedures.
24 In the case of South Carolina, we used your
25 filter system. In fact, we are basically testing this out
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again to see how well that tracks and what we think is
true liquid and what is not true liquid, and we'll submit
that data to the Agency by the 30th of this month.
I believe that's the comment period on your —
CHAIRMAN DIETRICH: Oh, I see. Right.
I think that I would like to move on. Are you
gentlemen going to be here for the day.
MR. DURNING: We have no more important business.
CHAIRMAN DIETRICH: If I might, I would like to
move on to the next witness — or several witnesses.
I'm going to call on Mr. Hugh Mullen, representing
the National Solid Waste Management Association, and he will
I think, be followed by Dave Fetter and Peter Vardy, also
representing that Association.
Hugh?
STATEMENT OF HUGH MULLEN
MR. MULLED: Thank you, Gary. I am Hugh Mullen.
I am Director of Government Relations for Conversion Systems,
Incorporated, a copy that treats and disposes of many types
of hazardous waste.
I also serve as Deputy Chairman for the Institute
of Chemical Waste Management of the National Solid Waste
Management Association. And it is in that capacity that I
address you this morning.
The presentation of the Institute will include
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1 testimony by two other members, Mr. David Fetter of U.S.
2 Ecology and Mr. Peter Vardy of Waste Management, Incorporated,
3 who will discuss specific technical matters.
4 I would then like to make a one or two minute
5 summation of our position.
6 We are here today to discuss two petitions: one
7 was submitted by NSWMA asking that the proposed regulations
8 covering the landfilling of containerized waste as published
9 by the Agency on February 28th, 1982, be made an interim
10 final regulation effective immediately.
11 We are also discussing a second paetition asking
12 that the ban be — the absolute ban on landfilling of
13 containerized waste, that was lifted February 25th, 1982,
14 be reinstated.
15 The rule we're addressing today pertains to
16 facilities having interim status and/or state operating
17 permits.
18 The Institute of Chemical Waste Management does
19 not advocate and has never advocated the indiscriminate and
20 unregulated disposal of liquids in landfills.
21 ICWM has always advocated that stringent but
22 workable regulations be promulgated as quickly as possible.
23 We were involved in the drafting of the Resource
24 Conservation Recovery Act. We have worked for strengthening
25 the amendments, including criminal penalties.
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i We were in the hallways of Congress in the closing
2 hours of the debate on the super fund, urging enactment.
3 As a litigant in the scheduling litigation,
4 Illinois v Gorsuch, we have pressed the Agency to promulgate
5 the longer, overdue regulations for hazardous waste manage-
6 ment facilities including those for secure landfills.
7 In our comments on EPA's option paper of December
8 21, 1981, regarding potential regulatory schemes for
9 permitting secure landfills, we recommended that the Agency
10 call Part B permit applications immediately upon promulgation
11 That would insure that all hazardous waste would be placed
12 in permanent facilities within 13 months.
13 Further, we have continually opposed the small
14 generator exemption provided in 40 CFR 261.5.
15 Recently, on February 2nd, 1932, EPA reopened
16 the rulemaking records for additional comments on the propose
17 regulations for permitting wastewater treatment units
18 because of NSWMA's concern that the proposed regulations
19 do not provide adequate record coverage.
20 Finally, we have supported the exemption of waste
21 from the hazard waste management scheme only when it can be
22 demonstrated that those wastes are, in fact, non-hazardous.
23 We are strongly committed to the protection of the
24 environment. And, indeed, we have a compelling business
25 interest in stringent regulations. Our market and our
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1 economic interest coincide with the overriding public
2 interest of insuring proper management of hazardous waste.
3 Further, we have a continuing liability. I would
4 believe that the best way to manage that liability is
5 through compliance with good regulations.
6 It's not surprising, therefore, that we oppose
7 the unregulated disposal of containerized, hazardous liquids
8 in any type of facility.
9 Let us look at the facts, facts that have been lost
10 obscured in the public reports on this issue. Less than a
11 dozen ICWM facilities dispose of drums containing free
12 liquids.
13 These are mainly located in areas of the country
14 with exceptional and/or climatological conditions. At these
15 sites — some of these sites — there is no ground wear at
16 all or naturally occuring contamination makes the groundwater
17 unusable. At some precipitation is nil. At others there are
18 many feet of impermeable clay or other natural formations
19 below the facility providing protection for the groundwater.
20 Some of the sites have more than one of these
21 protective features. There is no technological reason by
22 containers with waste, including free liquids cannot be
23 disposed of in these facilities.
24 Half of the drums received by ICWM sites typically
25 contain liquid waste and waste containing small amounts of
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free liquids. The trend in the percent of liquid being
received in drums is downward, because of recycling and
treatment as performed by members of the Institute and as
stimulated by regulatory and economic incentives. RCRA is
working as intended.
Even though the 55 gallon drum has become the
unfortunate symbol of improper waste management, there are
very good reasons why drums should be used for storage,
shipment and disposal of hazardous waste.
First, the drum is a convenient, secure container
for accumulating and segregating wastes, especially by
generators who produce relatively small quantities.
Second, shipment in drums is a safe and fully
approved method of shipment of hazardous wastes. Third,
handling of drummed wastes both during transportation and
at the disposal sites minimizes the chances of exposure to
both the public and the facility employees.
The regulation proposed by the Agency February
25th, 1982, would permit landfilling of drum wastes con-
taining liquids up to a maximum of 25 percent of the volume
of the landfill, including intermediate cover, as determined
by a very conservative formula.
We support this rule as workable and believe it
limits the volume of liquids in our landfill to an environ-
mentally accented level. It should be put into effect
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immediately.
2 While we support the proposed amendment, we must
3 point out that we — what we consider to be a glaring
4 deficiency. The regulation as proposed is too stringent in
certain circumstances.
6 It gives no recognition to any site-specific
7 hydrogeological or climatological conditions. It does not
8 recognize the obvious technical fact that liquids up to the
9 maximum proposed limits can be safely disposed in secure
10 landfills in arid climates with deep groundwater located
11 below hundreds of feet of clay.
12 All situations are not the same and should not
13 be addressed by the same rule. We hope the Agency will
14 consider this in the formulation of the final Part 264
15 regulations for secure landfills.
16 There are two environmental concerns regarding
17 landfilling drums containing liquids. The first concern
18 involves leachate; the second, subsidence.
19 Liquids contained in the waste would become leachat*
20 if allowed to escape into the groundwater. We believe that
21 liners and leachate collection systems are necessary under
22 certain circumstances and we will install them for our
23 protection even if they're not required by the regulations.
24 Voids within the landfill cells resulting from
25 collapsed drums might conceivably cause subsidence of the
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completed surface creating breaches in the cover. This
condition would increase the potential for formation of
leachate caused by precipitation.
Any landfill practice including an allowance for
the disposal of wastes containing free liquids must address
both of these concerns.
The proposed rule is a workable solution to both
of these problems. Mr, Peter Vardy of Waste Management,
Incorporated, will discuss these in greater detail.
Why is the proposed amendment necessary? It's
necessary because Section 265.314(b) of the hazardous waste
regulations published May 1980 totally bans even a single
drop of liquid in a drum without specifying how this is to
be measured.
It provides no provides no provision for a de
minimis amount of free liquid and is, therefore, unworkable.
And I might point out that that was the position of the
previous speaker in the previous group. There must be a
de minimis amount. We are just talking about percentages and
what that de minimis amount should be.
Several states have instituted a ban on disposal
of waste containing free liquids similar to EPVs prohibition.
For the most Dart, however, they have accepted either
explicitly or implicitly a de minimis allowance.
For example, New York State has such a ban in the
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1 permit conditions for its two secure landfills. Recently
2 this permit condition was included in New York's hazardous
3 waste regulations.
4 To implement this rule, however, we are advised
5 that New York will accept a container of waste having up to
6 a 10 percent fluid volume above the solids. Such containers
7 have not been considered to hold free liquids for the
8 purposes of the New York regulatory program.
9 In this way New York addresses both concerns
10 attendant with the disposal of liquids in landfills; namely,
11 leachate and minimizing excessive subsidence.
12 we believe the proposed amendment to be superior
13 to New York's method in that it provides a limitation on
14 the amount of fluid volume in a landfill that will be no
15 greater than that allowed by New York and most importantly,
16 it gives the operator the discretion to test a drum or
17 charge it against a prescribed liquid quota.
18 I would like, at this time, to introduce
19 Mr. David Fetter of U.S. Ecology who will describe some of
20 the types of waste that we received and some of the problems
21 that the industry faces and options available to us.
22 STATEMENT OF DAVID FETTER
23 MR. FETTER: Good morning. I am David Fetter,
24 Corporate Chemical Operations Officer with U.S.Ecology. We
25 are in the business of hazardous waste disposal, primarily by
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landfill. However, also associated with incineration.
What I'd like to answer and exemplify this morning
is exactly what types of hazardous waste get landfilled. I
think we too easily fall into the definitions in the regula-
tions and we picture, for example, an ignitable waste as
being a can of mineral spirits like we had around the house.
We picture a corrosive waste as being almost 100
percent acid solution. Reactive as being dynamite or TNT,
something like that.
We're not dealing, in the waste disposal industry,
with anything that clean, though I wish we were.
(Bottles of waste being displayed.)
This is the kind of material that we're talking
about.
(Indicating to bottles.)
Okay,a conglomeration of all of these things that
nay have as many as 100 - 105 chemicals in any one. We
ask what raises our concerns about the liquid content.
Decanting something like to a point where it contained
absolutely no liquid could be virtually impossible with all
the voids, even draining it.
I use these as two examples. Of course, this
would be a common spray -- I believe, Gary, earlier this is
probably the type of material you were referring to when
you referred to rotary kiln incinerators with the paint
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solids.
Filter cake — we get much, much filter cake from
treatment. We get filter cake from the electroplating
industry who have destructed the cyanide present in their
waste stream. They de-water it by way of the filter press.
We've encountered numerous problems with this
de-watered filter cake. In transit the normal vibration in
the back of a van will cause a separation and formation of
anywhere from 4 to 6 inches of liquid on top of that.
Wastewater treatment sludge is much the same
situation. And we do handle many, many wastewater treatment
sludges primarily because of the heavy metal content.
I have to add here that the generators by and
large that we deal with are small generators. Now, they're
not so small that they're exempt from the regulations, not
by any stretch, but they are small generators.
By and large, they're small enough that there's
no way they can afford to go to bulk systems. We have
approached them and encouraged this, that we go to a bulk
liquid handling system, bulk solid handling systems.
They just cannot afford that kind of thing. The capital
investment would just absolutely tear them up.
These are the people — and what we're concerned
about is that we don't get regulations that are aimed and
governed — the major — the large industries — and that
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these little guys end up going out of business as a result.
These are the people with the de minimis quantities of liquid:
They have to rely on drums.
In addition, we received — probably one-third
of our waste is waste that is not hazardous in the regulatory
definition; that is, it does not meet the criteria of 261.30
through 33.
The people understand their ongoing liability
whether it be a regulatory liability or whether it be just a
public liability. As a result, they bring this waste to
us. Many of these wastewater treatment sludges are not
hazardous under those regulations.
We don't want to see getting to the point where
these people, in order to comply and de-water, that they just
say well the heck with it. I won't worry about it. "L can
go to a sanitary landfill any way. That is not the case.
What we get, I guess what I'm really pointing to,
is basically — at our landfills we get what other people
don't want or can't take in the way of waste.
We've heard a lot of discussion regarding incinera-
tion. One example that was given on the rotary kiln was the
Cincinnati incinerator that — it was operating, I believe,
at 25 or 50 percent of capacity.
I might also add since we're a major broker into
that Cincinnati incinerator, that that Cincinnati incinerator
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1 cannot handle drums. The material must be shipped in bulk.
2 (Laughter.)
3 Various incinerators will charge astronomical fees
4 for low BTU or no BTU value, because of the fuel supplement
5 that it takes to burn that material, on highly aqueous waste
6 streams especially.
7 Precious fuel oil that we're all concerned about
8 in another building in this same town right now — and in
9 many cases simply to reduce the volume not to destroy as was
10 alluded to earlier. The heavy metals in the wastewater
11 treatment sludges are not destroyed, they're in elemental
12 form. They may change form and be made oxides, but they are
13 not destroyed. They come out in the slag which eventually
14 goes to the landfill any way.
15 Ash content being too high, sulphur content being
16 too high, chlorinated hydrocarbons that require a special
17 scrubbing system downstream, these are all things, I believe,
18 Gary, that have to be taken into account when we look at
19 the capacity for treatment of the materials that we're
20 banning from the landfill.
21 We are not in favor of wholesale landfilling
22 of liquids. We agree that it is not a good practice. We,
23 the Agency, and we, ray company, are not in favor of this
24 wholesale.
25 What we're really talking about are these kinds of
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1 waste. We're talking about 55 gallon drums full of this
2 type of material. We're talking about having to decant that
3 in some way, shape or form, which, like I said, is virtually
4 impossible under the absolutely no liquid — we're talking
5 about — and I had two samples that I didn't bring with me —
6 I had prepared — the reason I didn't bring them was they
7 were too small — but two samples of material that on Monday
8 was the consistency of peanut butter.
9 I had just finished decanting a sample in our
10 laboratory. It was literally the consistency and color of
11 peanut butter. I had to use a spatula and spoon the material
12 into the sample bottle.
13 The sample bottle just sat. Now, this is after
14 it has been decanted. It sat about three months in the lab,
15 re-decanted, and sits again for 24 hours, and I came back
16 and there was a quarter inch of liquid on top.
17 This is the type of material that we're talking
18 about, that we have to deal with on a day-to-day basis that
19 roll up to our gates.
20 Now I will have to get in a little bit too to
21 try to dispel the notion and the picture that many people
22 have from Love Canal, that incident — I can, myself — from
23 the valley of the drums in Kentucky and my back yard — it's
24 right there — have the notion of an open hole and an open
25 pit in the ground and the dumo truck backs up to it and tins
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1 it back and dumps his drums in and pulls out.
2 And once we get this humongous 100 foot x 100 foot
3 x 25 foot deep hole filled with drums, then we come in and
4 we put soil on top. Nothing could be further from the truth.
5 Absolutely nothing for the reputable landfill disposal
5 companies, those that ICWM represents.
7 We first of all — let's step through it just a
8 little bit and I'll try to be as quick as possible — require
9 an extremely detailed chemical and physical analysis
10 identifying every component in that waste stream, identifying
11 various physical parameters that flashpoints these kinds of
12 things in the waste stream.
13 This is evaluated. And these are approved or
14 denied based on can we handle it and can we handle it safely.
15 At that point, after the review of extremely
16 qualified technical people, the waste does come to the gate.
17 Okay, we've got an improvised system where two drums — if
18 we're handling drums on a ban — two drums at a time are
19 taken off of the truck. And I have to add the truck gets
2Q through the gate only after a very thorough inspection,
21 pulling of samples to verify that it is what the people said
22 it was before they shipped it.
23 It doesn't just come up to the gate and the gate
24 guard pulls the gate up, and the guy drives in. It's
25 stopped. We have a chemist at our sites. That chemist
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takes samples, he runs some of the analysis on those samples
to verify that that material is what the generator had said
it was and here's what is manifested.
The truck goes to the trench. We take two drums
at a time and they are very carefully placed in a lined
trench. We use three feet of compacted clay, containing a
leachate collection and removal system.
The drums are placed. Then each load of drums —
or each two drums — are covered with absorfaant material.
The significance being, even with the 25 percent rule, that
down the road, if there's any leakage, the absorbant material
is there to contain it. We're not going to have just large
amounts of liquids leaving the landfill cell.
We say, what's wrong with decanting? Why can't
we decant these drums? I think in looking at some of these
samples you can see where there may be problems with getting
absolutely all of the liquid out.
In addition, many of the materials that we do
deal with that we do take, or we take because they are
extremely hazardous materials. They're extremely toxic.
And no one is here to deny that today. They have to be
disposed of.
We feel that it is an unnecessary measure in
some of these instances for the extremely toxic material to
have to open and pour or decant each drum.
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We tend to forget about the worker who's actually
out there with the wand opening the drum and decanting it
and his safety.
We do agree with decanting, and I believe all of
our sites to utilize decanting to some degree. All we're
asking by way of the 25 percent rule is to have the flexibi-
lity for the trained, experienced professional to make a
determination as to which of those are too hazardous and
which are not to decant and dispose of in that manner.
10 In addition — just one other note on the decanting
11 Decanting is talked about as being only one part of the —
12 well, we talk about decanting as being the operation. It's
13 only the first step. Once the material is out, once the
14 liquid is decanted, it still has to be disposed of.
15 Once the drum is empty, the drum still has to
16 be disposed of. One of the critical — and one of the safety
17 problems, when we're talking about especially ignitable
18 waste, low flashpoint waste, is the actual crushing operation
19 of that drum.
20 You know, your gas tank in your car — I'm sure
21 many you have heard — it's much more dangerous and much
22 more of an explosion hazard empty than it is full because of
23 the vapor content. It's much the same with these drums.
24 You're taking an empty drum. There is no way
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rubbing against the other and the possible sparking. And
you're just asking for trouble.
What we're asking for is the flexibility for small
quantities of liquids not to have to do that on a selected
basis.
In summary, we do commend the amendment EPA has
proposed as stopping wholesale dumping of liquids in dumps.
And now I'll use that term: not landfills; not RCRA permittee
interim status landfills, well-managed and well-operated.
But it does — it would stop the wholesale dumping of
liquids.
In no other means — the record keeping that would
be required to demonstrate compliance with that rule and
regulation, to demonstrate that the liquids had been placed
in a trench, what liquids there are, in a uniform manner not
all at one end, not all in the middle, but in a uniform manner
The record keeping, the location records that would
have to be kept. The records of your budget — 25 percent
liquid.
We encourage EPA today to give full regulatory
authority to that proposal because we do believe it takes
a major step in assuring proper management of all hazardous
waste by technically competent, ethically managed firms.
Thank you.
MR. MULLEN: Gary, our next speaker will be
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1 Mr. Peter Vardy.
2 CHAIRMAN DIETRICH: The next speaker is Peter
3 Vardy with Waste Management.
4 STATEMENT OF PETER VARDY
5 MR. VARDY: Mr. Chairman, my name is Peter Vardy.
6 I'm Vice President for Environmental Management for Waste
7 Management, Inc. In our subsidiary, Chemical Waste Management
8 Inc., we handle large quantities of chemical and hazardous
9 wastes.
10 In the course of transporting, storing, treating
11 and disposing of these wastes, we employ what we think are
12 state-of-the-art technologies which range the full gamut of
13 landfilling, incineration, treatment, deep-well injection,
14 solar evaporation, land farming, fixation. I think you'll
15 probably find a full range technologies employed by our
16 company and by the companies that represent ICWM.
n i mention this only to emphasize that in this
18 industry there are no good guys and bad guys. There's no
19 polarization where one guys does the good thing, he incinerates
20 and another guy does the bad thing, he disposes to land.
21 I've been around this industry for a long time.
22 I've been around working with EPA for a long time. And this
23 is almost a deja vu. It reminds me of the days of resource
24 recovery, where if you're going to have a black box, but
25 landfilled, you were the bad guy. And if you had a black
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box, you were the good guy.
It's a horrible misrepresentation of the facts,
and it is most unfortunate that the media tends to pick up
on that.
Land disposal, if properly done, is not only
essential and an essential element of the proper disposal
of hazardous wastes, but it is, in fact, under certain
circumstances a good practice.
It is not only an economical practice, but it is
also environmentally a safe practice. And I think that when
you wrote your regulations, when you proposed your regula-
tions, you have taken that very well into account.
I think some statements were made here this
morning that I find somewhat appalling. It's almost like
a shell game. Here it is and here it's not. A statement
is made to the effect, for example, that interim status
regulations promulgated by your Agency specifically restricte
landfilling of bulk or non-containers — non-containerized
hazardous liquids.
Note the subtlety, the cuteness of the word
restricted instead of banned. The public doesn't know the
difference. The public thinks restricted is equivalent to
banned.
The fact of the matter is that particular provision
says that liquid hazardous wastes can be disposed of to land
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provided the restriction involves the presence of a proper
liner and a leachate collection system. The reason it
recognizes that need is because in any landfill, whether it's
a hazardous waste landfill or a sanitary landfill, in humid
climates, there is the expectancy of leachate generation and
we're trying to provide for that in the design.
Where we first got involved with the whole issue
of drums or containerized liquids in landfills, everyone
recognized two basic issues: one was the issue of leachate
10 generation; the other was the issue of subsidence.
11 In the case of leachate generation, I think it was
12 generally accepted by everyone that proper design which
13 involves containment and the capability of removing any
14 leachates that are generated for long periods of time into
15 the post-closure period is an essential and legitimate design
16 system.
17 This has been recognized by everyone and I don't
18 think I've heard anyone this morning challenge that basic
19 concept.
20 So we have eliminated, essentially, the question
21 of the handling of leachates in properly designed landfills.
22 The next problem that arose was the question of subsidence.
23 And what causes subsidence, how is it formed and how can it
24 be mitigated against in the most practical manner.
25 (Setting up chart.)
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When we talk about drums, we have visions of drums
being dumped out of the back of a truck and a bulldozer comes
along and pushes it into the landfill and then pushes some
dirt over it and that's it.
In fact, the proper procedure for disposing of
drums is the stacking of the drums, the initial placement
of the leachate collection system at the bottom of the land-
fill, the placement of cover and generally some absorbant
material over it and the continuous stacking and placement
of intermediate cover for a certain specified depth.
Now, then, you have a drum at the bottom of the
landfill. Over a period of time it corrodes. It doesn't
collapse to a paper thin thickness, and, yet, in our
assumptions, when we looked at this problem, we have assumed
that every drop of liquid from the drum will be removed and
that the drum will essentially compact or crush to a paper
thickiness.
With that assumption, if you look at the column
of soil above it, and the various procedures that are at
work; namely, sheer strength of the material, itself, you
come to the conclusion that the actual settlement above that
drum is generally considerably less than the thickness of
the drum or the depth of the drum. That's because you get
some arching over it and the strength of the material itself
orevents total collanse.
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Take a row of drums. If you put them horizontally,
evenly placed across the landfill, they will in time corrode,
settle and you'll get a general settlement occurring along
the area overlying those drums.
If the drums, are placed in uniform layers, evenly
distributed over the landfill, settlement occurs, but it is
of the uniform nature.
If you do not do this properly, you put some
piles high, some piles low, you'll wind up with uneven
10 settlement and this is part of the problem that EPA saw as
11 a difficulty with the placement of drums in landfills and
12 proper operating procedures can mitigate against that.
13 And, finally, when you finish your landfill, cover
14 it, mound it with sufficient slopes, provide sufficient
15 soil for post-closure treatment in case there is settlement
16 and cracking, so that can be monitored and can be maintained
17 in the post-closure period, you have accomplished the taks
18 of eliminating subsidence and subsidence related problems
19 such as cracking which, in turn, results in leachate
20 generation.
2i We have looked at all of these conditions and
22 we said to ourselves what magnitude of settlement can we live
23 with, what magnitude of settlement can we design for, and
24 have concluded that a maximum settlement on the order of 10
25 to 11 feet would be a reasonable maximum to establish for
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1 potential settlement.
2 On that basis, then, we have developed a set of
3 formulas which limit the volume of liquids in the landfill
4 to an amount which would not result in settlements in excess
5 of what we have set as our maximum goal.
6 This combined with proper operating procedures
7 we felt was a safe approach to the disposal of drums in land-
8 fills.
9 Now, everyone makes reference to the fact that this
10 is a 25 percent rule. It is not. It is a formula that
11 establishes the percentage of drums ranging from 10 to 25
12 feet.
13 And contrary to the statement that Mr. Durning
14 made, the deeper the landfill, the smaller the percentage.
15 If we have a landfill that's 25 feet deep, that's 25 per-
16 cent; a landfill that's 100 feet deep, it's only 10 percent.
17 And the reason for that is we want — we do not
18 want to exceed the maximum settlement that we have set for
19 ourselves as a goal as a maximum.
20 Now, is there really a difference between what
21 we're proposing and what the council has proposed in its
22 technical proposal: 5 percent liquid, 10 percent air space.
23 Does that differ very much from the 10 to 25 percent
24 proposal? Absolutely not.
25 If you assume that about half of the waste that we
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1 receive is in drums, and generally speaking about 10 percent
2 of that is liquid, and let's assume that 50 percent of it
3 is liquid, by our approach we're saying that we're putting
4 into the landfill approximately 5 to 12 percent liquid by
5 volume. Not 25.
6 How does that differ from the other proposal?
7 It differs simply in this way: the one proposal says allow
8 5 percent and 10 percent, let's say a total of 15 percent
9 in liquid and air space. You establish that on a drum-by-
10 drum basis. You establish for each drum what that volume is.
11 The enforcement and the execution of that measure-
12 ment is a nightmare. It's an operational nightmare. And I
13 don't care if there are states that have enforced this and
14 are requiring it, I will bet you that those states don't have
15 the faintest idea how, in fact, that is being enforced and
16 how it operates. Because they would have to have literally
17 dozens out in the field inspecting that procedure.
18 What we're proposing — and essentially that's the
19 only difference — is that the operator have the discretion
20 to say this particular drum is so difficult to handle because
21 of its content and its potential hazard to the operate that
22 I don't want to mess with it. I don't want to open it. I
23 don't want to test it. I don't want to play with it. I've
24 established its content by other valid methods, certification;
25 tests by acceptable laboratories, whatever, and I want to
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assign that drum against my total liquid budget for that
landfill.
And I will not exceed that budget, but I have the
discretion to say this drum is too hard to handle. I don't
want to handle it and I will assign it to the budget. That's
the only difference between what we're proposing and what
the other party that spoke earlier is proposing.
What is the big difference? What is the big
excitement? What is the issue? I suggest to you it's a non-
issue. It's an issue that makes good headlines, it's
an issue that makes big news, it's an issue that allows
you to climb on EPA for a change, again. And we've enjoyed
some of that a little bit. I wouldn't pass up the fun.
(Laughter.)
We would have some issue over the fact that a
leachate collection system has been removed from solely
drum disposal. We have a strong issue with that fact, liner
and leachate collection systems.
We have some issue with a couple of other items
that are in the rules. But basically what we're suggesting
is that the only logical thing to do at this point to
eliminate the confusion, the delays that come by way of the
suspension — is to implement immediately the recommendations
or proposals of the Agency in the form of an interim final
rule.
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That is the only answer. It will resolve all these
issues. It will gives us time to comment in the areas where
we want to make comments, particularly in the area of liquid
tests, and I think it will resolve the entire difficulty
that we're facing here today.
Thank you.
MR. MULLEN: Just a brief summary here, Gary, but
first I would like to relieve your mind that you have not
alienated all the people in the country.
I came over here in a taxicab this morning. And
the taxidriver didn't even know where EPA was.
(Laughter.)
Just summarizing briefly, ICWM believes that
drums are a safe and convenient method of shipment, storing
and disposing of certain wastes and therefore should not be
eliminated.
We think we have shown that it is not practicable
to eliminate all free liquids in drums. Therefore, free
liquids in containers should be reduced to an acceptable
de minimis.
I point out here that also the Council has said
the same thing. As Mr. Vardy has explained, it is only a
question of interpretation.
The proposed rule allows the operator to charge
a drum against a liquid quota based on professional judgment.
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1 We believe that blanket rules that cover all sites are
2 improper and result in inflexibility that hinders environ-
3 mentally sound practices.
4 The question of free liquids should be addressed
5 in greater detail in the final part 264 regulations.
6 Allowance should be made for site-specific conditions,
7 recognizing that some volume of free liquids can safely be
8 placed in any properly designed landfill regardless of
9 location. Total ban is undesirable and should be avoided.
10 We believe that the proposed amendment accomplishes
11 these purposes and should be an interim final rule. EPA
12 should take this action to address a public perception of
13 regulatory retreat.
14 The most appropriate means to convert the proposed
15 rule is to convert the proposed rule to become effective
1 e imme dia t e ly.
17 And, finally, we commend the Agency for its
18 efforts to promulgate a workable and realistic regulation and
19 we stand ready to work with you on developing the test
20 procedure for a de minimis amount and the final Part 264
21 regulations.
22 And we will try to answer any question that you
23 might have.
24 MR. PEDERSON: Yes. I have a number of questions.
25 On Page 3 of your statement you say that less than
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a dozen ICWM facilities dispose drums containing free liquids.
What proportion of the landfills with interim status does
your organization represent?
MR. MULLEN: Unfortunately, I can't answer that.
Can you answer that?
MR. PEDERSON: Can you give me just an order of
magnitude? Ten percent, eighty percent?
8 MR. MULLEN: Shares or volume?
9 MR. PEDERSON: Share of the total. A slice of the
10 pie.
11 MR. MULLEN: I think the difficulty with that
12 question is that there are many on-site landfills that we
13 know nothing about.
14 CHAIRMAN DIETRICH: We have the total number. You
15 tell us hazardous waste landfills belong to your organiza-
16 tion and we'll be able to get at it that way.
17 MR. MULLEN: I don't have the number, but we can
18 certainly get it for you. I don't know that.
19 MR. PEDERSON: Do you have an opinion on
20 Mr. Durning's statement that the 25 percent rule does no
21 more than ratify what people are doing at present any way?
22 MR. MULLEN: Yes. I think we totally disagree with
23 that, that this is a restriction. It is —
24 MR. PEDERSON: Would it be a restriction on —
25 because it tightened up on every landfill or because it
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brought the less well-run landfills up to the level that the
best landfills are meeting now?
MR. MULLEN: I don't think just by this rule you're
going to do that. I think you need more enforcement. But
that is a step in the right direction.
MR. VARDY: If I may respond to that as well.
I think the answer to your question is a combination of both
the —• there are landfills which will fall in the category
where 25 percent does not change its present status by
virtue of the amount that they take.
There are other landfills that will see enormous
reductions in the liquid waste in drums that they see,
specifically I can cite you one of our facilities that will
see probably 70 - 80 percent reduction in the amount liquids
in drums, and we have, in fact, put into operation large
mechanical decanting systems to accommodate that.
And that's not our problem. Our problem in that
particular case is what to do with the kind of waste that
Mr. Fetter has addressed.
There are also those who are not operating legally
that you mentioned, that have to come into line.
So, all three are really correct statements. It's
a mix of all of those.
MR. BRAND: I'd like to address this to
Mr. Fetter. What — in the description you gave, how the
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1 wastes are handled at your sites, what percentage of the
2 industry operates that way?
3 MR. FETTER: I don't believe I'd have any way
4 to answer that, not on total industry.
5 MR. BRAND: Well, what I'm saying is how many
6 sites have a chemist on-site to open the cans and do tests?
7 Is that typical or is that atypical?
8 MR, FETTER: Amongst our members it is very
9 typical.
10 MR. BRAND: You still can't answer the other questiojn
11 of what percentage that is of the whole industry?
12 MR. FETTER: No.
13 MR. BRAND: Okay.
14 MR. VARDY: Let me just answer — at least for
15 myself — that we operate about 14 facilities. Every one
16 of them has a laboratory. Every one of them has a chemist
17 and every one follows the waste analysis plan and everything
18 that's required under interim status.
19 MR. BRAND: I'm not questioning that. I'm
20 wondering how many of the approximately 900 landfills operate
21 in the manner that Mr. Fetter described.
22 MR. VARDY: Well, let's not get married to the
23 900 number, because I question it very seriously.
24 MR. BRAND: Some of them.
25 MR. VARDY: I don't know.
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MR. BRAND: The other question I have is,
Mr. Vardy, how does enforcement differ under your method
as opposed to the states that say they're controlling it now
under the ban. I don't understand why your method makes it
easier to enforce against.
MR. VARDY: Because you have two sets of facts
that you have to keep straight. One is the configuration of
your landfill, the depth which essentially establishes the
volume and a running talley on the drums that are set
against the liquid budget.
In other words, you just keep a running tab of
the liquid drums and you compute the amount of space avail-
able and you compare those two and see if you've met that
budget or not.
MR. BRAND: But how do I, under either method,
determine the amount of liquid in a drum?
MR. VARDY: Well, what we're saying is that when
a drum comes to a site,'it's presumed to be liquid. As you
have said in your rule, unless you can demonstrate that it
is not by way of opening, of testing it and of providing
proof that it is solid using the best method that you
proposed or some other that we'll come up with at a later
date.
Any other drum, by our method, is liquid. And
what we're saying is that if there's only 10 percent liquid
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1 in it, and we don't want to open it, we don't want to work
2 with it, we don't want to maange that drum in terms of
3 exposing our people to it, we conceed that all of it is
4 liquid and all of that goes against the liquid budget.
5 MR. BRAND: And that's done on 100 percent of
6 the drums?
7 MR. VARDY: Right.
8 MR. BRAND: You sample the drums?
9 MR. VARDY: Well, the sampling procedures as
10 they're presently employed is if you're dealing with a, say,
11 a new customer that you've had no experience with or you're
12 not totally familiar with his process or the nature of his
13 waste, that you test every drum that he provides you.
14 After a while, when you — when a pattern is
15 established, if you're familiar with that waste stream and
16 you know what process they use, you can reduce that about
17 10 percent of the shipment in terms of sampling. That's
18 the general approach.
19 MR. BRAND: Thank you.
20 MR. MULLEN: Just to emphasize that point, what
21 we are suggesting and what we are requesting in this
22 decision is that you impose that regulation as you've
23 written it and that means that we have the discretion to
24 test a drum that we believe will pass the test and will not
25 unreasonably harm our people.
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1 We're not going to open a drum we know is liquids
2 because it fails the test. We don't have to touch it. And
3 that's the difference.
4 MR. PEDERSON: If I can ask a broad question.
5 it may be too broad, but what is your position on whether the
6 current amount of liquids disposed in landfills should stay
7 as it is or diminish over time?
8 MR. MULLEN: Well, we think it will naturally
9 dminish over time. There are incentives in the whole Act
10 and the whole process to diminish the amount of liquids, and
11 I think that is taking place gradually. People are
12 recovering energy for instance.
13 It's going to be a natural evolution and this
14 is going to be a decreasing problem.
15 MR. PEDERSON: And, so, if — you see that the
16 major point of difference between yourselves and the pre-
17 ceeding speaker is really in what regulatory method is most
18 efficient in reaching about the same results in the amount
19 of liquids that go to landfills?
20 MR. MULLEN: Generally, yes.
21 MR. PEDERSON: I guess I would like to ask the
22 Hazardous Waste Treatment Council as they work on the
23 materials that we have requested to pay attention to some
24 of the points made by these sneakers and in particular to the
25 question whether incineration and dther disposal methods are
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practical when you are dealing with drums that must, perhaps,
be decanted and may have a greater variety of waste than
bulk shipment.
CHAIRMAN DIETRICH: Peter, you indicated that you
thought that the average liquid content of drums in — at
least coming into your facilities might be as low as 10
7 percent.
8 Do you have any data that supports that? Have
9 you done any inventories?
10 MR. VARDY: Yes, we've done such an inventory
11 at least on one of our sites. Now, that — there may be
12 something that's regional or geographical to that particular
13 site, but that's out general finding, or at least that amount
14 that is readily decantable.
15 I am not sure and that is a basic problem as to
16 whether after you've decanted whether you're left with a
17 solid or a liquid. That's a real question.
18 But let me just stress so that there is no
19 misunderstanding that we're not suggesting that we will handli
20 any drum the contents of which we're not clear on.
21 In other words, we're not suggesting that we xvill
22 bypass the basic requirement of identifying what's in the
23 drum for purposes of compatibility or other problems that
24 may exist in the contents of it. We're just saying that in
25 sone cases we know exactly what's in it. l-Je know we don't
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want to mess with it.
CHAIRMAN DIETRICH: Under Part A applications
there have been approximately 900 and some odd, I believe,
persons who have indicated that they're operating landfills.
You seem to indicate that at least within the
Institute you have 12 to 15, something like that, of those
landfills.
There must be a great many more, I suppose. Is
that companies or is that individual sites?
MR. VARDY: No, let's get that straight, it's
10 to 15 that receive drums, not —
CHAIRMAN DIETRICH: Oh, I see. Okay.
There must be — I would presume that there are
several hundred sites, on-site facilities out there, that
could receive drums.
One of our concerns is — although you can be
perhaps persuasive that you're operating correctly, it's
hard for us to know whether that is going to apply to all
landfills.
Now, what in your estimation is going to prevent
somebody from using the 25 percent — the so-called 25
percent formula — I recognize it's a formula — and the
percentage of capacity allocated to landfills varies — to
use their whole allocation for containers that are 100
percent or 75 to 100 percent full of liquids. What is going
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prevent that? What is going to prevent the abuse of that?
How do we correct that problem?
MR. VARDY: Well, whether you achieve the — they
get a percentage by way of placing drums that are full of
liquids versus filling a whole landfill with drums that have
10 percent of liquid.
I don't know that I see the difference. The
difference is in how can you control one versus the other.
9 But what we're saying is in either case, we're limiting the
10 amount of liquid in the total volume of air space available
11 for disposal.
12 That's done whether the drum is full or empty.
13 As a matter of fact, in that sense, our approach is far more
14 conservative because we're conceeding that a drum that may
15 have only 10 percent liquid in it — we're calling it all
16 liquid. And we feel that's a very conservative approach.
17 CHAIRMAN DIETRICH: Well, the point is is that if
18 you have a facility that exercises the use of that formula,
19 to use its 25 percent capacity, allocated the drums, to
20 having drums that are, indeed, full of liquid that is not in
21 my estimation minimizing liquid input into the landfill.
22 That is not equivalent to the suggestion that
23 was proposed by the Waste Treatment Council this morning.
24 MR. VARDY: I don't really see why. If the
25 argument is that you — under their proposal that they're
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distributing that liquid over a large mass of solids —
that's the argument.
CHAIRMAN DIETRICH: Well, mathmatically —
MR. VARDY: Mathmatically it's the same.
MR. PEDERSON: If I can — just off the top of
my head as a drafter of regulations, I suppose one way to
address the point you raised, Gary, would be to impose an
additional restriction of no more than X percent of drums
that are known to be more than 75 percent liquid.
And a restriction like that would control the —
if it were workable, would address the abuse you fear.
MR. VARDY: In terms of the mathmatics, Gary,
if I might just say, I don't know what the difference is
between 100,000 drums containing 10 percent liquid or
10 thousand drums that are full, unless you want to raise
some other issues.
MR. PEDERSOH: The difference is this, I take it,
that the thought behind each of these formulas is they set
an upper limit and in terms of normal commercial practice
the operator will use that upper limit to avoid uncertainty
in testing and thus will naturally come in well below the
limit because he's going under the limit just to be safe and
to avoid testing.
But it could be that there was a facility that
knew it dealt mostly with liquid wastes and said I — well,
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this formula was made for me and I will just landfill the
liquid waste.
So, the point would be that the formula which is
designed — which everyone things will produce liquid levels
may be a fraction of what it formally allows. In some cases
we'll have people coming right up to the limit.
MR. VARDY: The question is what are you trying
to regulate. If the concern was subsidence then I suggest
to you there's no difference between the two.
10 If the concern is the contents, then your entire
11 rule does not address the question of contents as to
12 specific types of weights.
13 So, if you're guarding against abuses, you know,
14 that's a different thing all together, but we were addressing
15 leachate and subsidence which is conceeded to be the major
16 problems of the environment.
17 And that's what was — what I believe we tried
18 to address.
19 CHAIRMAN DIETRICH: Do any of the Institute's
20 companies — are they complying with the New York rule that
21 I understand — or at least it was suggested this morning
22 is on a 10 percent by individual container — do you know
23 how --
24 MR. SKINNER: Five percent.
25 CHAIRMAN DIETRICH: Do you know how any of your
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i how rany of your companies are complying with that?
2 MR. SKINNER: I'll sneak to that in my —
3 CHAIRMAN DIETRICH: Okay. Thank you. Next I
4 would like to call on Phil Palmer, representing the Chemical
5 Manufacturers Association.
6 STATEMENT OF PHILIP A. PALMER
7 MR. PALMER: Good afternoon-, my name is Philip
8 A. Palmer. I'm a senior environmental engineer with the
9 Dupont Company in Wilmington, Delaware, and I serve as
10 Chairman of the Chemical Manufacturers Association of RCRA
11 Regulations Task Group.
12 CMA endorses EPA's efforts to substitute a reasonable
13 regulatory scheme for the total ban of free liquid contain-
14 ing waste in drums placed in landfills.
15 CMA representatives participated directly and
16 vigorously in the process that led EPA to propose alternative
17 means to minimize the amount of liquids being placed in
18 landfills.
19 CMA regrets that the public controversy and
20 confusion have resulted from these efforts.
21 To allay fear that substantial improper disposal
22 make take place we recommend that EPA immediately make
23 effective the alternative regulation limiting liquids in
24 landfills proposed on February 25.
25 Thus, CMA endorses NSWMA's petition of March 3.
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1 There can be no debate regarding the need to
2 minimize the amount of liquids being placed in landfills.
3 A rigid ban, however, is unworkable.
4 In the basence of any protocol to determine whether
5 particular waste contain free liquides, a ban could not be
6 implemented in a fair and sensible fashion.
7 Moreover, even if such a protocol existed, certain
8 free liquid containing waste could not be disposed of
9 except by their being put in drums and placed in landfills.
10 Certain wastes cannot be incinerated. For others
11 suitable incineration capacity does not exist. And I stress
12 suitable.
13 In framing responsible proposals for amendment to
14 EPA's rigid ban one encounters the obstacle that no readily
15 applicable and practical test exists for measuring free
16 liquid content of particular wastes.
17 Because of the absence of such a test, CMA and
18 NSWMA proposed a standard limiting to no more than 25
19 percent the overall volume of any particular landfill cell
20 that could be filled by drums containing any liquids or
21 free liquids.
22 And as you've heard earlier today, in essence, the
23 25 percent leve is going to be much less than that because
24 we'll allocating drums to the landfill which have considerabl\
25 higher solid content.
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1 Under this conservative standard, each drum
2 containing any free liquid would, in effect, be presumed
3 to contain 100 percent liquids when, in fact, most drums
4 would contain a significantly lower amount of liquids.
5 In addition, we propose that landfill operators
6 be required to distributed drums evenly throughout a landfill
7 cell so that when the drums corrode, they would not cause
8 subsidence that could harm the clay cap placed on the land-
9 fill enclosure.
10 Moreover we recommended design standards that
11 would help insure the integrity of the final cover assuming
12 some significant percentage of subsidence as a result of
13 failure of drums.
14 Finally, we recommended that drums containing
15 any fraction of free liquid only be placed in landfills with
16 liners and leachate collection systems unless absorbant
17 materials- were added to the fill in sufficient quantity to
18 capture any liquid escaping upon eventual collapse of the
19 drum.
20 We believe that at the time we initially made the
21 proposal and continue to believe that it represents a sound
22 and environmentally responsible approach to limiting the
23 free liquid placed in landfills while avoiding a rigid and
24 potentially counterproductive ban.
25 In the face of the infeasibility of alternative
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disposal of some wastes an absolute ban on landfilling
might encourage irresponsible handling of drummed wastes
rather than contribute to the protection of the environment.
At a meeting on November 6th, 1981, the Agency
was apparently persuaded that no simple and practical test
of free liquids could be readily implemented and that our
proposal would provide reasonable protection to the environ-
8 ment.
9 Accordingly, it consented to proceed to rule-
10 making on an amendment to Section 265.314 along the lines
11 proposed by NSWMA and CMA.
12 This meeting was attended by representatives of
13 a number of parties to the pending litigation including the
14 Environmental Defense Fund.
15 No objection to the proposed course of action
16 was posed.
17 The Agency stated that it would promulgate a
18 rulemaking proposal by or before November 19th and accompany
19 this proposal with a suspension of the compliance date to
20 last for 90 days or until finalization of the rulemaking
21 proposal, whichever occurred first.
22 The Agency did not act by November 19th to extend
23 the compliance date for the ban and took until February 25
24 to publish its oroposed regulations and the accompanying
25 suspension of the ban in the Federal Register.
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1 Consequently, during the period of November 19th,
2 to February 25 the ban on landfilling of drums containing
3 any free liquids has been in effect.
4 However, generators and landfill operators have
5 been on notice that EPA intended to proceed to rulemaking
6 on an alternative approach that would have allowed continued
7 landfilling subject to the restrictions contained in the
8 amendment that has now been proposed.
9 Accordingly generators and landfill operators
10 store drums of waste above ground awating regulatory action
11 from EPA.
12 As time passed without action, technical regulatory
13 compliance problems became widespread. Some landfill
14 operators advised their customers to store their waste
15 pending the Agency's action.
16 Others accepted the waste as usual but stored them
17 above ground. Some generators who did not have interim
18 status storage areas, because they routinely ship waste
19 off-site within 90 days after generation began to accumulate
20 waste for more than 90 days.
21 Other generators and landfill operators accumulated
22 drums in numbers in excess of the capacity of drums storage
23 identified in Part A permanent applications.
24 EPA's delay in suspending the November 19th
25 compliance date and promulgating a limited approach for
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limiting free liquids in landfills has caused a 90 day
accumulation of drum waste which some fear may be placed
landfills without adequate regulatory restraints.
These concerns, while understandable, are
exaggerated. Generators who allegedly would send their
waste to unscrupulous landfill operators together with
the operators face the potential of long-term liability
under super fund or state common law if these wastes are not
disposed of in a responsible fashion.
10 Moreover, much of the accumulated drum waste has
11 been stored at interim status landfill sites managed by
12 responsible operators who will in normal course apply the
13 sound operating practices identified in EPA's proposed
14 regulations.
15 Whether or not these regulations have come into
16 effect, many such landfills will dispose of these drums
17 in cells with liners and leachate collection systems even
18 though they are not required by EPA proposed regulations.
19 Moreover a number of states have regulations
20 governing landfilling of liquid waste and these states will
2i continue to limit these practices whether or not Federal
22 limits are in effect.
23 Nevertheless, it is undeniable that the timing of
24 this action with respect to this necessary regulatory relief
25 has had an unfortunate impact on public perception and may
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result in imprudent disposal of some quantities of drummed
liquid waste.
It is for these reasons that CMA strongly endorses
HSWMA's petition to make the proposed regulation effective
immediately.
Simple reinstitution of the November 19th ban
in the absence of a firm commitment by EPA, expeditiously
to complete rulemaking on modification of this ban, would not
be an adequate alternative approach.
Moreover it could cause widespread technical
violations of EPA's interim status storage requirements.
The concerns that led CMA and other industry
representatives to urge relief from a rigid ban remain
compelling. Inceineration is not a feasible alternative for
many of the wastes of concern to CMA.
Some of them are two-hased and quite high in in-
organic solids and consequently are just not amenable to
incineration. For them there is no sensible alternative to
landfilling in drums.
Other chemical industry wastes are highly viscous
slurries and tar-like materials that pose special handling
problems in incineration. These wastes can can at best
only be incinerated in scarce facilities capable of destroy-
ing wastes in netal drums.
Nor is decanting and mixing such wastes by the
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1 generator of the landfill operator a generally feasible
2 alternative. Such actions are not possible with some wastes
3 and with others may pose serious human safety risks.
4 Accordingly, we have concluded that continued,
5 limited disposal of drummed liquid and free liquid containing
6 wastes in hazardous waste landfills during interim status
7 under closely controlled conditions is a sound and necessary
8 alternative to a rigid proscription.
9 CMA agrees that in the longer term it should be
10 feasible and proper to limit further the landfilling of
11 drummed free liquid containing wastes.
12 Additional experience in minimizing liquid
13 content in drums, the availability of suitable incineration
14 capacity and the installation of safe decanting and
ts mixing systems should allow the minimization of this
16 practice.
17 It is our understanding that EPA may insure this
18 result by gradually reducing the allowable fraction of land-
19 fill cell volume that may contain drums of liquid waste.
20 In the meantime, the Agency's proposal will provide
21 a substantial barrier to indiscriminate landfilling of
22 liquid wastes. This proposal should be made effective
23 immediately.
24 MR. PEDERSON: -Jhat is your opinion of the
25 statement of the Hazardous Waste Treatment Council? Does
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25 rule sanction the existing state of affairs and wouldn't
really require and substantial change in what's happening
now?
MR. PALMER: Well, if you look at the proposal
as CI-1A and NSWMA proposed it, there are two limitations
there on it.
One is that there is a limitation on the number of
there's a 25 percent limitation but it's a. curve that goes
up. The way the curve is put together, it would probably
force many of the people out of business that have the
simple trench type operations because they're volume
requirements would be very much lowered compared to everyone
else's and in this sense it would drive these materials to
the larger facilities. I might add, the larger, more
well-managed facilities.
Our requirement that CMA was concerned about was
the leachate collection systems involved would insure in
addition that these wastes would only go to the better
constructed, designed and operated facilities in existence
today under interim status.
MR. PSDERSON: Could you comment on the extent
to which capacity to dispose of the waste — the liquid
containerized wastes that are currently being landfilled is
available? Presumably there is capacity for some, but not
all of them. Could you —
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1 MR. PALMER: There's presumably capacity. Our
2 experience is that the folks that say they have incineration
3 capacity, when you send them certain waste become very
4 selective and so say, well, maybe not this one.
5 The real problems lies in materials that are very
6 very viscous, that can't easily be pumped out of drums, that
7 can't be used — put into an incinerator by liquid injection,
8 and they are — there are very few incinerators today that
9 have the capacity to burn steel drums with these materials
10 in them. So, we're in a box.
11 On top of that, a number of the wastes in our
12 industry consists of waste that no only have these properties
13 but in addition have very high solids content and very high
14 metals content.
15 This is not a material that these people are
16 ready, willing and able to handle.
17 I think there's a basic policy question that
18 has to be addressed in this too and it was alluded to before.
19 If you have a material which is 80 to 90 percent solids and
20 some organics, does it make a great deal of sense from a
21 solid waste management perspective to taka this at great
22 expense, run it through an incinerator to move the 10 percent
23 material, wind up with some more ash, which then has to be
24 removed from the incinerator and put in a landfill any way.
25 So, when you're talking about waste management,
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you have to take into consideration that, you know, we're
really talking about management.
MR. PEDERSON: I'd like to get your opinion on two
possible regulatory positions. And I should emphasize that
really with complete truth that these are my personal
thoughts and the only reaon that I'm uttering them now is
because we hope to move very quickly. And I just want to
inform the people here as wide a range of options as
possible — I understand the argument. I think we all
understand the argument why the 25 percent rule would in
practice be expected to result in a much lower average
liquid content than that.
But I imagine the concern will remain that in
some particular cases, someone who has a special situation
and a special class of waste will be able to fill right up
to the 25 percent limit.
Would it feasible to include some type of a
provision that would guard against these cases arising?
MR. PALMER: Part of the problem has been in the
last year is that we really still don't have a test for
free liquids that we've all had experience in using and
has been verified and we understand which wastes are in and
which wastes are out.
And I think that's part of our problem. And until
we answer that, it's going to be hard to give an answer on
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1 that. And the main reason is that we have a lot of wastes
2 which are highly viscous which flow very, very slowly
3 which would go into a landfill in close to 100 percent.
4 These materials have a very low potential for
5 migration because of their viscosity and really probably
6 shouldn't add into the liquid consideration at all, but we
7 don't have a test yet to define whether or not that's the
8 case.
9 So, if you try to limit on a 100 — you know, a
10 certain percentage in a drum or you can't put any drums
11 that contain 100 percent ^liquid, it depends upon the test,
12 how much problem it really would be for the industry.
13 MR, PEDERSON: Assume that we are using the
14 paint filter test that has been proposed, what about a
15 requirement that no more than X percent of the drums can
16 contain more than some high percentage of liquid as measured
17 by that test.
18 MR. PALMER: We did receive some early indication
19 of what this test would be from EPA and we've implementing
20 test procedures with our waste to determine if we can meet
21 this.
22 And we're really not done with this yet. So, I
23 really — I have a hard a time answering that question for
24 y°u-
25 It seems at this noint that that may still be a
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1 yes-no type of test rather than a percentage test. And the
2 real problem involved in any of these drum materials is
3 getting a representative sample to begin with in order to
4 run the test so that it's validity as a totally qualitative
5 material for these viscous drum materials may not be too
6 good so we may still be faced with using it as a yes-no
7 proposition type situation.
8 MR. PEDERSON: The other possibility I wanted to
9 raise, which, in fact, has been raised by some of the
10 proceeding speakers, is whether it should — whether before
11 a liquid is landfilled there should be some regulatory
12 requirements to examine or certify that other disposal
13 methods are not available that it is not the kind of waste
14 that can be incinerated or neutralized.
15 MR. PALMER: Well, I guess there's a problem in
16 timing with this. This is somewhat the same type of approach
17 that was used for the ocean disposd. type situation and
18 it only takes years to do that from one situation.
19 You have to understand that some wastes that we
20 produce are relatively routine in that they're produced
21 continuously and if we were given enough time to go through
22 the regulatory process and after a year or so or two years
23 we could finally come to the conclusion that, yes, there was
24 no other alternative, but what would we do in the meantime.
25 There is a tremendous amount of the waste that we
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get in our industry that are incidental or one-time, or
strange, or unusual. And, so, there would be a tremendous
number of these types of waste that we would have to file
this kind of petition for.
And as a workable management scheme, I'm not
sure how good it would be. In fact, I don't think it would
be very good at all.
CHAIRMAN DIETRICH: Somebody on the floor asked
the question are incinerators among CMA companies — have
full capacity?
MR. PALMER: Absolutely. And I don't know what
the latest tally is but it's in the 100's. And, in fact,
that may be part of the problem, I think, that the outside
incinerator operators are seeing, that our industry has
taken it upon ourselves to do a great deal of this in-house.
CHAIRMAN DIETRICH: Including in boilers. Right?
MR. PALMER: For very clean solvents, that's
correct. And I think — there's some truth in the fact that
there has been a great deal of recycle lately. The types of
waste that you're beginning to see at the disposal sites
are much lower in solvent content than they have ever been
before becuase we're extracting much more solvent from these
wastes in order to recycle them.
\nd so they're getting gooier. They're getting
higher in solids content. They're getting higher in
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i inorganic solids content, they're getting more difficult to
2 handle.
3 MR. BRAND: On this issue about the liners, is it
4 correct, my understanding, that many of the containers and
5 barrels are going to outlive the liner any way? What is a
6 liner —
7 MR. PALMER: I don't know that that's a foregone
8 conclusion. I don't see any proof to say that this would be
9 the case.
10 Our basic feeling, and, of course, there isn't
11 much historic data on this that's of any value, is that it's
12 likely that becuase of both external and internal corrosion
13 that you're going to see the drums degenerate quite fast
14 and typically within the post-closure period.
15 Whether this means it's going to outlive the liner,
16 I don't know. Liners, both synthetic and clay, can't have
17 very long lifetimes, indefinite.
18 So, I don't think it's ever been proven that
19 liners will have long lifetimes.
20 MR. BRAND: The important thing is not the
21 liner. It's having the leachate collection system operating
22 and moving what is caught by the liner; Is that correct?
23 MR. PALMER: Well, that's right. We think that
24 with the 25 percent limitation at worse, and the standard
25 that you folks set, we can't agree with EPA that the
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1 generation of leachate under just these conditions would be
2 trivial, but nonetheless we feel that if for some reason
3 there might be an excess of leachate generation that we would
4 prefer to see a system in place that can handle that.
5 CHAIRMAN DIETRICH: A gentleman back there would
6 like to rebut a statement of fact that you made.
7 MR. PALMER: Yes.
8 MR. SCHOFIELD: My name is John Schofield, Vice
9 President, I.T. Corporation (Phonetic). You just indicated
10 that industries' incinerators full capacity. This is
11 absolutely untrue.
12 MR. PALMER: Whose industry? We're talking
13 about our industry.
14 MR. SCHOFIELD: We are currently working for two
15 chemical companies concerning four incinerators. We have
16 been asked to modify those incinerators because they are
17 lying idle because the cost of running those incinerators
18 is too high and it's cheaper for them to send their waste
19 to landfills rather than use their own incinerators.
20 MR. PALMER: I have 22 hazardous waste incinerators
21 in my company and they are all running at full capacity.
22 MR. SCHOFIELD: You made your statement on behalf
23 of the industry —
24 MR. PALMER: And I'll make on behalf of the CMA
25 too.
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1 MR. SCHOFIELD: I'm sorry, it's untrue, otherwise
2 we wouldn't be being paid right now to work on those
3 incinerators.
4 MR. PALMER: Well, perhaps at 95 versus 100
5 percent capacity is what you're talking about.
6 CHAIRMAN DIETRICH: Thank you.
7 I'd like to call one more speaker before lunch.
8 His name is Mr. Peter Skinner, and he's with the State of
9 New York Attorney General's Office.
10 STATEMENT OF PETER N. SKINNER
11 MR. SKINNER: Good morning — I guess it's
12 afternoon. My name is Peter Skinner and I'm a professional
13 engineer licensed to practice in the State of New York.
14 I'm presently employed by and represent today
15 the New York State Department of Law. New York State
16 Attorney General Robert Abrams has asked me to testify
17 in his place today about the summary ban on land burial of
18 free liquids in hazardous waste landfills.
19 He strongly urges EPA to immediately reinstate
20 the ban for the reasons I will be discussing here today.
21 Aside from my appearance before the EPA at this
22 time, the Attorney General has also, together with the
23 Environmental Defense Fund and others, sought to intervene
24 in the proceeding brought by the Hazardous Waste Treatment
25 Council for court review of this recent rule suspension and
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1 committed to taking such other legal actions as may necessary
2 to assure that liquids remain banned from hazardous waste
3 landfills.
4 For the past eleven years, I have served in the
5 Attorney General's Environmental Protection Bureau. My
6 staff of five other environmental professionals and I
7 provide scientific support for the Attorney General's environ-
8 mental advocacy and enforcement efforts in cour, the legisla-
9 ture and at the negotiating table.
10 We have become intimately involved in with
11 hazardous and nuclear waste management issues through our
12 involvement in the cleanup of the West Valley Nuclear Fuel
13 Reprocessing Plant, lengthy permit hearings for CECOS
14 and SCA chemical waste management facilities, litigation
15 surrounding the Love Canal, remedial efforst at numerous
16 abandoned waste sites and spills, and many other matters
17 concerning hazardous wastes.
18 I have appeared personally before EPA before,
19 have authored numerous professional papers on landfill
20 performance and am working right now on a long-term
21 dynamic sub — landfill subsidence model.
22 The RCRA rule promulgated May 19, 1930,
23 represented a long overdue start at the difficult job of
24 modernizing an industry with technology at least four
25 decades out of date.
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V
Foreign countries such as England, Denmark,
West Germany are more circumspect about the future of
their land and water resources than we have been and moved
years ago in this area to develop and operate detoxification
destruction, retrievable storage and fixation facilities
to properly dispose of the increasing quantities of
ever more toxic and persistent chemical waste.
The United States, however, despite its leader-
ship in creating this waste in the first place has been
10 slow to develop appropriate waste management facilities.
11 Rather, we have continued to indiscriminately
12 dump toxic waste into pits, ponds, landfills and our rivers
13 even after Love Canal brought to national attention the
14 irrationality and shortsitedness of this approach.
15 Many responsible industries, however, have been
16 working on solutions to the problem: 3M, General Electric,
17 Kodak and others have installed special incinerators and
18 solidification equipment to destroy or render harmless most
19 or all of their waste streams.
20 Many companies found the simple process adjustment
21 significantly reduced quantities of toxic waste in
22 treatability.
23 The energy crisis intervened to increase the value
24 of organics, which could be recycled and used as fuel and
25 thereby help reduce the volume of hazardous waste.
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Simultaneously, a viable, hazardous waste
management industry began phasing in new and more expensive
facilities designed to comply with emerging RCRA regulations
and increasing demands of a more knowledgeable public.
In 1979 and 1980, New York State carefully
scrutinized the efforts of private hazardous waste management
companies to which it had granted land burial permits as
early as 1975.
These companies provide much of the basic waste
10 disposal capacity for hazardous waste in the Northeast.
11 The Marathon permit hearings, one of which lasted
12 over a year, which focussed much needed attention on the
13 deficiency of past operations in each facility, the two
14 major facilities reviewed had historically relied on land
15 burial of toxic wastes as a disposal method. In every case
16 the so-called secure landfills had failed to operate as
17 promised.
18 Leachate levels inside the landfills were
19 elevated and out of control. Landfill caps refused to
20 shed water and serious questions were raised about the
21 compatibility of waste which had been in place.
22 The rule in New York for leachate levels is
23 two feet deep above the bottom liner. I have with me today
24 some data which I took yesterday from the inspection reports
25 carried out by the 1-lew York State Department of Environmental
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Conservation monitors at those two facilities in question.
As late as February 2nd of this year, Secure
Landfill Number One at CECOS, closed in 1978, showed levels
of 20.6 feet of leachate. At Secure Landfill Number Two,
closed in 1979, 14, 16 and 20 feet of leachate. Secure
Landfill Number 3 which is still open shows levels as high
as 24 feet.
SCA, for instance, whose landfills were closed in
the late 1970's, show levels — Secure Landfill Number One —
of 13 feet. Eighteen feet at Number Two, 27.3 at Number
Three, 26.3 at Number Four, and onward.
What we see here is a dredful difficulty in
achieving the kind of landfill leachate levels which are
required by the rules.
Some of these landfills were operated on the
basis of a 15 percent free liquid rule and we can still see
leachate grows very, very quickly.
During these permit hearings in New York, a
number of highly qualified witnesses testified about the
availability of technologies to properly treat and destroy
a broad range of toxic wastes.
Based on the record of these hearings, the New
York State Department of Environmental Conservation required
the facilities to reduce from 15 percent to free liquid to
5 percent free liquid for containerized and non-containers —
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non-containerized waste. They were install and utilize
solidification pre-treatment equipment and to submit a
10 year modernization plan as a condition for the permit to
construct a new secure landfill capacity.
In his decision the Commissioner stated, and
I quote:
"In this atmosphere of ever-increasing knowledge,
experience and rigorous regulation, it is essential that those
applicants given the privilege to construct and operate
10 a secure landfill be required to take concrete, affirmative
11 and demonstrable steps towards implementing currently
12 recognized detoxification, incineration or other feasible
13 al te rna t i ves.
14 It is clear that New York's tolerance of hazardous
15 waste landfills is exhausted. It is also clear that alterna-
16 tive technology is available to destroy much of the waste
17 which poses a threat to the health and welfare of the
18 citizens of the state and the nation as well when land
19 buried is in the past.
2o In addition to the permit requirements discussed
2i above, the New York State Legislature is considering the
22 passage of a bill to prohibit land burial of many acutely
23 toxic wastes and all bulk liquids.
24 Other states are considering similar bans as
25 well.
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While the State of New York is moving quickly
to totally eliminate land burial as a basic technology for
hazardous waste management, it began years ago to limit
land burial of liquids. In the mid-1970s, certain permits
grandted to the Newco and Chemtrol facilities' secure land-
fills required the operator to limit burial of liquids
to 15 percent by volume both in containerized and non-
containerized waste materials.
To achieve this permit limitation, the operators
developed a number of workable techniques. First, they
found that generators were sble to comply with the 15 percent
free liquid rule if properly notified in advance and
monitored assiduously.
Next, each facility adopted a quality control
program to assure waste compliance with permit limitations
which programs required random and systemmatic spot checks
on drums being received.
Similarly, all bulk loads of wastes were checked
for their free liquid constituency. Each facility found that
a charge-back to the generator for the extra costs associated
with on-site solidification by the addition of kitty litter
or other bulking agents -quickly inspired compliance with
permit requirements at the point of transport.
Contrary to what Mr. Vardy said earlier, 'lew York
maintains full time monitors on each site who write weekly
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1 inspection reports about the ability of each operator to
2 meet permit conditions.
3 Based on the success of these efforts and the
4 regulatory recognition of the dangers to facility integrity
5 posed by liquids in landfills, the New York State Department
6 of Environmental Conservation moved to further limit the
7 burial of liquids to 5 percent free liquid by volume for the
8 CECOS Landfills No. 4 and No. 5 and the SCA Landfill No. 10.
9 Number 4 has been built. Number 5 is under
10 construction as Number 10.
11 Reportedly, CECOS has been able to achieve 10
12 percent free liquid in each container to date without undue
13 hardship based on initial quality control and generator
14 dialogues.
15 Aside from these permits limits for industrial
16 facilities, rules promulgated by the New York State
17 Department of Environmental Conservation required that
18 hazardous waste destined for land burial possess no free
19 liquids at all, although compliance with these rules may
20 require additional free treatment and or fixation processes
21 on site.
22 The intent is clearly to ban all liquids from
23 burial in New York State landfills.
24 New York State is not alone in recognizing the
25 importance of banning liquids from hazardous waste landfills.
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i The EPA set forth in the Federal Register clearly some of
2 the hazards associated with landfill liquids. On Page 8310,
3 SPA states it is concerned about the long-term subsidence
4 that may occur in allowing landfill disposal of containerized
5 liquid waste. We deeply share these concerns.
6 Subsidence has been a very troublesome problem at
7 all low level nuclear waste sites in humid climates which
8 came before much of secure landfill capacity. Three-
9 quarters of these landfills have been closed largely based
10 on the difficulties of subsidence.
11 Similar difficulties beset Love Canal and more
12 modern secure landfills at the Chemtrol facility.
13 EPA goes on to suggest that on 8310 that burial
14 of liquids might result in "significant and irrevocable
15 damage to the integrity of multi-layer final covers." We
16 agree and believe the damage will occur and we agree
17 entirely with Mr. Vardy who has depictions of that very
18 damage.
19 In fact, if I could, I'd like use one of
20 them. Could I?
21 (Laughter.)
22 ('4r. Skinner setting up Mr. Vardy's charts.)
23 CHAIRMAN DIETRICH: While he's setting that
24 up, there is a phone message at the registration desk for
25 Bob Leahy.
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1 MR. SKINNER: Today's final covers are usually
2 constructed of a gas collection system, soil compacted clay,
3 drainage layers, synthetic membrane, compacted clay again,
4 sub-soil and turf. This is not the case in the depictions
5 here.
6 (Indicating.)
7 Subsidence amounts in the range of 11.25 feet,
8 as estimated by USEPA on Page 8310 in the Federal Register
9 would absolutely destroy the integrity of such a final
10 cover and allow surface water to enter, mix with the waste
11 and facilitate leachate migration.
12 A description by Mr. Vardy here on this rather
13 simplified diagram of the drop indicated right here of
14 differential settlement would, in the case of New York
15 State landfills, sheer all liner layers and cause at least
16 in the Spring of the year significant infiltration of water
17 at these cracks,
18 In fact, at the low level waste site in West
19 Valley, in the mid-70's we nearly lost one of our regulators
20 down a subsidence crack. So, consequently it can be
21 serious and a very real problem.
22 Repair of such cover failures is possible, but
23 exceedingly expensive and certainly only temporary. Repair
24 of West Valley's single layer, minimally comnacted trench
25 covars, not unlika what Patsr Vardy shows here, cost
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hundreds of thousands of dollars for the first seven
trenches. Kentucky has spent even more at their low-level
waste site in Maxey Flats.
Illinois is seeking in court tens of millions of
dollars to remediate the trenches at the Shieffield site.
Complete repair of the complicated covers of today's
secure landfills will cost untold dollars each time it
must be done, long into the future.
Liquids in landfills cause other terrible problems
as well. As USEPA freely admits landfill containers will
eventually release their contents into the fill itself.
The first six landfills at Chemtrol in New York are good
examples of this phenominon.
As I said double digit in feet levels of leachate
have plagued the facility in spite of continual efforts to
remove and reduce that volume of leachate. PCB's have
floated to the surface of some of these landfills and
further frustrated attempts to remove and de-water the
fills.
This problem is particularly troublesome in the
Northeast where evapotranspiration plays a lesser role in
the surficial water balance than in dryer climates.
High levels of lechate cause several difficulties.
First, the higher the liquid levels or hydraulic head in the
landfill cause contaminants to run more quickly through the
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' liner into the environment. The higher the leachate
2 level, the greater the likelihood soluable contimanants
3 in the fill itself will become part of the leachate for
4 eventual transport out of the landfill into the environment.
5 The greater the liquid volume in the landfill,
6 the less stable and resistent to earthquakes the landfill
7 will be. Perhpas, most important is the high liquid levels
8 increase the stress on the exterior berm walls enclosing
9 the fill.
10 Any instability problem due to erosion or
11 earthquake stress could quickly lead to mass carriage of
12 contaminants far from the site via surface and groundwater
13 transport. In short, secure landfills with appreciable
14 amounts of leachate inside can be likened to chicken pot
15 pies, the crusts of which will collapse with the least
16 stress or liquid removal.
17 Since many of the liquids traditionally buried in
18 landfills are solvents or solvent mixtures, they possess
19 unique capabilities to mobilize hydrophobia and otherwise
20 immobile wastes. The leachate generated by the addition
21 of such liquids inevitably becomes a witches brew of toxics
22 far more dangerous than the original waste materials
23 themselves. Solvents have been undeniably linked to severe
24 and rapid degradation of both synthetic membrane and
25 compacted clay liners in numerous and varied laboratory
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1 experiments paid for by EPA and others.
2 Field experience with such liner systems bears out
3 these findings. Recent data from the modern Earthline Wilson
4 ville landfill indicate that gross levels of contaminants
5 have escaped the liner in not just one area but several.
6 On the basis of these indications and as a result
7 of court proceedings on the matter, the facility owner has
8 been ordered to begin exhumation of the wastes at the
9 facility. Recent analysis of four out of five New Jersey's
10 secure landfills by Princeton University investigator,
11 Dr. Peter Montigue, clearly demonstrated that all four have
12 suffered liner failures even before the landfills were
13 closed.
14 Based on these uncontested laboratory and and
15 field observations, placement of solvents and other liquids
16 in secure landfills constructed with such liner systems
17 seems totally irresponsible.
18 In spite of all the dangers associated with this
19 practice, well-known to USEPA, the Agency argues that
20 burial of large quantities of liquids is required because
21 "substantial capital costs" while EPA resolves of the key
22 issues will have an impact on industry.
23 This argument has falacious on its face because
24 the ban has been effect for several months and has been
25 promulgated after years of public debate, 13 months nrior
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to its effective date.
Industry has had ample opportunity to install
whatever equipment was necessary to provide containers
compliant with the free liquid ban. In addition, decanting
equipment will not be needed at most facilities at all for
wastes produced for particular liquid levels.
Rather, inexpensive production process adjustment
8 will determine the liquid levels for a particular
9 waste.
10 The argument is additional falacious because
11 most generators have received USEPA permits to store wastes
12 on-site preparatory to disposal. These permits will allow
13 storage for an additional period to USEPA determination of
14 the free liquid limit issue discussed in the Federal Register.
15 Furthermore, if the generator does not want to
16 store or decant existing barrels of liquid wastes, they
17 can be shipped to existing destruction or solidification
18 facilities across the nation.
19 USEPA argues that limiting landburial of liquids
20 in each container for a particular level requires land
21 disposal facilities to "open inspect all incoming containers
22 and perform additional de-watering operation on these
23 containerized liquids."
24 New York State has successfully implemented a
25 reasonable liquid limit ban and the regulated community has
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not found it unworkable. Cooperative arrangements between
the generators and disposers have resulted in contracts
that specify certain waste characteristic limitations,
allowing disposers to develop quality control schemes which
require opening only a fraction of the drums.
If any of the drums do not comply with the rules,
a larger fraction is inspected and the generator notified
of the deficiency. The generator then chooses whether the
drums are to be returned to him for additional treatment
or whether the additional work is to be done by the disposer
on site and charged back to the generator.
The additional costs of transportation and/or on-
site treatment provides the necessary motivation to generators
to comply with contract specifications.
Based on USEPA's unreal perception of the
"real-word problems" at waste disposal sites, it believes
a landfill-wide limitation of liquids based on the
formulae provided in the Federal Register would eliminate
inspection of drums and thereby the theoretical endangerment
of workers.
It is hard to see how this reduction of endanger-
ment will occur since the proportion of containers described
as solid by the generator — approximately 75 percent in a
25 foot desr> landfill — will still need the same quality
control efforts and nrotocol on site which all containers
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receive now. Consequently, the proposed EPA liquid limit
formulae for landfills should eliminate only 25 percent
at most of the inspection required when the ban was in
effect.
EPA bemoans the lack of remove technology to
determine liquid contents of barrels. We join them in this
concern as inspecting barrels remotely would be preferable
to opening them manually.
9 We do believe, however, that such technologies
10 exist that could be researched'in developing systems which
11 do not require manual container inspection activities.
12 Let the entrepreneurial ingenuity recently
13 demonstrated by the rush toward alternative treatment
14 technology for hazardous wastes be brought to bear on this
15 problem, as it will, if the ban is reinstated.
16 These arguments are clearly EPA's proverbial
17 Trojan Horse. The real truth is that some parochial
18 industrial interests have pressured EPA into suspending the
19 ban on liquids and landfills because destruction or solidi-
20 fication is mora expensive in the short run than dumping
21 liquids in the ground.
22 Land disposal of the liquids postpones the costs
23 and puts those costs not on industry but on the public
24 custodians of landfills. Industry gets a free ride at the
25 expense of the taxpayers.
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1 Rather than weaken already unconscionable rules
2 permitting land burial of untreated waste, EPA should follow
3 New York's leadership in requiring waste management facility
4 modernization;allowing burial of liquids destroys economic
5 incentives for state-of-the-art destruction fixation facili-
6 ties.
7 The suspension of the ban on land burial of liquids
8 and the proposed formulae for liquid limits in landfills
9 will break the precious momentum that years of industry,
10 government and citizen cooperation have generated to
11 modernize the waste management practices in New York and
12 other states.
13 If our neighboring states are allowed to manage
14 waste irresponsibly under USEPA rules and choose to do so,
15 New York State industry may leave the State in search of
16 cheaper disposal fees and our growing and modernizing waste
17 management firms will be starved for revenue.
18 In the long run, of course, the public will be
19 the big losers. As we have all discovered too late
20 remediation of such toxic disasters as Love Canal costs
21 much much more in the end than prooer management in the
22 beginning.
23 Having briefly addressed the problems surrounding
24 the substantive impact of the Agency action being discussed
25 today, I would like to close with a comment on the Agency's
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1 inexplicable disregard of lawful procedures in summarily sus-
2 pending a duly promulgated regulation.
3 Beginning with the passage of RCRA, the
4 New York State Attorney General has been committed to a
5 strong involvement in the promulgation of the regulations
6 under the Act.
7 My office actively participated in the development
8 of the rule that was effectively thrown out by EPA on
9 February 18th of this year.
10 Long before the long-delayed promulgation of that
11 rule in May of 1980,we expended a great deal of time and
12 energy. We put in more than 100 pages of comments on the
13 proposed rules and did sd for the purpose of making the
14 Resource Conservation Recovery Act carried out properly [sic].
15 NOW after 18 months of lead time for the rule
16 to take effect, which followed a four-year effort to imple-
17 ment the Act, and another three months following the
18 effective date, EPA unilaterally, summarily and totally
19 without notice tells industry that the rule can be ignored
20 while the Agency considers an amendment to it.
21 On behalf of Robert Abrams, Attorney General of
22 the State of ?Iew York, I urge the Agency to immediately
23 withdraw its suspension not only for the sound environmentally
24 related reasons that I've discussed today, but as a showing
25 of good faith to those of us who have worked so hard to
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the accomplishments we now have reason to fear will be
eroded.
MR. PEDERSON: Mr. Skinner, what's your opinion
of the proposition that the EPA proposed rule is more or
less equivalent in strigency to the New York rule, because
under the EPA proposed rule, any drum with any liquid is
counted as having a 100 percent liquid?
MR. SKINNER: Well, first off, that's not the
way I read the rule. More importantly, one of the issues
10 that has not been raised here — at least this morning—
11 is the notion of bulk wastes, which may or may not meet
12 the 25 or 10 percent rule.
In New York demand for sludge disposal is so
14 great that one of the operators developed his own sludge
15 disposal facility so that it would not mix with and cause
16 subsidence problems in the normal secure landfill.
17 Because the demand is so high in New York, we
18 fear that having 25 percent of the containers be liquid
19 added to the non-regulated — at least in other states —
20 excuse me. It's regulated in New York.
21 But in other states the 25 percent of liquid in
22 drums plus the highly liquid sludges and other materials in
23 bulk form will cost much more than 25 percent of the landfill
24 to be liquid.
25 And EPA points that out in their preamble and I
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1 agree entirely with that.
2 Those kinds of considerations, I think, make a
3 mockery of the — this limited rule covering just con-
4 tainerized waste. The way to get around that rule, of
5 course, is to deliver the bulk liquid waste in a truck,
6 dump them over the side and then all of a sudden you have
7 made a mockery of your efforts to minimize liquids in
8 landfills.
9 MR. PEDERSON: Yes, but focussing just for the
10 moment on the containerized wastes, you have an opinion as
11 to whether you are proposing one stricter than the one that
12 we have proposed, taking into account the difference in
J3 sampling methods.
14 MR. SKINNER: Well, certainly at the 5 percent
15 limit for liquids in containerized and non-containerized
16 waste, it certainly is, yes, absolutely, because if I
17 read your rules right — by the way, you should put in
18 your rules that it's measured in feet. Because if it's
19 measured in centimeters or — it would — you have to do it
20 in feet.
21 Certainly, at 5 percent free liquid, we are
22 certainly more strigent because not only can we cover
23 containerized waste, but we do non-containerized as well.
24 CHAIRI1AN DIETRICH: What test do you use — test
25 methods do you use for free liquid content?
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MR. SKINNER: Well, I think that's a hard
question. At the present time, the particular test in
question is under negotiation between our operators and the
Department of Environmental Conservation.
There are a number of tests that have been used
in the past. One was perhaps an appropriate but poorly
carried out test, that was called the honey test; namely,
once the drum was opened and it was stirred, if it had the
9 consistency of honey, then it was okay, if it was not, it
10 wasn't.
11 Now, I didn't quite support that notion. And
12 I didn't support it for a number of reasons: (a) I think
13 there are a lot better ways to do it; and, (b) there are
14 certainly no reason in many many cases to put those kind of
15 materials in the landfills in the first place.
16 But assuming that a showing can be made that there
17 is no treatment capability for such materials there are
18 many tests carried out, physical chemistry tests, such as
19 sheer tests for liquids which can be determined to be
20 appropriate.
2i And I know EPA has appropriately looked at
22 75 of those. And I think it might be helpful to all of us
23 if SPA would put in the Federal Register a description of
24 all 75 for the review of technically oriented oerson, in
25 industry and the private sector as well.
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CHAIRMAN DIETRICH: Those are, I believe, in our
docket. It seems to me, though, if you want to have an
enforcement policy with regard to the 5 or 10 percent, you
do need some sort of precise test to carry that out.
MR. SKINNER: I don't think a precise test is
really waht is needed. What is needed is a generally
7 acceptable test.
8 And the basis for that test should be a determina-
tion based on criteria to what objective you wish to
achieve. If viscosity — a high viscosity — achieves that
11 objective; namely, reduction of migration potential, as
12 CMA seems to indicate, the viscosity would be an
13 appropriate approach.
14 I think one of the basic questions that has
15 been alluded to that needs careful review, of course, is
16 the fact that under vibration you get materials floating
17 to the surface. Does that indicate that absorbtion is
18 really taking place. I think that's an important question,
19 so research should go into it.
20 I think the addition, of kitty litter may not,
21 in the long-run, keep even neutonian (phonetic) fluids in
22 place. I think that's very important to determine whether
23 in the long-run pouring absorbants really isn't answering
24 the question either.
25 CHAIRMAN DIETRICH: Tell me once again, how does
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a New York inspector at a landfill site determine whether
a particular drum is in compliance or not.
MR. SKINNER: I don't know the precise answer to
that. They indicate in their inspection reports that they
achieved what they believed is 10 percent free fluid which
includes air, by the way.
But the exact protocol we use today I don't know.
In the past —
CHAIRMAN DIETRICH: Could you supply that?
MR. SKINNER: Certainly.
CHAIRMAN DIETRICH: Could you perhaps do that
by Monday?
MR. SKINNER: I will certainly attempt to.
But I would indicate that those — the issue is the —
the issue is being negotiated because we are committed to
the stand, but want to do it in a fair —
CHAIRMAN DIETRICH: And do I understand that the
state regulations use the term prohibition or ban?
MR. SKINNER: That's correct.
CHAIRMAN DIETRICH: The actual enforcement of it
is —
MR. SKINNER: This ban
CHAIRMAN DIETRICH: Shows some discretion. Is
that right?
MR. SKINNER: That's correct, because as people
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1 here have indicated the variety of waste that comes in
requires a somewhat flexible approach.
3 However, the clear intent is to reduce those
4 fluids which have the capacity to cause difficulties in the
5 landfills.
6 CHAIRMAN DIETRICH: You gave some amazing figures
7 about depth of leachate in three or four fills, 13 - 20
8 feet. Are you suggesting that all that leachate has come
9 from liquids placed in the landfill or could some of that
10 ha'vecome from rainwater infiltrating through the cover or
11 falling on the facility during —
12 MR. SKINNER: I think we have to look carefully
13 at that issue. At CECOS, for instance, where secure landfill
14 numbers one and two were governed by the 15 percent free
15 liquid rule, there is clear indication that probably most
^
16 of that may be precipitation from rainfall if that's during
17 the open period.
18 In terms of the SCA facility, one through five
19 as far as I know were not governed by the 15 percent free
20 liquid rule so many of those, especially, for instance the
21 PCB's which are appearing, are clearly liquid and clearly
22 were liquid when they were placed there.
23 In additionl, SCA's present high levels are exas-
24 cerbated by the placemsnt of sewage sludge atop the landfill
25 to cao that was never enplaced on the six fills.
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So, I think those high levels at the present
time can be explained that way. In the past, however, prior
to the enplacement of that sludge, similar levels existed
and that probably is a mixture of enplaced liquids and
rainfall.
I think the important thing to look at is the
CECOS facilities which are state-of-the-art, were constructed
as planned and were governed by the 15 percent free
liquid and still high leachate levels exist.
Since '73, that's four years now and —
CHAIRMAN DIETRICH: That suggest that you have
a rainwater problem.
MR. SKINNER: I don't think that's the case and
I think CECOS would argue that's not the case as well. But
at the present time those liquids fluctuate every time you
try to pump it out and as such they are pumped on a
continuous basis year round to try and reduce the levels.
CHAIRMAN DIETRICH: To your knowledge, has
compliance with the five or ten percent rule been accomplishe
by removing liquids from tha waste or by addition of
absorbants?
MR. SKINNER: The addition of absorbants and
care at the generating facility to reduce the amount in the
first place.
CHAIRMAN DIETRICH: Do you have any idea of what
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proportion?
MR. SKINNER: No,, but I think that representatives
of the industry will be here today to help you out on that
question.
CHAIRMAN DIETRICH: Okay, it's now three and a half
hours after we started and I'm hungry and you're hungry,
and I think I would like to reconvene at 1:30.
(Whereupon, at 12:30, a recess for lunch was
taken.)
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AFTERNOON SESSION
CHAIRMAN DIETRICH: Peter, I would really appreciate
it if you could give us as much information as you could
on how you are implementing the five and the ten percent.
MR. SKINNER: I'll be happy to. I think it's
important that perhaps a presentation by the Department
of Environmental Conservation by the monitors themselves
who are on site and actually carry out the day-to-day
j work to achieve that would be very helpful to you.
For instance, I do know that their review of
the site when they first went there, they found it very
easy to locate non-compliant drums that were actually
already landfilled, required the operators to move those,
add the necessary agents and put them back in place, so,
even in the fill, through tapping measures and some other
things, they were able to segregate non-compliant drums
and the compliant drums.
So it's not completely impossible. I'm not
on a day-to-day basis in the fill, but I think it would
be very helpful if you talked to them.
CHAIRMAN DIETRICH: Maybe you could arrange
something for tomorrow and tell me how we could get that
information.
MR. SKINNER: I'll do that.
CHAIRMAN DIETRICH: I've been asked to announce
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that there will be a press conference tomorrow on the
National Contingency Plan. It will be at 1:00. It will
be in Room S363 which is the new offices over the sinkway
in this building, in this complex.
We have 21 people, more people. At that rate,
we'll be here all night. I'm going to see if we can get
through maybe 15 minutes apiece. What I'll try to do
is go to 4:30 this evening, and have a half-hour break,
reconvening at 5, and perhaps we can wind this thing up
at 6.
I think that would be better than letting this
thing over into tomorrow. I'm going to exercise the discre-
tion of the chair and do a little bit of reshuffling.
I first would like to call on Mr. Ted Clardy, State Coordi-
nating Organization of Missourians against Hazardous Waste.
He's from Excello, Missouri, and he has driven three days
to get here, and I would like to give him an opportunity
to make his statement. Ted?
STATEMENT OF TED CLARDY
MR. CLARDY: Thank you for allowing me this
time and putting me ahead of some of the other people.
I am one of the grassroots movement. I'm one of the many
concerned citizens throughout the United States, and they
are growing everyday. We heard people, technical people
from the regulatory agencies. We are the people who are
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going to have to live by these sites. We're going to
have to drink the water when it's contaminated, and I'm
here to make sure — I think it's concern and everyone
else is.
Like I said, I'm Ted Clardy, I'm a farmer, I
live in northeast Missouri. My address is Rural Route
1, Excello, Missouri, and don't try to find Excello on
a map. There's not over 70 people there.
I'm one of the many thousands of concerned citizens
across these United States who believe in God, our country
and that the health and welfare of the people shall be
the supreme law. We believe that we were made by God
to be the spirit of the land, and that we have a responsi-
bility until God, ourselves and our fellow men to pass
this land of ours onto the next generation as good or
! hopefully in better condition than what it was passed
onto us.
This, I believe, and this is my own, that this
is a basic law of survival for mankind as it was intended
from the beginning.
I am member of Missourians Against Hazardous
Waste, Macon County, Jissouri, and a member of the State
Coordinating Organization of Missourians Against Hazardous
Waste. I wish to read the following statement.
A policy statement from the State Coordinating
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Organization, SCO of Missourians Against Hazardous Waste,
MAHW, in regard to the U.S.EPA policy reversal record
in the Federal Register dated 2/25/82 concerning 90-day
suspension of the EPA ban on burying liquid hazardous
waste in landfill effective 2/18/82 to 5/26/82, docket
number 3004, extension of Section 265.314 (b).
To the participants in this United States Environ-
mental Protection Agency hearing, the SCP of MAHW is a
not-for-profit corporation in the State of Missouri. As
an umbrella alliance with individual and organization
affiliates, the SCO represents more than 100,000 Missourians.
The SCO was created to promote safe and responsi-
ble methods of hazardous waste disposal, like incineration,
recyling and recovery. The SCP policy maintains that
the use of landfill for hazardous waste disposal is an
unjustifiable risk to human health and to the environment
and ecological safety.
The SCO further maintains that the use of landfills
for hazardous waste disposal is illogical and irresponsible.
Therefore, because of our grave concern for the diminishing
protection of our nation's water, soil and air; and because
of our firm belief in the U.S. EPA's continual obligation
to strengthen, rather than weaken, the laws that provide
this protection; and because of our unified commitment
to the SCO objectives, we, the members of the SCO, challenge
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and oppose U.S. EPA 90-day suspension of the ban on land-
filling liquid hazardous waste and call upon.the members
of this committee to override, nullify or otherwise repeal
said 90-day suspension.
This statement submitted on behalf of the SCO
membership by Sue Behrens, the Vice Chairman of the SCO
of MAHW and Linda Clardy, Secretary Treasurer of the SCO
of MAHW, Route 1, Excello, Missouri.
Thank you.
CHAIRMAN DIETRICH: Thank you. I'd next like
to call on Mr. William Eichbaum, Assistant Secretary for
Environmental Programs of the State of Maryland.
STATEMENT OF WILLIAM EICHBAUM
MR. EICHBAUM: Thank you very much, Mr. Deitrich.
Thank you for taking us at this time. My name is William
Eichbaum. I am Assistant Secretary for Environmental
Programs in the Maryland Department of Health and Mental
Hygiene.
I have with me here today several other members
of my staff who might also be able to help any questions
you might have. Dr. Max Eisenberg who is responsible
for our science and health advisory group and also serves
on the Administrator's Council for Toxic Substances. We
also have Mr. Ronald Nelson who is Acting Administrator
for our Waste Management Program and who serves as
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Maryland's liaison on the Northeast States Hazardous Waste
Coordinating Council, also Mr. Bernie Bigham from Mr.
Nelson's staff.
My purpose here is to in the strongest terms
possible object to the 90 day suspension of the ban against
disposal of containerized liquids in hazardous waste land-
fills. One of the points I'd like to make initially and
that has not been addressed before really arises out of
the remarks and the concerns that you just heard from
Mr. Clardy.
I think one of the things you've got to recognize
when you at EPA go for a rulemaking process is that out
in the states there are people like me, and our responsi-
bility is to issue permits, to conduct enforcement actions,
inspections and to try and actually allow the development
of facilities pursuant to which we can wisely manage our
hazardous waste problem.
It ultimately boils down to the citing question.
The public reaction to the kind of decision that you have
made both in the 90 day suspension and that you are likely
to make if you impose the proposed rule which would allow
the 25 percent and would remove the requirements for leachate
systems and liners and the rest of it further undermines
public confidence, A, do we know what we're doing, and,
B, that what we are trying to do will work to protect
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the public health and the environment, and to the extent
that you erode and you undermine that public confidence,
you make it absolutely impossible for me to do a major
part of my job which is to try and get sites located and
facilities in operation to manage the sites.
There are people here from the State of Maryland
who live fairly close to our major hazardous waste landfill.
They're not always delighted with everything I do or do
not do, but they do not want to see liquid waste in land-
fills, and they will make my job infinitely more difficult
if they think that you are opening the door so that that
may occur.
Let me say that the State of Maryland has abso-
lutely no intention of allowing either the suspension
to have an effect in Maryland or any subsequent rule which
would allow 10, 15, 25 percent or whatever it might be
of liquid containerized waste be put in landfills.
Fundamentally, let me try and tell you why that
is. A, we don't do it now, and we have not done it since
we have had a program in Maryland going back to 1977.
Your record, your statements, much of what we heard from
the industry today, suggests that, and we believe in Maryland,
that liquids are not good for landfills.
I think we have to remember that landfills are
a technology. They're a technology like an incinerator
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is, they're a technology like a reprocessing facility
is, and that technology to many people is not the best
technology, because there are risks associated with it,
but it is perhaps a necessary technology, but many of
those risks arise because of water, because of liquids.
Therefore, it is our position in Maryland that
to maximize the opportunities for the technology of land-
filling to work, we just should not allow liquid materials
to enter into those landfills, and we have, therefore,
a pretty absolute prohibition against that.
In fact, we don't even like to have liquids
in our hazardous waste landfills if we can avoid it, so
we don't, for example, in many situations, we highly dis-
courage the placement of sludge from sewage treatment
plants just because we don't want all that water mucking
around in that landfill.
We would suggest that the situation in a hazardous
waste landfill is even more serious and, therefore, more
urgently suggests that we should not allow liquid container-
ized waste in hazardous waste landfills.
I'm somewhat struck by the discussion this morning,
and I'm not giving my prepared remarks which I actually
didn't give you at all, I guess. You don't seem to have
them, but I'm not reading them either, and we can give
those to you if you'd like to have them for the record.
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I was struck by the discussion this morning
because we seem to, A, not be talking about whether or
not EPA should have suspended any requirement for 90 days
out of whole cloth which I think is the major subject
matter of this hearing and which we are very strongly
opposed to, but, secondly, we did seem to get quite exten-
sively into the question of the 25 percent, the 10 percent,
the 5 percent, and I guess I want to say, as I have said,
we do not believe the suspension should have taken place
as a matter of policy.
We believe that the agency should maintain the
absolute ban as it considers its proposed rulemaking in
any change, because we do not believe the technology will
work with any other posture, but we got led into a debate
between 25 and the other numbers, because there was some
concern about whether or not you could measure or know
whether liquids were going in.
Well, the thing that strikes me is whether the
numbers 25 or 10 or 5, you have that problem. It doesn't
matter what number you pick so let's keep that in mind,
and I seem to hear from industry that you can, in fact,
tell whether or not liquids are going in.
There may be a cost associated with it. There
may be a delay associated with it, and you may make some
mistakes, but by and large, you can tell if liquids are
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1 going in, and it's our view that, therefore, the issue
2 is not whether or not 10, 25 or whatever percent of the
3 capacity should be liquid, the issue is are we correct
4 that liquids should not be in landfills ideally and, in
5 fact, we do seem to be able to tell whether or not liquids
6 are going in; therefore, if we are correct that they should
7 not be there, let's not allow them to go in.
8 That would be, I think, the first point of con-
9 fusion. I don't understand why we're even talking in
10 this context about the 25 percent or the 10 or whatever
11 the rest of it might be.
12 A second concern seemed to be, and this is cer-
13 tainly, I think, a much more legitimate concern is, in
14 fact, do some liquids have to be landfilled. In Maryland,
15 we have a siting process that is run by the state, and
16 which can ultimately override local zoning opposition.
17 That process has recently, and I can only speak
18 for the State of Maryland, completed a needs survey which
19 was done by the Arthur D. Little Company, and we'd be
20 happy to try and provide you with a copy of that, I'm
2i sorry I didn't bring one today, and it does not suggest
22 that there is a need in Maryland, and we have a somewhat
23 sophisticated industrial base, for landfill capacity for
24 liquid wastes.
25 So at least to the extent that we've taken a
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1 look at the issue, to the extent that we now have an absolute
2 prohibition, to the extent that in response to that prohibi-
3 tion an industry has developed in Maryland over the last
4 decade which, in fact, does reprocess and handle in many
5 different ways liquid wastes, I'm not sure the need exists.
6 It certainly doesn't in Maryland. There's certainly no
7 evidence to support it. In fact, the evidence could go
8 the other way.
9 I'm not sure we need to across the board conclude
10 that we need 25 percent perhaps of the capacity of the
11 landfills in America for this undefined, unknown liquid
12 hazardous waste. Perhaps though there are some ways,
13 somewhere, as the gentleman from CMA seemed to suggest,
14 that there is no option, and I certainly think we have
15 to look at that.
16 I would recommend that some sort of rulemaking
17 process be pursued that would do that, but I don't think
18 we ought to throw out what I view as fundamentally a major
19 question of the reliability of this technology in the
20 interest of allowing these few wastes, perhaps, to go
21 into landfills.
22 I guess the only other point that I would make,
23 and this again by way of analogy and what I think we're
24 doing, you know, we have 55 mile an hour speed limits,
25 and we know an awful lot of people go 70 miles an hour,
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1 and we don't catch everyone of them, but we don't raise
2 the speed limit to 75 miles an hour. We think about whether
3 there are better ways to catch them. We think about whether
4 or not the benefits still don't outweight, and I think
5 that goes to the question, how can the state guarantee
6 that no liquid will go into a landfill.
7 If you can't guarantee it, isn't it a stupid
8 requirement? Well, I can't guarantee that everyone is
9 going to drive 50 miles an hour, but you don't think that's
10 a stupid requirement.
11 I do think that the desirability of having zero
12 is sufficient important, that that is the goal we should
13 shoot for, and we should rely on the ability of state
14 agencies to inspect the manifesting system that many states
15 have and perhaps EPA will have in a usable form, and the
16 proper action of most of industry in order to insure that
17 liquid wastes will not go into these fills.
18 Our experience has been in Maryland where we've
19 had a manifest system now for about five years that if
20 the burden is placed on the generator and if the disposer
2i knows that that's where he can look that, in fact, the
22 system works pretty well as it is with the prohibition.
23 Thank you. We'll be happy to try and answer
24 any questions you might have.
25 CHAIRMAN DIETRICH: Do you allow any containerized
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1 wastes in your hazardous waste landfills?
2 MR. EICHBAUM: No. Yes, we do allow container-
3 ized waste.
4 CHAIRMAN DIETRICH: How do you enforce or inspect
5 that they indeed do not include any liquids?
6 MR. EICHBAUM: Well, one of the men from industry
7 really answered that question this morning, and I forget
8 which gentleman it was, but, as I said near the end of
9 my remarks, we place that burden on the generator and
10 on the operator.
11 The normal procedure is that the operator of
12 the fill will, in fact, fairly closely examine barrels
13 as they come in in order to determine whether or not there
14 are liquid wastes there. That will be, as was pointed
15 out this morning, typical where a disposer has a new cus-
16 tomer that he hasn't dealt with before.
17 Once there is an understanding of the business
18 relationship and how it's likely to proceed, the inspection
19 by the disposer tends to be a lot less frequent. The
20 operator, the major operating landfill that's generally
21 available to industry in Maryland today has chemists on
22 site who are able to conduct, not only for this purpose,
23 but other purposes whatever testing may be necessary.
24 MR. PEDERSEN: If I could just clear up one
25 point, is it the law in Maryland that a. container cannot
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1 landfilled if it contains any liquid?
2 MR. EICHBAUM: I'd have to see whether that's
3 law or regulation. Rom? Regulation.
4 MR. PEDERSEN: But the regulation is an absolute
5 ban?
6 MR. EICHBAUM: There are exceptions for very
7 deminimus amounts as there were in your original —
8 MR. PEDERSEN: What's a very deminimus amount?
9 MR. EICHBAUM: Ampules, car battery issue, that
10 kind of thing.
11 MR. PEDERSEN: And you say you place the burden
12 on the generator and the landfill owner in the first instance,
13 Well, what do you do in the second instance to make sure
14 that they are discharging that burden?
15 MR. EICHBAUM: Well, we conduct inspections.
16 We review manifests, and if we find that there are indica-
17 tions of problems or there are problems, we will pursue
18 it. One of the better examples, it doesn't have to do
19 . with containerized waste, it happened to be free wastes,
20 we found a major — the major site that was disposing
21 of liquid waste freely.
22 We initiated a civil action against them, collected
23 a $30,000 penalty, and a major issue in that case was
24 whether or not this was truly a liquid or was it something
25 else, and we used what I guess is commonly called the
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plate test or the inclined plane test which is like many
of these tests less than scientific, but it was sufficient
to persuade the company that what they had been doing
as a matter of practice, they should not have been doing,
they should pay a penalty for it, and that it would not
be done in the future.
It was also sufficient to persuade the source
of that particular waste that they should change their
practice and in the plant, to generate that waste so that
that problem did not exist and, in fact, it has solved
the problem of putting a fairly gooey waste into a landfill,
Now I use an example, if you will, of the non-
containerized situation, because the confrontational issue,
was it liquid or was it not was the same.
CHAIRMAN DIETRICH: But the point is you do
not have in your regulations or in guidance any specific
test procedure, sampling procedure, inspection procedure
that is used by your instructors to make a clear yes or
no answer with regard to whether the regulation is being
complied with.
MR. EICHBAUM: Yes, our regulations set forth,
I believe it's called the inclined plane test. We will,
however, work with a particular site to allow them to
use some additional or other process that we would find
equally satisfactory. Ron, do you want to add to that?
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1 MR. NELSON: Only that we also have guidance
2 to our inspectors. We have an operations manual, a manual
3 of guidance for our inspector on how to do things. Obvi-
4 ously we don't have sophisticated tests in all cases,
5 but a person with a reasonable mind can certainly tell
6 a liquid in a lot of cases from a solid, and we do that.
7 I might also that, you know, we do have that
8 test, but we've also worked with the industry on other
9 tests that have come up that they have proposed to us
10 to show that there's liquid, so there are guidance docu-
11 ments available.
12 MR. EICHBAUM: I think one of the things you
13 have to make a choice between, and this is going to have
14 to be EPA's choice, I can't tell you which way to go is
15 whether or not, as Mr. Nelson suggests, you're going to
16 rely on some judgment by the field inspector and by the
17 operator of the facility in order to minimize which is
18 our goal the placement of liquids in these fills, or in
19 the alternative, are you going to do what you're proposing
20 to do, adopt a regulation which while dealing with the
2i inspection and the enforcement problem also happens to
22 substantially change how these fills are probably going
23 to be able to — the capacity to be able to demonstrate
24 these fills are secure, and I would not recommend that.
25 I'd rather rely on the judgment of the
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1 fellow in the field than open these things up lock, stock
2 and barrel.
3 CHAIRMAN DIETRICH: But you seem to be suggesting
4 that in actual implementation, you do recognize that you
5 can allow a deminimus amount of liquid in containers going
6 into landfills.
7 MR. EICHBAUM: You can't stop it. This is not
8 a norm that I would shoot for.
9 CHAIRMAN DIETRICH: Okay, that's fine. I think
10 our goal is different from your goal.
11 MR. PEDERSEN: The norm that you would shoot
12 for this year or in ten years or eventually, what?
13 MR. EICHBAUM: I think you're right. That's
14 a good question. What can we do today, and what can we
15 do in ten years?
16 My sense in Maryland is today we can shoot for
17 zero liquids going into these landfills. My view also
18 is that the wider you open the door, and I think you've
19 opened it pretty wide, not only with the 90 day thing,
20 but also with your proposal for after March 22, the wider
21 you open that door, the more likely it is that in two,
22 three, four, five years, we will not have the technologies
23 in place that are going to be able to deal with these
24 liquid wastes.
25 We had industries in the State of Maryland that
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1 have grown up in the last ten years precisely in response
2 to the reality of and anticipation of this kind of ban,
3 and I can tell you that one of the worst things that happens
4 to them, and they cause me a regulatory problem when they
5 start to go out of business, and they're undercapitalized,
6 and they've got all these liquid wastes there, when you
7 cut the market out from under them, they go out of business,
8 and another guy isn't going to start into business very
9 soon when his whole economic ability really depends upon
10 the stability and the rationality and the constancy of
11 a federal and a state approach to managing this problem.
12 So I think, you know, Bill, you say what about
13 in ten years? I say maybe ten years is where we should
14 shoot, but if you do what you're going to do, it ain't
15 going to happen in ten years, because the industry won't
16 develop.
17 MR. PEDERSEN: I have a question from the audience.
18 Where are the liquid hazardous wastes generated in Maryland
19 being disposed?
2o MR. EICHBAUM: There are about three or four
2i facilities in the State of Maryland where there is chemical
22 treatment, and I think some solidification occurring.
23 I won't give the names of the companies here, but if anybody
24 wants them, we'll be happy to give them to them if you
25 need a place to go, and a good bit of it is going out
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1 of the state. We do not have an incinerator in Maryland.
2 I say a good bit, not all of it, and not a substantial
3 part of it, and we'll give you those numbers if you'd
4 like them by Monday.
5 We do not have an incinerator in the state,
6 and one of the things that came out of the Arthur D. Little
7 study is probably that there is not enough of that type
8 of waste generated in the state to justify a private company
9 developing an incinerator just for Maryland waste that
10 would normally go to an incinerator.
11 We have a number of businesses that do this
12 and that take waste from as far away as New York, North
13 Carolina and New Jersey. In fact, one of the complaints
14 that you might hear from our citizens is that we take
15 a lot more out of state waste than we do waste generatedin
16 the state.
17 CHAIRMAN DIETRICH: Thank you. I would appreciate
18 it, I would like if we could receive a copy of your guide-
19 lines or implementing instructions with regard to implernenta-
20 tion of your rule.
2i MR. EICHBAUM: I'd be happy to.
22 CHAIRMAN DIETRICH: Thank you, Bill. I would
23 like to complete the presentation by the state representa-
24 tives by calling Jack McMillan who is representing the
25 Association of State and Territorial Solid Waste Management
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Officials. Jack is Director of the Division of Solid
Waste Management of the Mississippi Board of Health.
STATEMENT OF JACK McMILLAN
MR. McMILLAN: I am Jack McMillan, the Director
of the Division of Solid Waste Management for the State
of Mississippi. I'm speaking on behalf of the Association
of State and Territorial Solid Waste Management Officials
who represent the regulatory agencies throughout the states
of the United States.
I want to first state that Norman Nosenchuk,
our President, regrets that he was not able to be here
to make this presentation, but since it was necessary
that I come to town, he asked me to do it on his behalf.
I'm also sorry to say that it's necessary for
the state regulatory agencies who is a part of the regulatory
program and was dictated by the law that we would carry
out the major portion of the responsibility under this
law, that it's necessary for us to come to Washington
to have an input into the process of this regulatory program.
I think it would have been much better if we
had been consulted and asked our opinions and had an input
prior to this hearing.
The Association of State and Territorial Solid
Waste Management Officials hereafter will be referred
to as ASTSWMO is extremely concerned about the Environmental
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1 Protection Agency's decision to allow containerized liquids
2 or waste containing free liquids to be disposed of in
3 landfills.
4 ASTSWMO is opposed to the lifting of the ban
5 on the land disposal of liquid hazardous waste. Instead
6 of moving ahead, EPA is now proposing to move backward
7 in the management of hazardous waste.
8 I have also been authorized by the Environmental
9 Subcommittee of the National Governors Association to
10 express NGA's opposition to the suspension of the ban
it as well.
12 In comments on the hazardous waste regulations
13 proposed in December of '78, NGA stated opposition to
14 the land disposal of containerized liquids .and NGS still
15 maintains this policy.
16 I want to note to the best of our knowledge
17 that EPA did not survey the states regarding this change
18 in policy which will have a great effect on the states'
19 hazardous waste program.
20 One effect it will have that has not been alluded
21 to this morning is the fact that since the proposed rule
22 to ban such disposal practices was proposed and put into
23 regulation in many states and EPA personnel also has promised
24 the public that we would not put hazardous — liquid hazard-
25 ous waste in the landfills, and now we've got to go back
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1 to the public and tell them, no, fellows, we changed our
2 minds, we want to do it the other way.
3 This, I think, will have a tremendous effect
4 on the siting of hazardous waste landfill and the confidence
5 of the public. The suspension of the ban is a reversal
6 of policy dating back to EPA's policy statement in the
7 August 18, 1976 Federal Register that places all other
8 means of disposal of waste, such as treatment, recovery,
9 reuse an incineration as higher priorities above secure
10 ultimate disposal, especially land disposal.
11 This policy shift was undertaken with no public
12 discussion until today and a minimum amount of documentation.
13 It is the position of the states that the federal ban
14 on the landfilling of liquids should be reinstated immedi-
15 ately.
16 EPA states in the February 25th Federal Register
17 notice of this action that it believes the current Section
18 265.314, prohibition is too extreme for real world applica-
19 tion. My question is, what evidence have you received
2o since the ban went into effect three months ago that made
21 you come to this conclusion.
22 The states that have banned liquids in landfill
23 before the federal ban went into effect have been able
24 to enforce their ban and the remaining states with programs
25 that are in effect are prepared to enforce a similar ban.
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Because the notice did not discuss the various
methods of enforcement that are used by EPA in the states
regarding the ban, we assume that those methods were not
reviewed. The ban has been in effect at the federal level
since November 19, 1981, and we feel this is not enough
time to decide whether or not this policy really works.
We considered the argument that the ban is too
extreme for the real world to be a false one, that it
is intended to cloud the issue and convince those with
less knowledge of the subject that government really cannot
enforce the ban although it was proposed for 18 months
and in effect only three.
The federal ban is enforceable and workable
and should be given a change to work before EPA declares
unilaterally that it is not practical for the real world.
EPA should not sell short the system it has worked so
hard to develop.
The uniform manifest system that was proposed
in the Federal Register last Thursday and on which ASTSWMO
has worked with you closely will give facility operators
good information on the content of the containers. Supple-
menting this information with spot checks of drums should
not disrupt an operation or endanger personnel's safety
if the proper safety equipment is used.
EPA states its final regulation for land disposal
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1 may absolutely prohibit certain liquid wastes, especially
2 in some hydrologic settings. If those wastes must be
3 banned from land disposal in the future, when finer regula-
4 tions are promulgated, there is no reason for these wastes
5 to be allowed into the landfills presently.
6 In studying the problem, we feel that this ban
7 on the disposal of liquids into landfills should not be
8 lifted. Although, if the ban is reinstated, the question
9 of liquids and landfills will be a moot point. It is
10 an aspect of EPA's proposal that must be addressed.
11 The most glaring omission from the Federal Register
12 notice is any mitigation measures for leakage that may
13 occur. Land disposal regulation must be based on the poten-
14 tial for leakage. No ground water protection measures
15 are proposed.
16 There is only discussion of controlling subsidence.
17 Liners and leachate collection systems are declared unneces-
18 sary without the citing of any specific evidence. There
19 is a need for additional documentation and discussion
20 before conclusions can be reached.
21 For example, EPA uses clay as an example of
22 a relatively permeable material. While the statement
23 may be accurate generally, research has shown that the
24 permeability of a clay liner may be affected by the primary
25 leachate of a waste and should be tested with that leachate.
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As with the possible prohibition of various
wastes from landfills, general statements should be avoided
until documentation has been fully reviewed.
After discussing various amounts of liquid waste
that might be allowable, EPA has settled on 25 percent
of the volume of a landfill to be designated for receiving
liquids. Given the documentation in the notice, this
amount seems arbitrary and, in fact, is nothing less than
placing in regulation what was business as usual before
the federal ban went into effect.
If the ban remains suspended and if there are
releases into the environment of these liquid wastes,
the responsibility for cleaning up the sites and taking
care of those people affected will fall to the states,
and we are ill-prepared for that role. The post-closure
liability trust fund that was established in the Comprehen-
sive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability
Act of 1980 will not be sufficient to handle the problems
we expect to occur.
As you can see by the response to the February
25th notice, the public is concerned about the subject
of land disposal of liquids. The suspension of the ban
will make the siting of any landfill extremely difficult,
if not impossible in the future.
People do not trust landfills, do not want
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1 landfills in their area, and will be even more fearful
2 of them because of this suspension.
3 in summary, EPA has lifted the suspension of
4 the ban on landfilling liquids, has attempted to authorize
5 business as usual and has not proposed any action to protect
6 the groundwater should any leakage occur.
7 EPA has created a barrier in hazardous waste
8 management that will take the states years to overcome.
9 In conclusion, the Association of State and Territorial
10 Solid Waste Management Officials recommends that EPA rein-
11 state the ban immediately. Thank you.
12 CHAIRMAN DIETRICH: Thank you, Jack. Do you
13 have any data as to how many states do have a regulatory
14 or statutory ban on disposal of containerized liquids?
15 MR. McMILLAN: Gary, I'm surprised. I was under
16 the impression that EPA had copies of all the individual
17 state regulations. I would have certainly reviewed those
18 regulations prior to making a decision of this magnitude.
19 (Applause.)
2Q To directly answer your question, no, I don't
21 know. I'm sure that all of those states that originally
22 adopted your regulations by reference does have a ban
23 on it until this point.
24 CHAIRMAN DIETRICH: Well, we certainly have
25 reviewed regulations with regard to authorization, and
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1 we do have those statistics, but I was asking it in a
2 broader sense. Of the states that have not been brought
3 in, do you have any information with those non-authorized
* states?
5 MR. MCMILLAN: No, I don't have.
Q CHAIRMAN DIETRICH: Basically this morning,
7 we've talked about the premise that although a ban is
8 good, you may have to allow some diminimus amounts. Do
9 you have any sense of how your state or other states repre-
10 sented by the Association, do they allow some recognition
11 of diminimus amounts in the actual implementation of the
12 ban?
13 MR. McMILLAN: We have discussed this point,
14 and it is agreed by most of the states that the absolute
15 drying up of all liquids in landfills might be impossible.
16 Our point is, and I think it would be a more
17 workable point, is that we've more clearly defined liquids
18 and solid waste and to better define testing methods for
19 determine those liquids.
2o Percentages, I think as I stated earlier, 25
21 or 10 percent is arbitrary. I think that it depends a
22 lot on the particular waste that you're disposing of.
23 Some wastes have greater abilities to migrate. Some of
24 them certainly have different characteristics for the
25 potential of endangerment. Other wastes have more
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persistency in the environment, and if it did migrate,
some of it would not harm groundwater when it reached
it while others would.
I think that it's necessary for us to define
liquids at this point and to define testing methods and
to keep the ban that we have in place.
MR. PEDERSEN: One question. Could you expand
a bit on your statement that EPA's proposed 25 percent
would just sanction business as usual and wouldn't lead
to any real change in landfilling practices?
MR. McMILLAN: It's business as usual with a
bit of modification. Instead of putting 100 percent liquid,
you've reduced it to 25, and really the end result is
that you have less liquids that will migrate out of the
landfill and probably take it a little longer to do it,
but the end results is the same.
CHAIRMAN DIETRICH: Thank you, Jack. I'd next
like to call on Mr. Tom Williams. He is an environmental
consultant in Arlington, Virginia.
STATEMENT BY TOM WILLIAMS
MR. WILLIAMS: My name is Tom Williams. I'm
a private citizen who has long had a strong interest in
waste management. As a former employee of EPA, I empathize
to a considerable extent with those civil servants who
for more than five years now have seriously struggled
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1 to implement the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act.
2 RCRA is a far-reaching law calling for radical
3 changes in a critically important environmental area which
4 until 1976 had suffered a history of almost total neglect
5 by our society.
6 Consequently, when EPA began, there were vast
7 technical and scientific deficiencies in the knowledge
8 base and little public understanding of the health and
9 economic ramifications of the hazardous waste issue. It
10 is not surprising then that you have had to travel a diffi-
ll cult road, featuring as many twists and turns as any Grand
12 Prix concourse. Moreoever, even though RCRA became law
13 in October 1976, the rest of the agency at that time place
14 only moderate emphasis on the problem until about the
15 middle of 1978 when Love Canal forced everyone's attention
16 to the tragic long-term implications of hazardous waste
17 mismanagement.
18 There were other problems. You had to carry
19 out your complex assignments under two different assistant
20 administrators who had somewhat different notions as to
21 how you ought to proceed, a matter on which the current
22 EPA Administrator has commented several times.
23 In addition, your work for 1978 has been the
24 subject of lawsuits from all sectors of the environmental
25 spectrum, left, right and center and wherever else, and
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to conclude this synopsis of happy days at EPA, when the
present administration came in, you were promptly deprived
of almost all your technical information and public partici-
pation capability, and publicly given low marks for your
past efforts to implement an act so difficult and complex
that it has provoked more voluminous comments from industry
and the public than any other legislation in the history
of EPA.
One day a historian may be able to sort out
all of the political and technical complexities which
have made the implementation of RCRA so difficult, but
even in the future when that may be possible, I submit
that we can be certain now that underlying everything
else would be the simple fact that EPA has been reluctant
and in my opinion with very good reason to officially
sanction in final regulation the placement on or into
the ground of certain categories of hazardous waste, no
matter how carefully done with the best of known technology.
To delay, to not get the law out is not quite
as guilt provoking an act as would be to say here, officially
we EPA sanction the placement of these wastes where they
will reach you sooner or later. Many of the known technical
and economic issues influencing the development of standards
applicable to owners and operators of hazardous waste
treatment, storage and disposal facilities, were discussed
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in the commendably clear and comprehensive 15-page supple-
mental notice of reproposed rulemaking which appeared
in the Federal Register on May 26, 1981.
This particular notice was referred by EPA's
administrator in her report to the U.S. District Court
last October. Mrs. Gorsuch outlined her views on the
deficiencies in EPA's earlier regulatory approaches and
then went on to say "that a more thorough and sophisticated
analysis of the issues is needed."
There's no question that a more thorough and
sophisticated analysis of many of the issues is needed
now, and will continue to be needed for years to come.
However, I suggest that the desire to delay final regula-
tions in order to do more analyses will exist indefinitely
until there is aceptance of the fact that no further analysis
is needed to conclude now that some wastes should be pro-
hibited from disposal in landfill. That this is a motion
which has not filed to reach the attention of EPA is sug-
gested quite clearly in the following statement which
appears in the preamble to the interim final amendments
to fule published on February 25, 1982, and I quote, "In
particular, it (EPA) believes that certain persistent
mobiles and highly toxic or carcinogenic liquid wastes
might need to be absolutely prohibited from disposal in
landfills in either bulk or containerized form."
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I submit that enough is known now for EPA to
remove the word "might" and to begin to identify the wastes
and implement the prohibition. All the major environmental
laws that have been written or amended in the last two
decades represent attempts to rectify problems which people
neglected and passed on to future generations.
The actions which EPA has taken since the interim
status standards which went into effect on November 19,
1981 were announced suggest we have paid too little attention
to that important lesson of history.
I realize that the rule which went into effect
on November 19 has caused some problems to pile up in
both a figuration and literal sense, but by extending
the compliance date until May 26, 1982, you may well have
decided to sacrifice to an unknown extent the health and
welfare of people not yet born.
In the long term, it may matter not at all whether
at the time of disposal certain liquid wastes were sloshing
within the drum or temporarily held in check by an absorbent
material of one kind or another.
In the long term, it may not matter at all what
our admittedly deficient knowledge of the problems of
subsidence and landfill covers suggests might happen during
the historically trivial period of a landfill's active
life, plus the ever-so-brief post closure period. Liners
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1 which may last for 20 or 30 years, and leachate collection
2 systems may be fine for many kinds of waste but they represent
3 a very roundabout and hazardous method of trying to deal
4 with certain highly toxic or carcinogenic wastes.
5 The proposed rules rests on shaky ground. You
6 say that unanticipated events may lead to non-compliance
7 with the formula on the fraction of free liquid wastes
8 allowed in the proposed rule. That's a quote.
9 Experience suggests to anyone who's worked in
10 the environmental field very long that you can usually
11 count on the occurrence of unanticipated events. These
12 might be, as you suggest, premature closing of landfills,
13 failure to obtain the expected volume of other than free
14 liquid wastes and several others.
15 Since any of these or all of these would change
16 the formula based volumes, it appears not to be a very
17 great idea.
18 The proposal for "uniform placement of containers
19 in the landfill" and "a final cover at closure designed
2o to accommodate the expected subsidence" does not offer
2i a great deal of reassurance either.
22 As you have writte, "the Agency and the regulated
23 community simply do not have much observed experience
24 or data conerning subsidence in those landfills where
25 containerized wastes are carefully placed". You also
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1 point out that the agency has some concern about the ability
2 of landfill owners and operators to adequately plan and
3 provide for remedying the damage caused by post-closure
4 subsidence.
5 I am sure that many share EPA's concern here,
6 and hope that it will be extended to the long, long post,
7 post-closure period.
8 The amendments proposed on February 25 are intended
9 to be rational and useful, I am sure. But they can readily
10 transform the reader into an eerie Kafka-esque landscape
11 largely obscrubed by clouds of cyanide, vinyl chloride
12 and other choice ingredients of the witches brew to which
13 Peter Skinner of New York referred earlier.
14 The gentle sound of 630,000 or more drums of
15 liquid hazardous waste being dropped ever so carefully .
16 into the ground is barely audible in the fetid air. On
17 the horizon are huge, corroded, dimly lit signs proclaiming
18 the virtues of reasonableness in pursuing "real-world"
19 solutions.
20 If we have learned anything from Love Canal,
21 from the thousands of other mismanaged waste sites in
22 our country, including the clum piles of Appalachia and
23 the uranium tailings piles of Colorado, it should be to
24 realize finally that current suppositions about the future
25 fate of wastes placed on or into the ground are not reliable.
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1 To rely on subsidence formulae or on unique
2 ways of carefully stacking drums under the earth, to assume
3 that our data on flood plains, on types of soil and ano
4 the many other variables that must be taken into account,
5 will be reliable 50 or 500 years from now, represents
6 an act of faith that many of us would rather not embrace.
7 What we do know now, with certainty, and which
8 is all likelihood will forever be true, is that some wastes
9 should not be given the opportunity of reaching people,
10 now or in the future.
11 I do not believe that EPA's attempts to deal
12 with the hazardous waste problem will receive widespread
13 public support until the agency begins in earnest to take
14 the route taken by some of the other states. I will cite
15 California for example which proposed, as you know, to
16 ban the land disposal of certain classes of high priority
17 wastes comprising almost 40 percent of the 1.3 million
18 tons disposed of annually in off-site facilities in that
19 state.
2o If California, with its dry climate and relative
21 abundance of available land, sees the need for such action,
22 for how long can EPA keep its eyes closed in implementing
23 a law which is intended to protect areas of a country
24 where rainfall is abundant and where "appropriate" land
25 for disposal is becoming harder and harder to acquire.
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1 I realize that such an approach by EPA would
2 be fraught with difficulties, t,ut that would be nothing
3 new or unusual for you. Until you do that or when you
4 do that or if you do that, the debate, and all this long
5 debate this morning which reminded me of times — it's
6 like the medieval debates on how many angels can dance
7 on the head of a pin, it can be endless, and it will go
8 on for years, but, at least, if you began forbidding the
9 landfill of certain wastes, the debate would be brought
10 from beneath the ground to on top of the ground, and you
11 could begin discussing the proper issues and the proper
12 atmosphere.
13 If not, in the meantime, the agency is probably
14 creating or perpetuating conditions that could guarantee
15 the extensions of the five-year superfund legislation
16 of 1980 far into the next century. This is hardly the
17 proper way to protect public health or the environment,
18 and for those who may not be persuaded by this argument,
19 let me quickly add that it is not cost effective either.
2o Thank you.
21 CHAIRMAN DIETRICH: Thank you, Tom. I next
22 would like to call on John Schofield of the IT Corporation,
23 STATEMENT OF JOHN SCHOFIELD
24 MR. SCHOFIELD: Thank you. IT Corporation,
25 a California-based company, is currently the largest U.S.
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1 company engaged solely in the business of hazardous waste
2 management. It currently owns eight disposal facilities
3 in the U.S. all of which involve landfilling as the final
4 step in waste treatment and disposal.
5 Each of these disposal facilities has been moni-
6 tored since its inception, and great care has been taken
7 to insure that no migration of leachate occurred. This
8 has required careful management, including the rejection
9 of materials or disposal practices which threatened to
10 generate potential health or environmental problems.
11 In particular, IT does not accept drums containing
12 liquid for burial at its own landfills. As a result of
13 this careful design and monitoring and the policy against
14 landfilling containerized liquids, IT Corporation has
15 maintained a clear record in its operation of landfills
16 since 1956.
17 Over the past 20 years, IT Corporation has devel-
18 oped various chemical processes for oxidation, neutralization,
19 incineration, stabilization and recovery of different
20 wastes. We have designed a complete technical package
21 to analyze, transport, recover, destroy or detoxify a
22 full range of hazardous wastes, both organic and inorganic.
23 IT's technical sophistication has recently been
24 calledon in a number of areas. For example, in Louisiana
25 where we are the first company in the United States to
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1 receive all state permits for an integrated regional waste
2 treatment center and the first applicant in the country
3 for a Part B federal permit for such a facility.
4 in Texas where IT was selected by the Gulf Coast
5 Waste Disposal Authority, a statement corporation formed
6 by the Texas Legislature to assist in the construction
7 and operation of the Gulf Coast Waste Management Center.
8 in the State of Massachusetts where the company's
9 project for an integrated waste treatment center have
10 been judged to be feasible and deserving by the State
11 Siting Board, justifying their expenditure of state funds
12 to assist in the establishment of the project, and in
13 the State of New York where IT Corporation currently is
14 on the short list of companies whose technology have been
15 acknowledged as suitable for a potential state run facility.
16 To date, IT Corporation has spent almost $20
17 million of its own money to secure the sites and permits
18 necessary to establish these facilities. We're all familiar
19 with the formidable problems which are phased in any effort
20 to site regional hazardous waste treatments and disposal
21 facilities, but IT with a very limited state and virtually
22 no federal assistance, has focused on integrated high
23 technology treatment centers in the belief that that is
24 the correct and safe thing to do and in the belief that
25 these centers best meet the intent of RCRA which was to
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1 eliminate the problems associated with traditional approaches
2 to waste disposal.
3 It should be emphasized that treatment centers
4 of this type would use proven technologies for destruction
5 and detoxification of hazardous waste, technologies which
6 have been employed in Europe and Japan for over ten years.
7 During the two years that IT Corporation has
8 been pursuing state and federal permits for the Louisiana
9 facility, we have seen fundamental changes take place,
10 all of which represent a substantial erosion of the goals
11 and safeguards of RCRA.
12 To apply for and obtain the permits, and to
13 commit upward of $100 million for the construction of
14 a regional treatment facilities involves a commitment
15 which can only be made and financed in the belief that
16 there will be some consistency and stability in the rules
17 and regulations concerning the management of hazardous
18 waste.
19 Regrettably the current proposals are the latest
20 in a series of actions which defer or delete major elements
21 of record, including, for example, a provision which allows
22 waste generators to dispose of substantial quantities
23 of hazardous waste in their own boilers without permits
24 or limitations in the name of energy conservation.
25 No such permission is afforded to the regional
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treatment plant even if heat recovery systems are included.
Or the proposal to again allow landfilling of liquids
coupled with a virtual endorsement of drum disposal into
landfills despite the fact that these practices have been
at the source of most of the serious leachate migration
problems from landfills.
Thirdly, the weakening of regulations concerning
financial responsibility and insurance. It is apparent
to IT Corporation that a fundamental change is taking
place in the federal government's commitment to use proven
advance technology in the treatment, destruction and detoxi-
fication of hazardous waste.
The constant revision for deferral of the regula-
tions makes it increasingly impossible to commit the resources
needed to pursue permit applications since the regulations
changes before the application can be completed.
Additionally, with the proposed changes concerning
disposal of liquids in landfills, even if all the permits
are obtained, it now becomes highly questionable whether
the remaining demand for regional treatment facilities
.can justify the large investment required to properly
treat these hazardous materials.
In view of this situation, IT Corporation is
announcing today a suspension of all its activities in
the development of regional treatment centers with the
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1 exception of the proposed Louisiana facility where the
2 permit process has already been underway for two years
3 with costs amounting to $16.2 million.
4 IT Corporation is unwilling to invest resources
5 in the development of permit applications for other regional
6 treatment facilities unless and until there is a clear
7 governmental commitment to the destruction and detoxification
8 of hazardous waste as the preferred method of disposal.
9 IT Corporation will continue with its traditional
10 business of landfilling with the knowledge that proven
11 technology exists which can remove the necessity of direct
12 landfilling of hazardous wastes.
13 We will continue to work with any state which
14 shows a responsible attitude towards solving rather than
15 deferring its hazardous waste problem and which by its
16 legislative effort moves away from undue reliance on land-
17 fills and towards destruction and detoxification.
18 Unfortunately, it is clear that not all states
19 would enact comprehensive preventative legislation if
20 left to their own devices, particularly if influenced
21 by continued relaxation of federal guidelines.
22 This relaxation means that increasing quantities
23 of hazardous waste will be landfilled in those states
24 which have the weakest regulation and are, therefore,
25 the least equipped to handle the hazardous waste problems
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1 which will arise in later years. For the above reasons,
2 IT Corporation strongly recommends that the U.S. Environ-
3 mental Protection Agency reconsiders its decision to allow
4 landfilling of liquids and the burning of hazardous wastes
5 which have not been permitted specifically for that purpose.
6 We urge the administration to return to the
7 original intent of the Resource Conservation and Recovery
8 Act in the interest of the health and safety of all citizens,
9 the potential liabilities of waste generators and the
10 sanity of the waste disposal industry. Thank you.
11 CHAIRMAN DIETRICH: John, do you dispose of
12 any containerized waste in your landfills?
13 MR. SCHOFIELD: We do not dispose of any container-
14 ized waste whatsoever. We are one of the largest truckers
15 of containerized waste to other people's landfills.
16 CHAIRMAN DIETRICH: But if you received containers
17 at your facility, you'll either empty the container and
18 put it in a vault, or you'll send the truck down the road
19 to the next —
2Q MR. SCHOFIELD: Absolutely. We will empty the
21 container, and we will process the waste and dispose of
22 the residues to landfill, or we will send the container
23 away.
24 Under no circumstances can we accept an argument
25 that some containers are too dangerous to open. In order
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1 to properly dispose of any container, you must know what
2 the contents are, and if it's too dangerous to open to
3 sample, then it must be too dangerous to bury.
4 CHAIRMAN DIETRICH: What does it take to have
5 a container opening operation? Can you give us a typical
6 cost and time to put one in, so that one could deal with
7 containers?
8 MR. SCHOFIELD: Dealing with containers, first
9 of all, I think it must be appreciated that the DOT regula-
10 tions for the transportation of containers is very, very
11 stringent indeed.
12 It used to be a situation where a lot of waste
13 was in very poor containers, and they were very difficult
14 to handle; however, that doesn't apply any more. Containers
15 are generally speaking in good condition, and even when
16 they're in bad condition, the ability to handle those
17 containers is now quite clearly known.
18 As anybody such as ourselves who have dealt
19 with major site remediation projects where you have to
20 dig up drums, and in digging up those drums and staging
21 those drums, you don't then remove the drums untested
22 to some other site.
23 Everyone of those drums is opened, and generally
24 speaking, their contents are emptied and segregated into
25 different types of waste when you're handling one of those
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1 -site remediation situations, and there are no drums more
2 dangerous than those than you dig up unknown out of clean-
3 up situation, and yet the technology, hardly technology,
4 the common sense handling techniques are all there.
5 The equipment is all there. The equipment is
6 available to handle the most dangerous situations, and
7 nothing that comes in normally from a generator even
8 approaches the danger associated with that situation,
9 and yet under those conditions, every drum is opened,
10 the contents are sampled, and, if necessary, the container
11 is emptied.
12 We use a very simple test to decide whether
13 it's liquid or solid. If you turn it over and it runs
14 out, it's liquid, and if you turn it over and it doesn't
15 run out, it falls out, it's solid, and I don't know what
16 there's all this obsession about some kind of test.
17 There has to be some subjective situation, a
18 subjective decision, and when you're dealing with site
19 remediation situations, everybody knows what's a liquid
20 and what's a solid.
21 You don't get into a great debate and testing
22 whether it is or not. You use a straight judgment, and
23 there is a responsibility there. There is a responsi-
24 bility by the operator, there's a responsibility by the
25 generator.
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CHAIRMAN DIETRICH: Your policy of not landfilling
any containers, is that because you fear that they might
have some liquids in there and you want to keep liquids
out?
MR. SCHOFIELD: No, it's for a very different
reason, and this is why I think this obsession with an
initial test is not necessarily the whole of the criteria,
because the condition of a material when you put it into
a landfill versus the condition that a material or the
properties the material will exhibit at the bottom of
the landfill are very, very different indeed.
You can take a material which is maybe 25 percent
solid, and it's fixotrophic and it looks totally and abso-
lutely solid, and you can put that into a landfill as
a solid, but under the conditions in that landfill, that
material may flow very, very simply indeed.
So what is a liquid and not a liquid, or what
is a solid, not a solid, and it's not sufficient necessarily
just to use the criteria of what it's like before it goes
in. That's what when somebody said we're surprised that
we suddenly found there were 13 feet of liquid there,
there's not a lot of surpise. When you're putting materials
in, 25 percent solid and the remainder is liquid, even
though it appears to be a solid, you're filling a landfill
with 75 percent of liquid even though it's a solid material.
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That material will accumulate in time, and it
will generally accumulate because of the pressure of the
landfill, and it will eventually squeeze some of that
out and the level of leachate will rise.
We can't afford to do that situation. One of
the main reasons, we have over 5000 acres landfill, so
we're not a small operator from that point of view. Somebody
talked about California being dry. California is dry,
but when it rains, it really rains. You only get it twice
a year, but you really get it, so you've got to be very
careful, because you can't afford to be carrying liquid
in a landfill under those conditions when you might receive
24 inches of rain in 24 hours, because then your landfill
becomes very heavily soaked and very heavily contaminated
and you have to have a run-off system, a treatment system
that can handle that, and you can't afford to have that
amount of rainfall on say a 2500 acre site adding to a
leachate problem.
You cannot afford to have a leachate at all.
CHAIRMAN DIETRICH: What kind of materials do
you put in your landfill?
MR. SCHOFIELD: Well, if we receive liquid,
as I said —
CHAIRMAN DIETRICH: What kind of waste?
MR. SCHOFIELD: What kind of waste? Every kind
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1 of waste.
2 CHAIRMAN DIETRICH: Dry waste is all you'll
3 permit in your landfill?
4 MR. SCHOFIELD: If we receive liquid waste,
5 we will do treatment, and we will reduce them to sludges.
6 I'm not saying we only handle very, very dry waste. I
+
7 didn't say that, but we're very prudent, and we're very
8 conscious of the fact that the condition of the material
9 going into a landfill has to be taken into account. The
10 degree to which we add other materials.
11 We also use particularly in California, we obvi-
12 ously use solar evaporation to the maximum to remove liquids
13 so that what we're then landfilling are dry materials.
14 CHAIRMAN DIETRICH: This morning, I mentioned
15 some of the problem wastes that had been identified to
16 us, several electroplating wastes as well as wastes from
17 the paint and the coating industry.
18 Are you able at your facilities, would you be
19 able to acommodate those containerized wastes if they
20 came into your facility?
21 MR. SCHOFIELD: Yes, that could be done. Really
22 with regard to electroplating wastes and those kinds of
23 things, there's really no problem whatsoever in precipitating
24 out, neutralizing and then either vacuum filtering the
25 resultant sludge to get it as low in water content as
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possible. All those things can be reduced so that what
you're landfilling is a sludge. . When I say a sludge,
I'm talking about get it as dry as you possibly can, and
solids content or liquid is not a criteria. It really
isn't, because you have to understand the waste, and you
have to consider how it's going to be in the landfill
itself.
MR. PEDERSEN: In your opinion, is there capacity
at present to treat by alternate methods all the container-
ized liquids that are now landfilled?
MR. SCHOFIELD: No, and there never will be
if the legislation continues backing off the way it's
done. If you — you know, we're in a chicken and egg
situation.
Everybody understands why you have to promulgate
what you're promulgating, but this should be an interim
situation until such time as the facilities are in position
that can properly, safely detoxify and destroy these materi-
als. What you're enacting is you're enacting a permanent
situation.
MR. PEDERSEN: When you refer to the thing that
everyone understands, do you mean the 25 percent rule
or something like that?
MR. SCHOFIELD: No, the landfilling of liquids
is not a desirable thing to do. The landfilling of
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material in containers is not a desirable thing to do.
Technologies exist to detoxify and destroy these materials
in other ways, but nobody on the basis that to do that,
when we have experience, to go from start to scratch,
to build a facility, get it permitted, it's something
like five to seven years, and if along that route, the
regulations change, then you'll never arrive at the end.
You'll arrive with a bunch of permits that will
be as useful as a piece of paper. Let me say this. This
problem is not unique to this country. Every country
has faced this problem, and what they've done is they've
done it over a period of time.
They have enacted an interim situation to allow
time for other facilities which can better handle these
materials to come into position so everybody knows this
is an interim situation, and the encouragement is there
to go to the ultimate solution.
MR. PEDERSEN: Yes, and we are talking about
an interim regime?
MR. SCHOFIELD: Are you talking about the adminis-
tration or the regulations?
MR. PEDERSEN: Do you think that the 25 percent
rule that EPA has proposed, if it were promulgated, would
lead to a reduction in the amount of liquids that is cur-
rently being landfilled?
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MR. SCHOFIELD: Absolutely not, because there's
no way that you or I or anybody else would ever know.
MR. PEDERSEN: Why not?
MR. SCHOFIELD: For the simple reason that the
way you're going about it, you'll still be debating two
years from now a test as to when a material is liquid
and when a material is a solid, and that's not the criteria.
As I've tried to explain, the test of that initially
does not describe how the material will perform in a landfill.
The fact is that there should be in my view a ban on liquid,
and if somebody has a particular need, a very specific
requirement where there's no other way of getting rid
of that material, then they should make special application
and give the reasons why that material must be landfilled
and why it's landfilled in that particular area in that
particular way, and let it be done on a case-by-case basis.
They can store it for 90 days right now. That's
adequate time to process those very specific applications
by exception. You don't need to cover the whole range
of materials, but in what you're dealing with are very
exceptional materials. There is a requirement for some
materials, but that doesn't mean when you open the door,
you take off the hinges.
CHAIRMAN DIETRICH: Thank you. I'd like to
call on Mary Kay Parker with the League of Women Voters
of the United States.
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STATEMENT OF MARY KAY PARKER ^
MS. PARKER: I am Mary Kay Parker, testifying
on behalf of Marilyn Reeves, Environmental Quality Chair
for the League of Women Voters of the United States, a
grassroots citizens organization with members in more
than 1300 communities across the country.
We are pleased to have this belated opportunity
to express our opposition to the action EPA has already
taken to lift the ban on the 1'and disposal of containerized
liquid and ignitable hazardous waste and to address EPA's
proposal to weaken the regulations governing the disposal
of toxic liquid and ignitable waste in landfill.
League members around the country are infuriated
by the fact that EPA1s suspension of the prohibition against
landfilling containerized liquids and ignitable hazardous
wastes went into effect before there was any opportunity
for public review and comment
Such an action is clearly contrary to the intent
of the public participation provisions of the Administrative
Procedure Act. Though EPA did make an after-the-fact
decision to hold this public hearing on the issue, the
practice of burying containers of toxic liquids is taking
place all over the country right now. This public hearing
should have been held two months ago
The League opposes the disposal of any bulk
or containerized liquid hazardous waste in landfills
DBS, Inc.
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unless the waste has been treated or stabilized by chemical
or physical means so that free liquids are no longer present.
We urge EPA to immediately reinstate the ban
on the disposal of liquid and ignitable hazardous waste
in landfills and to reject the petition of the National
Solid Waste Management Association calling for EPA to
put the February 25 1982 proposal into effect temporarily.
The February 25, 1982 proposal would significantly
weaken the landfill regulations by dropping requirements
for liners and leachate collection systems and by permitting
as much as 25 percent of the landfills capacity to be
filled with drums containing hazardous liquids and sludges.
The League urges you to reject this approach.
We believe that it is environmentally unsound due to the
widely recognized danger acknowledged by EPA in its own
proposal that drums can corrode and leak their contents
out of the landfill and into ground water supplies.
As EPA has clearly stated in its February 25,
1982 proposal, and, I quote, "Containers disposed of in
a landfill eventually degrade allowing their liquid contents
to escape," unquote, and, quoting again, "When containers
degrade and their liquid content escapes they collapse
creating voids which, in turn, may allow slumping and
subsidence of the landfill cover material which may increase
the infiltration or precepitation and thereby exacerbate
DBS, IDC.
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the leachate generation problem/" unquote
In short, during the 90-day period when EPA
is considering amendments to the landfill regulation,
the agency is allowing a practice to take place that it
has already acknowledged will endanger the environment
and the public health.
It is totally unacceptable to allow as much
as 25 percent of the landfill's capacity to be devoted
to liquid hazardous waste, and it is pure folly to simul-
taneously propose that landfills without impermeable liners
and leachate collection systems be allowed to accept these
wastes.
As EPA points out in its proposal, there are
technologies available to treat waste containing liquids
by dewatering techniques, such as screens, vacuum filters,
filter press, centrifuge and heat drying, as well as
chemical absorbent processes that rely on the additional
materials such as cement kiln dust, flyash, vermiculite,
fuller's earth and semintitious materials
Generators should be required to certify that
their wastes are liquid free, and EPA should make random
inspections to enforce this requirements.
EPA has also lifted the ban on the landfill
disposal of ignitable wastes, and, again we believe that
the May 19, 1980 regulation should be retained. The
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League supports the requirements of Section 265.312 that
states, quote, "Ignitable or reactive wastes must not
be placed in a landfill unless the waste is treated, ren-
dered or mixed before or immediately after placement in
the landfill so that, one, the resulting waste, mixture
or dissolution of material no longer meets the definition
of ignitable or reactive."
In conclusion, we urge you to immediately cancel
the February 25, 1982 suspension of the ban on landfilling
liquid toxic and ignitable wastes and to immediately rein-
state and retain the May 19, 1980 regulations that are
on the books. We deplore EPA's handling of this situation
which has only served to further undermine public confi-
dence in the government's ability to regulate toxic wastes
and will impede efforts to secure sites for environmentally
sound treatment, storage and disposal facilities. Thank
you.
CHAIRMAN DIETRICH: Do you have any thoughts
on the proposal that was made by the Hazardous Waste Manage-
ment Council that we, indeed, take the suspension off,
leave the prohibition in effect, but allow to implement
that exercising some enforcement and discretion for the
minimus amount of liquids?
MS. PARKER: The League of Women Voters would
like you to reinstate the May 19, 1980 regulations.
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After that, we would be happy to attend and express our
views at any public hearing on any proposals you might
make, but we would like that ban put back, that May 19th
regulation.
CHAIRMAN DIETRICH: Thank you. Next I would
like to call on Gregg P.Franklin, the Permits Coordinator
for the Stablex Corporation.
STATEMENT OF GREGG FRANKLIN
MR. FRANKLIN: Thank you. Once again, I'm Gregg
Franklin from Stablex Corporation. I handle all of the
regulatory affairs which includes dealing with state agencies
and acquiring permits.
I am pleased to speak to you here today, and
in the interest of time, I'll be cutting my remarks some-
what short, and if you have a copy of our prepared state-
ment, I'll be reading from page five.
The Resource Conservation and Recovery Act compels
EPA to establish standards for the handling, treatment
and disposal of hazardous wastes which will protect human
health and the environment.
Obviously, EPA cannot require compliance with
standards which are not technologically achievable. Nothing,
however, in the explanation provided by EPA in the February
25 Federal Register notice justifies such an open-ended
retreat from the prohibition of the disposal of
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containerized liquids. While the total prohibition may
have been unduly restrictive, there is no technological
basis, and I want to emphasize that, there is no techno-
logical basis for allowing large quantities of all liquid
wastes to be placed into landfills without prior treatment,
Specifically, our company, Stablex Corporation,
has developed a proven technology for converting inorganic
liquid wastes into an environmentally inert, solid rock-
like materials. This materials, termed "STABLEX" can
be placed on land without fear of the two chief hazards
posed by the disposal of free liquids.
That is, STABLEX is a hard, solid material which
will not subside and will not generate harmful leacha e.
Stablex employs a unique patenteded technology knows as
"SEALOSAFE" to convert inorganic industrial wastes into
an environmentally inert synthetic STABLEX material. A
Michigan court has ruled that STABLEX is, quote, "not
a waste, it is noxious free, non-toxic, noninflammable,
noncombustible," close quote.
Untreated liquids in containers will eventually
leak from their containers and migrate into the environ-
ment. STABLEX prevents such leakage. STABLEX results
from a crystal capture mechanism which combines two inter-
dependent reactions.
First, pollutants present in the solution as
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ions react with carefully selected processed chemicals
to form strong chemical bonds. Second, the pollutants
present in an insoluble form are further bound by a solidi-
fication process and thus prevented from escaping into
the environment.
Because of the nature of the STABLEX material,
Stablex Corporation has petitioned the EPA pursuant to
40 C.F.R Parl 260.2 to exclude STABLEX from being considered
a hazardous waste.
EPA has granted a temporary exclusion for a
Stablex facility, but this exclusion was conditioned on
several substantial requirements, including the company's
voluntary agreement to place the STABLEX material into
a facility which has a double liner and leachate collection
system.
EPA imposed this requirement notwithstanding
substantial evidence presented by Stablex showing that
the STABLEX material will not generate harmful leachate.
Given EPA's present posture of requiring liners and leachate
collection systems for Stablex treated wastes, waste which
are solid material which cannot generate harmful leachate
j and which do not cause subsidence problems, we find it
absolutely incredible that the Agency would allow others
to dispose of any type of containerized wastes into unlined
landfills. Indeed, even the industry sponsors of the
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EPA proposal advocated requiring the use of impermeable
liners and leachate collection systems under the landfills
to catch chemicals which will inevitably leak from untreated
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liquids in the containers.
By allowing the continued disposal of container-
ized untreated liquids in unlined landfills, EPA has cast
away the incentive to use more advanced, environmentally
reliable treatment techniques which are known to be avail-
able. Instead, EPA should encourage hazardous waste
generators to lock up their wastes in a solid rock-like
material such as STABLEX if that waste is -compatible with
our process.
In conclusion, EPA's mandate under RCRA is to
promote environmentally sound hazardous waste treatment
facilities. EPA should not allow the continued disposal
of untreated liquid inorganic hazardous wastes where better
methods of permanent environmental security exists.
Stablex offers a sound method of converting
hazardous wastes into a virtually inert mass which can
be placed on the ground without adverse environmental
impacts. Given the serious shortage of new facilities
for responsible treatment of hazardous wastes, it seems
more desirable for the EPA to direct its efforts to assist
Stablex and similar companies promoting responsible hazardous
waste treatment methods rather than to relax regulations
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to such an extent that large quantities of liquid hazardous
waste can be released into the environment.
We recognize the current shortage of suitable
treatment facilities in the U.S. to handle all the liquid
wastes which are presently generated. Until sufficient
treatment capacity is developed, it would be appropriate,
on a case-by-case basis, for EPA to grant limited exemp-
tions from the ban on the disposal of containerized wastes
where the generators can demonstrate that no suitable
treatment facility to convert these liquid wastes into
a solid inert mass exists.
Furthermore, where containerized liquid wastes
are allowed to be disposed of untreated because of the
absence of suitable treatment techniques, they should
only be disposed of in a lined landfill with the appropriate
leachate collection and treatment systems.
That concludes my comments. Any questions?
CHAIRMAN DIETRICH: Thank you very much.
MS. SKINNER: Mr. Dietrich, my name is Peter
Skinner. In answer to the question at lunchtime, a contact
in the Department of Environmental Conservation, they
indicate in order to determine whether a particulate waste
is a liquid or not, the first test is the tap test where
they determine, as I indicated before, whether it's generally
compliant, pure nutonian fluids, can clearly be heard
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as being in existence, and they open those up, check the
depth of the nutonian fluid and add kitty litter where
it's appropriate.
The non-nutonian or fixotrophic wastes which
he says — which this is Mr. John Beecher of Region 9
of Department of Environmental Conservation — indicates
that fixitrophic plastic type waste which the CMA seems
to be concerned about
seen in the landfills
is not the majority of waste being
at this time, and the best engineering
judgment, the site achjieves the kind of ban that we feel
is appropriate.
CHAIRMAN DIETRICH: Thank you, Peter. Next
I'd like to call on Ms. Katherine Durso-Hughes with the
Environmental Action Foundation in Washington, D.C.
STATEMENT OF KATHERINE DURSO-HUGHES
MS. HUGHES: Thank you. I'm Katherine Durso-
Hughes with Environmental Action Foundation. We're a
national non-profit citizens' organization which has served
state and local groups throughout the country for more
than a decade with our educational and research work on
waste and toxic substances issues.
Thank you for this opportunity to present our
views on the 90-day suspension of the ban on landfilling
of liquid hazardous waste.
Since EPA lifted the ban late last month,
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Environmental Action Foundation has heard from citizen
and environmental group leaders around the nation who
have decried this Agency action and the covert way it
came about, using such terms as outrageous, counterproductive,
irresponsible and appalling.
You must understand that we are not talking
here about casual comments from armchair environmentalists.
We are talking about what one citizen called "indignation
bordering on disbelief" on the part of those who have
spent years trying to work cooperatively with state and
federal agencies, with the chemical and the waste management
industry and with other citizens.
We are talking about the reaction of people
who have been working in good faith and with some successs
to improve waste management in their states and to encourage
recovery, treatment, destruction and, where possible,
elimination of hazardous wastes.
With this recent action, the U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency has betrayed that good faith, undercut
the progress being made toward alternative hazardous waste
management techniques, created future liability problems
for industry and virtually guaranteed future health and
environmental problems for all of us.
The people we have spoken with represent millions
of Americans more than casually interested in hazardous
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waste problems who now see years of effort washed away
with this liquid hazardous waste landfilling decision-
These people cannot be here to talk to you today, but
what they have to say should be heard.
You can listen and do something about what they
are saying now, or you can let industry and government
officials listen to it in the future every time they try
to cite a hazardous waste management facility or deal
in good faith with the community.
We heard from the heartland of the chemical
industry, Louisiana. Ross Vincent of the Ecology Center
of Louisiana believes EPA has opened a Pandora's Box.
Many people, he says, still believe government will take
care of a problem once government understands the problem.
With this action, he said, "EPA has made it
abundantly clear that they have no intention of taking
care of the hazardous waste problem, and when people realize
that there is no hope for government protection, they
will resort to any action they feel is necessary to protect
themselves."
From Florida, Joe Podgor of Friends of the
Everglades, sees EPA action permitting the landfilling
of liquid hazardous waste as a favor to all the industries
who have been stockpiling waste in their back forty since
November, and as a reprieve for the midnight dumpers,
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allowing them to dump in daylight and with government
blessing.
Some of the people we spoke with cited the problems
this action creates for state government. Mark Sullivan
of the Natural Resources Council of Maine points to the
triple blow of diminishing resources for state hazardous
waste programs combined with steadily weakening federal
regulations and limited funds for remedial action and
clean-up.
"There is no way," says Sullivan, "that my organi-
zation can support the siting of facilities until we have
laws and regulations adequate to protect the public from
potential dangers of hazardous waste treatment, storage
and disposal as well as the resources adequate to enforce
these rules."
Steve Sedam of the Ohio Environmental Council
says the people of his state don't support the direction
in which EPA appears to be moving with the lifting of
the ban, that is toward discouraging rather than encouraging
alternatives to land disposal.
According to Sedam, the citizens of Ohio have
exhibited their preference by posing much less opposition
to the siting of facilities which employ waste management
alternative methods, and despite these tough economic
times, Sue Behrens of Missourians Against Hazardous Waste
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says that the thousands of people she represents would
rather pay to take care of the waste now than pay to clean
up the site or purify contaminated water later.
There is no legitimate, far-sighted economic
argument to explain the dumping of liquid hazardous wastes,
and EPA has not even bothered to try to defend its position
in terms of fufilling its mandate to protect health and
the environment.
This Administration seems intent on taking a
giant step backwards by setting irresponsible precedents
for hazardous waste handling.
"Look back historically at places where liquid
hazardous wastes have been landfilled," warns Dede Hapner
of the Environmental Health Coalition in San Diego. "The
names of those places have become household words repre-
senting the worst possible consequences of short-sighted
hazardous waste disposal practices. Now, by lifting the
ban on landfilling of containerized liquid hazardous waste,
EPA is setting the stage for future remedial action, cleanup
and possible victim compensation at sites across the country.
Why do they insist on approaching the problem backwards?"
So that people across American will not have
to keep asking this question, the ban on landfill disposal
of containerized liquid hazardous waste should be rein-
stated. Thank you.
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CHAIRMAN DIETRICH: Thank you. Next I would
like to call on Ms. Khristine Hall, Staff Attorney, Toxic
Chemical Program, Environmental Defense Fund.
STATEMENT OF KHRISTINE HALL
MS. HALL: The thought occurred to me as I was
sitting back there that really I'm superfluous to this.
You've all heard from the broad spectrum of interests
the objections to EPA's rulemaking, and I don't know if
I've got anything more to add to that, but I'll make a
statement anyway.
During the last nine months, we've witnessed
a startling reversal in EPA's attitudes on regulating
hazardous waste. I'm sure all of you know that EOF, or
more of you know that EOF has been a vigorous participant
in most of EPA's rulemakings, and it's been a litigant
in most of the the litigation.
No longer is EPA concerned with protecting public
health and the environment. Their main emphasis, their
main concern in the last nine months has been deregulation
and consideration of costs of control to industry.
At this point, practically six years after passage
of RCRA, there's virtually nothing in place that will
guarantee that the sort of things that we're now spending
money on will not happen again.
EPA's actions in the last nine months fly
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in the fact of its mandate under the Resource Conservation
Recovery Act and in the face of strong public sentiment.
In the eight years I've been in Washington practicing
environmental law, I've never seen the kind of public
sentiment expressed on an issue as on this one.
EDF in the last two weeks has gotten phone calls
from all segments of society ranging from truckers who
haul hazardous wastes and are very concerned to stock-
brokers.
The liquids and landfills issue is a very good
example of the blatant disregard of this agency of their
statutory mandate, and the basis of the outrage on this
issue is the realization of the public that instead of
moving forward, we are moving backward.
Landfilling is the least desirable method of
addressing our hazardous waste problem. The public senses
this intuitively and the science supports it. In my written
statement, I've got several pages going through the various
scientific studies that have been done on the problems
of landfilling.
Landfilling of hazardous waste has undoubtedly,
indisputably caused damage in the past. It's caused damage
to our ground water supplies, our surface water supplies.
It's caused documents damages to drinking water, fish
kills, agricultural land, and it's caused health effects.
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Liners in landfills are not efficient. Clay
can be leached. Clay breaks down under the influence of
solvents, and synthetic liners are also not effective.
Leachate collection systems are not effective.
We do not now possess the know-how to contain
hazardous wastes perpetually. There is no institutional
body in place that can make sure that the kind of care
that has to be taken to guarantee that the hazardous placed
in landfills do not leave them.
In addition, the costs of upkeep, if we were
to do that over the period of years that the hazardous
waste remains hazardous, are exorbitant. All this says
that we should be moving away from landfills, and we saw
the prohibition on liquids and landfills as a significant
step in that direction.
EPA itself in promulgating that requirement
acknowledged the problems of liquids in drums in landfills,
recognizing that the drums corrode and the liquids leak
out, that subsidence happens, and more leachate is generated.
Placing drums of liquids in landfills can be seen as a
trigger mechanism for a long series of events that eventually
in many instances culminate in damage to ground water
supplies and other environmental problems.
Ironically, EPA again acknowledged the problems
of liquids in drugs in landsfills when it suspended the
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regulations and proposed the 25 percent rule. The bottom
line of all this is that EPA knowingly disregarded the
public health and environmental effects when they suspended
the ban and proposed this 25 percent rule.
They know that this is going to create problems.
They know that what they've done does nothing to encourage
sounder treatment of hazardous waste. In addition, as
has already been mentioned frequently, what they've done
was done on a unilateral basis.
This is very characteristic of what's been taking
place in the last nine months. EPA has undertaken rule-
making in a vacuum. They only listen to part of society,
and a very narrow portion of that as well as can be seen
from the comments today.
Those comments were solicited on the suspension.
Apparently EPA feels that when they deregulate an industry,
there's no need to ask for comments. This is arrogant
and extreme and intolerable from an agency whose mandate
is to protect the public.
Any significant change in the basic ban regulation
has to be preceded by the opportunity of the public to
comment on it, and I'm including in that the 25 percent
rule that EPA proposed.
If there are problems in the ban regulation,
EPA has two courses of action, either to propose a change
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and allow it to undergo public comment or, and I think
this is more feasible, to finetune it. If EDF does not
care about a single drop of liquid in the drum, nor should
EPA. EDF doesn't care about a sheet of liquid across the
top of a drum, nor should EPA.
If we have to finetune the rule, finetune the
rule. Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. We
hope that this will mark a turning point. The cries of
outrage on this issue should be taken to heed by EPA,
and EPA should reassess its direction.
We demand that EPA reimpose the ban immediately.
Everyday of delay on this subject allows more drums to
be buried. We urge EPA to insure that the landfill regula-
tions now under consideration and now under development
adequately protect public health and the environment and
that EPA start to develop creative strategies for dealing
with the problems that landfills ultimately create, and
we urge ElPA to reassess a number of other actions that
they've taken in the last nine months to weaken the overall
regulatory program of hazardous wastes. Thank you.
MR. PEDERSEN: Yes, I would just like to point
out a missing piece on EDF's specific involvement in this
matter. I have before me a copy of our letter from Mark
Greenwood of our office to David Linnett of the Environmental
Defense Fund.
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EDF is an active participant in the Shell Oil
negotiations out of which this suspension arose. "Dear
Dave," says the letter, "As I indicated in our November 6th
meeting, I am summarizing our understanding of the agreement
reached on the provisions covering containerized liquids."
So, the letter on December 1st is already a month after the
meeting.
Then it goes forward to recite, in essence, the
proposal that has been issued and paragraph two of this
letter of December 1st to EDF from EPA says, "EPA will issue
an interim final rule extending the compliance date for 90
days or until final amendments are made, whichever is
sooner."
The letter concludes, "I hope this provides an
accurate summary of the understanding that we reached on
this issue. If you have any questions or clarifications,
let me know as soon as possible."
I quess my question is: If it was all that bad,
why didn't you let us know*sooner?
MS. HALL: Okay, I'm really happy to have the
opportunity to respond to that. We never agreed to a sus-
pension of the rule, and we never agreed to the 25 percent
rule.
Our lack of comment on that group has grown out
of months of frustration of dealing with EPA. As you have
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mentioned, we've been participating in several negotiating
sessions and other matters on these issues. Never once has
EPA listened seriously to what we said. Every single issue
that we've raised in negotiations, EPA has ignored or turned
against us.
It was our judgment, and I think it's still the
correct one, that whatever we said would have been futile.
M.R. PEDERSEN: But surely these were not confi-
dential settlement papers because we said from the beginning
we need them to be public, at least as a matter of good
lawyering, if you had concerns you would have commented to
make a record.
MS. HALL: I've already replied.
CHAIRMAN DIETRICH: Thank you, Khris.
Next I'd like to call on Ms. Jane Bloom of the
Natural Resource Defense Council.
STATEMENT OF JANE BLOOM
MS. BLOOM: The Natural Resources Defense Council,
NRDC, is a national environmental organization of over
40,000 members. NRDC has long worked to ensure that drink-
ing water is protected from contamination by toxic chemicals,
Today we are deeply concerned that EPA's action in sus-
pending it's ban on the landfill disposal of liquid hazard-
ous waste adds a significant threat to the nation's already
endangered underground sources of drinking water.
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NRDC strongly opposes both EPA's 90-day suspension
of the ban and it's proposed partial suspension of the ban.
EPA imposed the ban because overwhelming evidence
demonstrated that disposal of liquids in landfills poses
major threats to public health, safety, and the environment.
The ban was a realistic response to what EPA conceives are
the real world problems, that landfills leak, liners crack,
covers subside, and contaminants leach out from a landfill
into the surrounding environment, particularly into the
ground water which provides over 50 percent of our nation's
drinking water.
At present, except in the realm of theory, per-
petually secure landfills simply do not exist. Even at
so-called secure or sanitary landfills, leaching is likely
to occur because the protective linings and covers which
are used to prevent migration of contaminants into the
environment often do not remain intact long enough to out-
live the toxicity of the landfill's contents.
EPA expressly concedes this point in its announce-
ment of suspension of the ban by acknowledging that, and
I quote from the Federal Register, "The containerized free
liquid wastes allowed in landfills often will eventually
leak from their containers and migrate out of the landfill
and into the environment."
The agency further concedes that the subsidance
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which results from the inevitable decay of landfill drums
may cause "significant and perhaps irreparable damage" to
the landfill covers thus causing migration of contaminants
from the landfill, yet under the proposed partial suspension
of the ban we take collection systems and liners would not
be required. These are devices which prevent such migration
of contaminants into drinking water.
Equally troubling is the fact that many, if not
most, of the existing landfills do not now contain liners,
leaching collection systems, or other protections necessary
to protect against leakage.
These protections are not required under interim
status and this situation is likely to persist until that
time, predicted to be as long as ten years hence, when
final permiting is completed, and that is assuming that
the final landfilling regulations, which have not yet been
promulgated by EPA, requires such protective measures.
It is not surprising, therefore, that burial of
liquids in landfills is one of the major ways in which
contamination of ground water sources of drinking water
occurs.
Contrary to the agency's unsubstantiated claim
that the inevitable weakage of contaminants from landfills
into the environment "is likely to be diluted and attenua-
ted ", ground water is extremely vulnerable to contamination
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accumulating at very high concentrations.
For example, trichloroethylene, TCE, a carcino-
genic solvent which is one of the most prevalent contaminants
discovered in drinking water wells, has been found in ground
water in concentrations that are many orders of magnitude
greater than the highest concentrations fround in surface
water.
EPA recently found that whereas in surface water
the highest reported concentrations of TCE were 160 parts
per billion, in ground water the highest recorded amounts
were over 35,000 parts per billion, which were found in
ground water.
TCE is just one of a number of dangerous con-
taminants that enter drinking water wells through migration
from land disposal sites. In fact, just one week after
suspending the ban, EPA published an advance notice of
proposed rule making in the Federal Register in which it
expressed concern that 14 toxics commonly found in drinking
water, which EPA acknowledges got into drinking water
partially through improper hazardous waste disposal prac-
tices.
Once contaminated, ground water is prohibitively
expensive if not technologically impossible to clean up.
For all practical purposes, therefore, contamination of
ground water by hazardous wastes leaching from landfills
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is irreversible.
In light of these real world facts, the veracity
of which EPA concedes, the agency's authorization of 90 days
of unrestricted dumping of containerized liquids into land-
fills practically guarantees the continued contamination of
ground water.
EPA is currently charged under the new super fund
law with spending $1.6 billion to clean up hazardous waste
sites, a sum which will enable it to clean up only the
very worst problems created by improper land disposal of
hazardous wastes including ground water contamination.
Given the scarcity of funds available for clean
up and the magnitude of the existing problem, we believe
that it is unconscionable for the agency to aid in the
creation of a new generation of potential super fund sites,
this is especially true when safer, and in the long run,
more economical alternatives to land disposal currently
exists as previous speakers have testified.
As EPA acknowledges, these alternatives, which
according to EPA include incineration, reprocessing and
recovery, and treatment by dewatering of chemical absorbent
processes are presently available and feasible.
Rather than actively promoting a method of dis-
posing of hazardous liquids which has potentially disastrous
environmental consequences, EPA should be focusing its
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attention and resources on providing incentives and en-
couragement for the utilization, development, and expansion
of these alternatives to land disposal of hazardous liquids.
EPA's suspension of the ban on landfilling of
these liquids and its proposal to partially suspend the
ban, however, will senselessly undercut the viability of
environmentally preferable alternatives.
The overwhelming evidence supporting a ban con-
trasts sharply with EPA's scant explanation for its abrupt
and dangerous decision to lift the ban, no new evidence nor
indeed any scientific evidence is presented in support of
EPA's decision to allow a three-month free-for-all on land-
filling containerized hazardous wastes nor has any compelling
evidence be presented to explain how allowing 25 percent,
which is clearly not a diminimous amount, of liquid hazard-
ous wastes into landfills will protect the public from
ground water contamination.
The agency's only stated basis for immediately
eliminating its well-founded ban and proposing a formula
which would allow up to 25 percent of the volume of a land-
fill to be filled with drums of hazardous liquids is "the
professional judgment of the capable, expert landfill
operators who advised the National Solid Waste Management
Association and the Chemical Manufacturers Association."
As EPA boldly states in the Federal Register
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notice, this advice was given to EPA during the course of
settlement negotiations in a lawsuit brought by these
advisers to challenge EPA's regulations under RCRA.
It is unseemly at best, we believe, for EPA to
rely upon the not disinterested advice and proposals of the
deponents in litigation whose objective is to negotiate a
settlement which will release them from RCRA requirements
that they consider burdensome. Furthermore, given the
serious concerns which EPA currently expresses concerning
the safety of landfilling liquid hazardous wastes and the
serious criticism by other members of industry who were
represented here today, as well as the public, of the sus-
pension of the ban and the industry proposal, we believe
that any suspension of the ban of affected industry prior
to completion of rule-making is unjustified.
By lifting the ban pending the outcome of rule-
making, EPA unnecessarily shifts the burden to the public
to bear the consequences of increased risks of harm to the
environment and to the public health and safety, especially
since EPA may ultimately decide to retain the ban.
Such a shifting of the burden clearly contravenes
the intent of RCRA, to provide protection for the public
against just such risks, and in our opinion violates EPA's
broader responsibilities to protect the environment.
In conclusion, NRDC stronly urges EPA to reinstate
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the ban on landfilling of containerized liquid waste. NRDC
will address the specifics of EPA's proposal to allow up to
25 percent of the capacity of a landfill to be filled with
containerized liquid wastes prior to the close of the com-
ment period. However, NRDC will also be formerly submitting
a request that the agency extend the comment period on the
proposal for an additional period of time. I believe that
NRDC may not be alone in feeling that 30 days, which is the
minimum comment period generally afforded in rule-making, is
too short a time in which to meaningfully evaluate a proposa
of such enormous consequence for public health, safety, and
the environment. Thank you.
CHAIRMAN DIETRICH: Thank you. I'd like to next
call on Mr. Robert Janereau of the National Association of
Metal Finishers.
STATEMENT OF ROBERT JANEREAU
MR. JANEREAU: Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and member;
of the panel for this opportunity to address this issue. My
name is Robert Janereau, President of Stanley Plating Co. in
Forestville, Connecticut. I currently serve as Chairman of
the Solid Waste Committee of the National Association of
Metal Finishers, and in my home state of Connecticut serve
on the Advisory Committee to the Board of Water Resources.
The NAMF represents approximately 3,000 metal
finsihing operations nationwide, all of which are relatively
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small job shops. A profile of a job shop would reveal sales
at $665,000 per year with 15 employees and an after-tax
profit of 3 to 4 percent.
Members of NAMF generate hazardous wastes in
their metal-plating and metal-finishing operations and
accordingly are vitally affected by EPA's RCRA regulations.
NAMF endorses EPA's efforts to find a reasonable
regulatory substitute for its rigid ban on landfilling of
free liquid containing waste in drums during interim status.
It also strongly endorses EPA's efforts to pre-
scribe a sensible test of whether or not waste may fairly
be said to contain free liquids.
Further, we support the suspension of the ban on
landfilling of drum free liquid containing wastes pending
rule-making on an alternative.
However, we also support the petition to make
EPA's proposed amendment effective immediately.
NAMF recognizes the need to minimize the amount
of free liquids placed in landfills and supports all rea-
sonable regulatory efforts to accomplish that purpose. We
submit, however, that a complete ban is infeasible and
may prove counterproductive.
NAMF represents many small businesses that cannot
afford extensive on-site treatment of their wastes. We,
therefore, favor concerted efforts nationwide to remove
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local political obstacles to siting of vitally needed off-
site treatment facilities. We believe that those local
political obstacles are not economic incentives allegedly
created by federal regulations that cause the current
shortfall of treatment capacity metal finishing wastes.
In the absence of adequate off-site treatment
capacity, many members of our industry face no practical
alternative to sending their free liquid containing wastes
in drums to landfills.
The waste of particular concern to our industry
is waste water treatment sludge from electroplating opera-
tions. These metal hydroxide sludges result from waste
water treatment facilities installed to comply with the
Clean Water Act and in our opinion represent far less of a
problem to our environment than those reactive and organic
wastes.
Our industry generates more than 14 million
gallons of these sludges per month. When federal pre-
treatment regulations go into effect in 1934, the volume
of waste generated will increase dramatically. Approxi-
mately two-thirds of this amount is generated by small job
shops which do not accumulate sludges at a rate sufficient
to make it practical to ship them in bulk unless these
sludges are placed in drums for off-site treatment and
disposal.
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On-site treatment of these sludges to eliminate
free liquid is not feasible. In the absence of an agreed
test to establish the presence of free liquid, many small
businesses such as ours cannot scarce capital to install
drying equipment that may later be deemed insufficient.
If the agency were to adopy the test of free
liquid proposed on February 25, we estimate that the instal-
lation of in-house drying equipment to allow our sludges to
pass this test could average upwards of $30,000. Installa-
tion time would be up to a year.
Independent of possible permitting delay, these
costs are equal to the annual net earnings of the typical
job shop. Our members cannot afford to gamble on such an
investment only to find that some more stringent degree of
liquid removal is to be required.
As I have already noted, off-site treatment is
not a readily available option in many areas of the country.
Such commercial treatment capaacity as does exist must as
a first priority treat reactive metal finsihing wastes to
render them non-reactive.
Technically, one further alternative exists,
absorbent material may be added to the sludges placed in
drums. We estimate that this would increase the volume of
sludge sent off-site in drums by a. factor of two. This
labor intensive and costly practice of doubling the volume
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of metal hydroxide sludges sent to off-site disposal would
cause these sludges to command an increasing share of
diminishing existing landfill capacity.
Metal finishers also engage in painting operations,
Hazardous ignitable wastes from these operations are placed
in drums. These wastes are very difficult to mix or de-
drum, as has been stated by various waste treatment firms,
nor because of their intrinsic character can they be
removed from drums for incineration if not placed in land-
fills. Such materials can only be incinerated in a rotary
kiln capable of destroying wastes in drums, and such
commercial facilities are scarce.
For the foregoing reason, NAMF urges the agency
to stay on the course established by its February 25
actions. We would, however, urge the agency to make
immediately effective its proposed amendment pertaining to
the volume of a landfill that may be occupied by drums
containing liquids. This step should help restore public
confidence and the integrity of the agency's regulatory
scheme.
Reinstitution of the ban would confront my indus-
try with an impossible situation and force widespread
technical non-compliance with interim status storage require-
ments .
In the longer term, the solution to the problem
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of drum liquids in landfills lies in the development of a
sensible test for the presence of free liquids, and in the
long run, deregulated community the time to install the
techniques necessary to eliminate free liquids to meet this
test. Also necessary is cooperation by state and federal
governments to eliminate obstacles to siting of new
hazardous waste treatment facilities necessary to treat
wastes of our industry's and others.
CHAIRMAN DIETRICH: Thank you. Let me just ask
a couple questions. Have you run the paint filter test of
the February 25th proposed rule on your waste water treatment
sludges?
MR. JANEREAU: No, sir. We have not had sufficient
time to react to that. I've discussed this with several
waste treatment people, and the results that I got from
them, their feeling was that metal hydroxide sludges
specifically on this item would have to attain at least an 11
to 12 percent solids content in order to pass that paint
filter test.
CHAIRMAN DIETRICH: Would that require a vacuum
filtration in your view?
MR. JANNEREAU: First of all, the experience, of
course, on metal hydroxide sludges that as precipitated,
they characteristically fall in the 2 to 5 percent solids,
depending upon the efficiency of your actual water treatment
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system. To get them drying than that, of course, requires
some thickening and what have you.
I think it's generally accepted that centrifuge
and that sort of technique is capable at best of 11 to 12
percent. If you were to go higher than that, than rotary
drum vacuum type technology, high-pressure filtration is
required; and I'm sure you may know that capital investments
there are more like $150,000.
CHAIRMAN DIETRICH: But the $30,000 was based on
something like centrifuge?
MR. JANNEREAU: Centrifuge or filtration.
CHAIRMAN DIETRICH: Now, you seem to mostly dis-
cuss the waste water treatment sludges. You also have
cleaning bath sludges and stripping and cleaning solutions
that also are sent to landfills in containers, is that
correct?
MR. JANNEREAU: Mine aren't, we send ours to a
treatment facility. It would be our position that the F-00.8
and the F-009 category of materials we prefer to see existing
waste treatment facilities handle those materials, the I
allowable capacity to treat those materials as opposed to
the landfill. j
CHAIRMAN DIETRICH: Now, existing waste treatment,
is that hazardous waste treatment or is that into a municipal
waste treatment facility?
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MR. JANNEREAU: Hazardous waste.
CHAIRMAN DIETRICH; Do you have any ideas on
whether there is capacity in the hazardrous waste treatement
area to deal with those types of wastes generally throughout
the country?
MR. JANNEREAU: It would be my personal opinion
that capacity exists to handle the F-008 and F-009 categories
presently but certainly not the metal hydroxide sludges.
CHAIRMAN DIETRICH: The waste water treatment
sludges?
MR. JANNEREAU: Yes, sir.
CHAIRMAN DIETRICH: Thank you.
I next call on Mr. Barny Wander of the Rollins
Environmental Services of Wilmington, Delaware.
STATEMENT OF BARNY WANDER
MR. WANDER: Thank you. My name is Barny Wander,
and I'm Director of Public Environmental Affairs for
Rollins Environmental Services, Inc., of Wilmington,
Delaware.
I'm submitting a copy of our full statement for
the record. My oral remarks will be in the interest of
time, and my voice with considerable abbreviations of the
longer annotated versions.
For more than 30 years, the United States has been
building a body of law both in statutes and regulations
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designed to protect human health and the environment in the
area of waste disposal. The most comprehensive of these
laws is the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act of 1976.
In it Congress singled out land disposal as a
particular problem, saying that the landfilling of hazardous
materials was not the preferred method of disposal if other
methods are available.
The regulations that have been promulgated over
the past six years under RCRA have reemphasized this need
to find evermore safe ways to dispose of hazardous wastes.
Now, however, EPA is apparently abandoning the national
goal of seeking safer ways to dispose of hazardous materials.
We believe this is a clear contradiction of the
intent of Congress as expressed in RCRA. In particular,
the agency's 90 day suspension of the prohibition of land-
filling containerized liquids and ignitable hazardous
wastes does not reflect the current state of hazardous
waste treatment and disposal technology for the real world
long-term problems that accrue from placing liquids in
landfills.
We believe we are well qualified to hold these
opinions and to make suggestions in this area for Rollins
Environmental Services is the oldest and most experienced
high technology waste treatment and disposal corporation in
the United States.
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We operate large-scale commercial high-temperature
emission controlled hazardous waste incinerators for over
12,000 individual waste streams.
We, along with the EPA and others, have for more
than a decade been developing a wide variety of technologies
for the safe disposal of liquid hazardous wastes by means
other than landfilling.
We do, however, operate secure, controlled, class
one landfills for the disposal of drummed and bulk solids
and pre-treated sludges.
RES also is engaged in the business of cleaning
up past waste disposal sites that are now threatening health
or the environment.
In all of these endeavors we believe we hold a
position of public trust, earned over more than a dozen
years of operating experience. We further believe that
EPA holds an even greater position of public trust.
Unfortunately, by its two recent actions, EPA
is being responsive neither to requirements of the law, nor
to its responsibility as a protector of the public good.
Our comments today will not address the legality
of the suspension but rather its substance. Similarly, we
will comment on the longer term proposal by EPA to allow up
to 25 percent of a landfill capacity to be used for disposal
of liquid hazardous wastes from a substantive standpoint
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based on our own experience.
For the past several years across the United
States, federal and state agencies have been discovering
sites used in the past for the disposal of hazardous materi-
als that are now posing threats to human health or the
environment; one result, of course, has been Superfund.
As a company involved on a day-to-day basis with
the clean up of these sites, we know that one of the major
problems is liquid materials that are leaching from the
sites into ground and surface water.
By allowing for even 90 days the disposal of
hazardous liquids in landfills, EPA will create future
problems of exactly the same nature as the problems it is
attempting to solve with Superfund.
On the face of the issue, this is an obvious and
unacceptable contradiction that must be abated. The
agency should immediately retract its 90 day suspension of
the regulations to fulfill the requirements of the law as
well as the agency's obligations to the maintenance of
public health and the protection of the environment.
Now, the longer term question of eventual revision
of current regulations governing landfilling of containerized
liquids and ignitable hazardous wastes is not as cut and
dried an issue as the temporary opening up of landfills to
unlimited liquid waste disposal.
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We agree it is impossible to regulate to a zero
requirement, however, the revision the agency has proposed
goes too far in correcting the problem.
In our company alone we have an annual landfill
capacity of about 280 million pounds. Under the EPA pro-
posal we could theoretically dispose of 70 million pounds
of liquids a year. We do not believe this to be an environ-
mentally sound practice. At the present time we do not
landfill free liquids at Rollins facilities, foremost
because we believe we're in the business of trying to pre-
vent environmental problems, not create them.
Under current regulations, we have what is a
built and suspender approach to landfilling hazardous
materials. Liners and leachate collection and removal
systems are required in addition to the prohibition on
landfilling hazardous liquids.
In its current proposals, EPA intends not only to
substantially relax the prohibition on liquids, but also
intends to eliminate many of the requirements for liners
and leachate collection and removal, thus EPA is eliminating
both the belt and the suspenders. It will be returned to
the very problems of the past we are attempting to correct
today.
EPA bases its proposed regulation in large measure
on what the agency perceives is an unwarranted and dangerous
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need to open waste containers for purposes of inspection or
to perform additional dewatering or absorbent addition
operation. Yet in its own proposal, EPA would require waste
disposal facility owners and operators to demonstrate
whether a container holds free liquids, and such demonstra-
tions and the required analyses would be difficult to make
without opening containers.
We believe the issue of opening containers is
largely spurious. Under current regulations owners or
operators of waste disposal facilities must before dis-
posing of any hazardous wastes inspect and, if necessary,
analyze each hazardous waste perceived at the facility. It
is impossible to make such inspections and analyses without
opening the containers.
There is no question that the opening of con-
tainers of hazardous waste can present risks, but these
risks are well-controlled by practices developed over many
years that are designed to protect persons handling the
wastes.
A much more pertinent question is: Should some
risks be taken by opening hazardous waste containers before
treatment and disposal to prevent future risks following
treatment or disposal? We believe the answer is yes.
The hazard involved in opening waste containers
in a controlled environment of a waste disposal site is
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negligible. The hazard of a landfill leaching toxic materi-
als into the environment is major and serious.
The opening of waste containers is an accepted
practice currently in place which can continue without
posing substantial threat to health or the environment.
If we relagate this consideration to its proper
place as a relatively inconsequential tangential issue, we
are then left with the basic question: Should liquids and
ignitable hazardous wastes be disposed of in landfills? We
do not believe the answer can be a straightforward no. As
we have already stated, there is no way to completely
eliminate liquids in landfills because while zero can be
approached and may be desired, it can never be achieved.
But if our answer is yes, then we are faced with
two more critical questions: How much and under what
circumstances?
EPA's answer to the first question is 25 percent
of the landfill's capacity, or perhaps more in some in-
stances. However, if a high volume of hazardous liquid
waste is allowed to be landfilled, this can become a vicious
circle. If more landfilling is allowed, there will be less
high technology used, which in turn will lead to more land-
filling; and in the process, there is little incentive to
develop new and safer treatment technology.
We believe the answer to the question how much
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should be the absolute minimum consistent with the Congres-
sionally mandated national goal of limiting the disposal of
hazardous wastes in or on the land and mindful of the costs
required to achieve this objective.
We propose, therefore, that current regulations
be revised, not as proposed by EPA, but rather to reflect
the following: First, some free liquid but not more than
3 percent should be allowed in each container of hazardous
waste disposed of by landfilling except for certain speci-
fied wastes. An example might be known human carcinogens
that could not be landfilled above the limits of detect-
ability.
Second, the waste generators should specify in
addition,to other information that already must be speci-
fied, the percentage of free liquid in each container of
hazardous wastes up to the permitted limit of 3 percent.
In fact, the hazardous waste data sheets currently used by
most disposal facilities already ask for this information.
Third, EPA should specify an appropriate standard
test to verify the percentage of free liquid in a waste in
instances where such verification is required.
Fourth, if any waste generator believes a particu-
lar liquid waste should be allowed in containers at a per-
centage greater than 3 percent, than that generator should
be allowed to petition the agency for an exception which
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would establish a definite higher percentage for that waste
only for specified landfill locations.
And, fifth, owners and operators of hazardous
waste disposal facilities will be required to verify waste
generator analyses for free liquid content in the same
manner as they carry out other tests that already are re-
quired. This is how we propose answering the question how
much.
In response to the question under what circum-
stances, we propose the following: First, any landfill
permitted to accept containerized liquid waste should be
required to have the same liner and leachate collection
and removal specifications as landfills permitted to accept
non-containerized liquid waste.
Second, as is currently the case, a landfill owner
or operator would be permitted the option of refusing to
accept any containerized waste containing free liquid in
any amount.
We blieve the proposals we have outlined above
are appropriate to protect all involved interests. First
and foremost, the interest of the public in health and
environmental protection will be safeguarded; second, the
interests of those using or developing new technologies
for waste treatment or disposal will be protected; and,
third, the interests of waste generators will be protected
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by building reasonable flexibility into the regulations.
There is no lack of capacity to treat liquid and
ignitable wastes by high technology means, particularly
incineration, based on the experience of our own company.
The ability to treat or dispose of wastes safely
and efficiently should itself be considered a natural
resource worthy of development and preservation.
We, therefore, urge that the current suspension
of restrictions on the landfilling of liquid and ignitable
hazardous wastes be rescinded immediately and that amend-
ments to current regulations incorporation the suggestions
we have presented here be studied and adopted quickly as
interim rules and later as permanent regulations.
The details of our opinions and proposals are
contained in the complete statement we are submitting for
the record today. If you have any questions, I'd be glad
to try to answer them.
MR. PEDERSEN: Yes, sir, you referred to the EPA
proposal for 25 percent containerized liquids at landfills.
My understanding had been that, in fact, the formula peaks
at 25 percent and because any drum with some liquids is
treated as being all liquid that in practice it would be
very difficult for the liquid content to even come near
25 percent. Do you agree with that or not?
MR. WANDER: I both agree and disagree. In point
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of practice any reputable waste disposal operation would
probably meet the conditions you just outlined, however, I
can envision a case where I might buy a 100 acre hole in
the ground, put in 25 acres of drums containing 100 percent
hazardous liquids, and my next address would be Argentina.
That concerns us a loophole in the way the EPA is currently
proposed.
MR. PEDERSEN: I understand.
MR. WANDER: You're correct if you're dealing
with a responsible operator; if not, you run that risk.
MR. PEDERSEN: If EPA were to adopt on an interim
basis this 25 percent regulation for nationwide application,
would it in your opinion decrease the amount of liquids
that go to landfills or would it just sanction existing
practices?
MR. WANDER: The 25 percent, if you put that
into effect for —
MR. PEDERSEN: As opposed to a situation of no
regulation.
MR. WANDER: It would probably somewhat decrease
it but not to a great extent. I'd have to go back and do
a little mathematics to give you a precise answer, but I
think it would decrease it somewhat.
MR. PEDERSEN: It would be helpful if we could
have your estimate of that somewhat. Where did you get the
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3 percent free liquids from?
MR. WANDER: Based on our experience and the kinds
of wastes that we normally receive at landfills that require
further treatment — first place, at our landfills normally
liquids aren't a great problem. Wastes come in, they can
be treated to solidify them or since EPA has not relaxed
the rules so that a generator can solidify wastes before
they're delivered to folks like us without them having go
through the permanent process, in point of fact, liquids
just plain aren't that much of a problem for us or figuring
out what is a liquid and what isn't, sure, you sometimes
have that problem but not a great deal. There are a certain
number of limited wastes where there is a problem in this
area, and those are sometimes, frankly, difficult to deal
with.
MR. PEDERSEN: You say there is no lack of
capacity to treat liquid and ignitable wastes by high
technology means. I guess I have two questions about that.
First, can you tell us a bit more about the
factual basis of that statement; and, second, do you mean
to include all liquid wastes?
MR. WANDER: No, my statement I believe was
qualified based on the experience of our own company.
Right now our situation is artificial because we have an
incinerator shut down for the addition of some air pollution
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equipment, so the other incinerators are running pretty
close to capacity; but before that happened, we had been
running for sometime at somewhere in the vicinity of 65 to
70 percent of capacity, so there is excess capacity as far
as we are concerned, and we're obviously actively selling
in order to try to get business into those incinerators,
and it's difficult to do.
MR. PEDERSEN: What about according to reports
by other treatment disposal firms, does that express your
understanding?
MR. WANDER: The reports and the literature
generally have indicated the same situation in other com-
panies.
I took note of your question earlier to get you
precise figures in those areas, and we will get them to
you.
MR. PEDERSEN: Now, are there liquid wastes that
cannot be treated through use of this excess capacity even
if it is available?
MR. WANDER: Sure, there's no question that there
are some wastes that have relatively-high liquid content
where you can reduce the amount of free liquid in them but
where they still are in, let's say, a semi-solid state as
opposed to it being, you know, rock-hard solid. They cannot
be incinerated, for example, and can't find cogs to eat
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them up, and those materials up to date we know of nothing
other to do with them other than landfill them, that's
correct.
CHAIRMAN DIETRICH: Is your excess capacity on
both sides of the rotary kiln as well as the liquid injec-
tion?
MR. WANDER: It's predominantly on the rotary
kiln side.
CHAIRMAN DIETRICH: In other words, you could
take some of these so-called problem wastes that people
have identified to us?
MR. WANDER: If they can be burned.
CHAIRMAN DIETRICH: If they can be burned, you're
right, you're right.
MR. WANDER: You know, there are some things you
can't burn.
CHAIRMAN DIETRICH: The containerized wastes that
you put in your landfills/ are you achieving something
approximating 3 percent liquid content?
MR. WANDER: I would say considerably lower than
that. In the first place, most of the time we don't land-
fill containers. We get the containers in, the containers
are opened, the contents are emptied, they are further
solidified, the solidified material is buried within a cell
in the landfill, the containers that they came in are
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crushed and are buried separately.
CHAIRMAN DIETRICH: I've seen your drum handling
facility up at your — is it New Jersey?
MR. WANDER: In New Jersey, right.
CHAIRMAN DIETRICH: How many drums a year can you
handle at that facility?
MR. WANDER: I honestly don't know, I can get you
the number.
CHAIRMAN DIETRICH: Okay, thank you very much.
MR. WANDER: Thank you.
Let me call next on Mr. Kenneth Walanski of the
National Paint and Coating Association.
STATEMENT OF KENNETH WALANSKI
MR. WALANSKI: Thank you very much. My name is
Ken Walanski, I'm the Corporate Environmental Engineer
for DeSoto, Incorporated, in Desplaines, Illinois. I'm a
member of a water quality and waste disposal task force of
the National Paint and Coatings Association, an organiza-
tion that we know of as NPCA.
Today I represent the NPCA which is composed of
more than 900 companies, collectively produce about 90 per-
cent of the dollar amount of consumer paints and industrial
coatings in the United States.
NPCA has been actively involved in the liquid and
liquid-ignitable waste disposal issue, both as a litigant
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in the Shell Oil vs. EPA case and in administrative pro-
ceedings. It is an issue of great significance ot our
industry.
The NPCA data bank program shows that the paint
and coatings industry generates at least 20 million gallons
of ignitable wastes each year. Over 5 million gallons of
this material is reclaimed by off-site recycling facilities,
the remaining 15 million gallons must be incinerated, used
as auxiliary fuel or landfilled.
The ignitable waste generated by the paint and
coatings industry takes several forms and includes water
solvents, sludges from paint solvent recovery, obsolete
and defective coating products, used filter media, and
semi-solid and solid residues in tank cleaning and floor
cleanings.
In general, the waste cleaning solvents, which I
first mentioned, can be classified as clean wastes due to
the lower solids content which enables them to be reclaimed
or readily used as auxiliary fuel or incinerated in a
liquid injector incincerator.
The other wastes, however, are considered problem
way streams, and they are characterized by high solids
contents, high inorganic pigment content which results in
high ash when incinerated, heavy metal content, relatively
high viscosity, which ranges from pumpable off specification
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coatings to non-pumpable sludges, and they are also
characterized by having often times a solid and liquid phase.
Another point to be made is that we are dealing
with mixtures in many instances of organic and inorganic
materials which further complicates some of our management
problems.
The characteristics which I've just referred to
severely limit the disposal options open to generators of
these wastes and has led the EPA to identify them as a
so-called problem ignitable waste.
EPA states in their February 20th background
document, and I quote, "The clear ignitable wastes in
general have already been reclaimed as solids or used in
liquid injection incincerators as fuel sources. In general
it is the 'problem ignitable wastes' which the reclaimers
and incinerator operators don't want that are going to the
landfills. Often what is received at the landfills are the
rejects or sludges of the reclaimers. Therefore, the most
obvious alternatives to landfilling of these wastes
reclaiming and incineration are not praactical or readily
usable even when available."
Larry Straff, who is a Manager of Environmental
Engineering and Control at PPG Industries has already
testified as the former chairman of a water quality waste
management task force. He has testified at a public
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hearing held by the EPA on March 25, 1981, concerning EPA's
intention to ban the landfilling of ignitable wastes. Mr.
Straff discussed the serious lack of incineration capacity
to handle ignitable wastes in the United States.
While he cited the lack of incinerators with
technological capabilities to handle high solids and high
viscosity wastes, there is an additional serious shortfall
which he mentioned, even for ordinary incinerators, par-
ticularly in the Western United States. In such instances
there may not even be adequate incineration capacity for
the so-called cleaner or non-problem wastes.
The EPA has consistently recognized the practical
problem of a lack of alternative capacity and safe methods
besides landfilling to handle containerized liquid and
liquid ignitable wastes.
EPA's discussion of the basis for its decision
to first suspend the ban of landfilling of ignitable
wastes for six months spoke of the practical problems that
a ban would cause, and I quote: "In the past; containerized
ignitable liquid wastes often in large volumes have been
disposed of in many of the major landfills. Typically
these are two phase wastes, that is, semi-solid sludges
with both liquid and solid phases. The liquid phase is
often the phase that exhibits the characteristic of ig-
nitability, thereby causing the waste to be a hazardous
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waste. (Paint waste and spent solids are the most common
of these ignitable wastes.) Because of the high solids
content of many of these wastes, they are not easily incin-
erated, particularly in liquid injection incinerators where
the solids tend to plug the injector nozzles. For the same
reason, these wastes cannot easily be injected through deep
wells. Also, most incinerators, even some rotary kilns,
are unable to burn wastes in metal drums. Other options
for handling liquid ignitable wastes, such as solvent
recovery, land treatment, and chemical, physical, or
biological treatment can be successfully used to treat
some, but not all, of these wastes. Even when it is
technically feasible to handle liquid ignitable wastes in
incinerators, deep wells, or other facilities, such
facilities may not always be readily available." And,
again, that was a quote from the EPA.
We certainly concure with these comments by the
agency. The paint industry would be shackled with an
almost impossible regulatory burden if a complete ban on
landfilling were to be imposed now or in the near future
due to the lack of disposal options.
The alternatives of deep well injection or
incineration or not suitable or sufficient for liquid and
liquid-ignitable paint wastes.
The EPA acknowledges that several regions in the
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United States have no available commercial incinerators,
while others have only a limited number.
The EPA has in the past relied on the December
1980 report prepared by Booz, Allen, and Hamilton to judge
the availability of alternative commercial disposal facili-
ties.
NPCA believes that the Booz, Allen report presents
a misleading and over-simplified view of the commercial
hazardous waste management situation in the United States.
In the Spring of 1981, the National Paint and
Coatings Association undertook a critical review of this
report. This review included a survey of the 127 hazardous
waste management facilities listed in the report. Our pur-
pose was to determine which facilities actually had the
capability to treat or dispose of ignitable paint wastes.
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MR. WALANSKI: The results of our survey were
most interesting. Our survey showed that 15 were no longer
in business, three were not operating at the time, seven
were not hazardous waste management facilities, but in
reality offered some other type of service.
Thirty-eight were incapable of handling any —
and I stress any — of the hazardous waste. Twenty-three
were strictly waste solvent recycling operations. That
leaves forty-one.
10 Of the 41 remaining facilities only 19 could be
11 identified as operating incinerators that could handle
12 some type of ignitable paint waste again because of the
13 problem and the characteristics which I referred to
14 earlier.
15 In our comments filed in 1930 with the EPA,
16 NPCA documented this survey, including a breakdown by region,
17 which has demonstrated to our satisfaction, a severe shortage
18 of suitable incineration capacity for paint waste streams.
19 This capacity shortage we believe has not been
20 alleviated during this suspension period, and in some cases,
in some areas of the country it has actually worsened.
22 Indeed, during EPA's March 25th, 1981, hearing
23 even witnesses who supported the ban could not testify that
24 the millions of gallons of problem waste of the paint
25 industry can be handled exceot through landfilling for the
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t foreseeable future.
2 Mr. Whiteman, an EPA official, asked and I quote,
3 "Well, the question is, based on your knowledge of walls
4 capacity and other alternative capacities available today,
5 are you able to confidently say that there is adequate
6 capacity to handle the volume that NPCA has spoken about?"
7 Mr. Moon, a representative of the Reliance
s Corporation (phonetic) responded and I quote, "No, I could
9 not possibly comment on that."
10 I might also add we've heard testimony today
again reiterating that there is not sufficient capacity
12 nationwide for disposal of some of the problem waste from
13 our industry.
14 I should mention that some incinerators will
15 accept bulk shipments only. Some cannot handle steel
16 drums, only fiber packed drums. Some cannot handle materials
17 which are non- pump able.
18 These practical limitations make the actual
ig
21
availability of incineration to the industry even less than
20 the extremely limited capacity which Mr. Moon implicitly
recognized in his reply.
. Another major concern of the members of our
23 Association is the method of management of ash and residue
24 by the incinerator operators.
We feel that we must concern ourselves with this
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1 since under super fund we can have liability for improper
2 disposal.
3 Before adopting any rule which would, in effect,
4 require incineration, EPA should guarantee the controls are
5 in place for the disposal of the ash and residues.
6 Finally, given the lack of incineration capacity/
7 any return to a complete ban will force generators to
8 resort to more on-site storage of waste.
9 This situation may, itself, pose a more serious
10 environmental safety and health risks than control land-
11 filling. Many small generators do not have the storage
12 capacity for a large number of drums.
13 These generators are also not in a position to ship
14 in bulk shipments as demanded by qualified incinerators.
15 Because most small generators are not approved with interim
16 status as storers, they would find themselves an unwilling
17 violator of the reckless 90 day storage requirements.
18 In summary:
19 1. EPA acknowledges that many paint wastes
20 exhibit characteristics which render them unacceptable for
21 underground injection or incineration.
22 2. The Booz-Allen report which EPA relies on
23 for incineration canacity data shows large geographical
24 areas without sufficient capacity to burn even those liquid
25 wastes which are suitable for the more common forms of
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incineration.
2 NPCA's more recent study documents the fact that
3 the shortage in capacities are far more severe throughout
4 the United States than even Booz-Allen suggests.
5 I might add that delaying promulgation of final
incineration rules, we believe, has also had a chilling
effect on the development of new incineration capacity.
g 3. The fundamental question EPA must answer before
9 any complete ban on landfilling can be imposed is where the
millions of gallons of liquid waste will go if the only
means currently available for their disposal is cut off.
12 The EPA should immediately, we believe, conduct
13 a comprehensive survey of the incineration industry's
14 capacity to accommodate all liquid waste to determine the
15 true scope of the problem.
16 It is incumbent on the EPA to demonstrate that
17 adequate incineration capacities exist. Otherwise the
18 complete ban on landfilling is arbitrary and unfair and
19 will only incur more legal challenges to the agency's
„- actions.
20
4. The imoosition of a complete ban in the near
future will work a special hardship on small generators
_, who lack storage capacity and in many instances who have
ZO
no alternative but to violate RCRA storage requirements.
The overall ootential for environment ±>use and
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1 mishaps is therefore increased should a ban go into effect.
2 5. We urge the EPA to stand firm and continue
3 the extension until May 16th, 1982. However, if the EPA
4 feels that the continued extension of the compliance date
5 for another 76 days may substantially increase environmental
6 risks, NPCA joins with others to urge that the proposed rule
7 of February 25th, 1982, go into effect immediately in
8 interim final form.
9 NPCA endorses the Agency's belief that minimization
10 of landfill disposal of containerized wastes is a reasonable
11 objective for interim status standards.
12 But real-world constraints must be kept in mind
13 until alternatives to landfilling are readily and reasonably
14 available. The EPA must act prudently to allow necessary
15 landfilling with proper safeguards to protect the public
16 healt!i and safety.
17 Thank you very much.
18 CHAIRMAN DIETRICH: The problem wastes that you
19 list on Page 2 of your statement, high solids, etc., do
20 vou think they would meet a 3 percent rule and a 5 percent
21 rule on an individual container basis as has been suggested
22 by some earlier commenters?
23 MR. WALANSKI: That's a difficult question to
24 answer for this reason, the gentleman — I believe he was
25 from TA. — showed you some containers and one of the problems
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inherent in our waste is space separation. What is 3
percent liquid today may be 4 percent tomorrow, and may be
5 percent the next day.
I think we have concerns about the extractability
of some of these liquids. Again, we're also arguing —
talking about definitions. What is a free liquid? What
is a percentage?
I might also point out that three percent, just
in the rough calculations is about what's allowed in an
10 empty drum based on the one inch rule. So, we'd be allowed
three percent or whatever that turns out to be in terms
12 of gallons in an empty container much less a —
13 CHAIRMAN DIETRICH: It would tend to be an
14 organic material, would it not?
15 MR. WALANSKI: Excuse me?
16 CHAIRMAN DIETRICH: In your rfaste that you're
17 talking about, the liquid would be an organic —
18 MR. WALANSKI: Yes, it would be.
19 CHAIRMAN DIETRICH: Have you had any experience
2Q with a test like the paint filter test that we proposed on
21 February 25th?
22 MR. WALANSKI: I have not, but I have only one
23 thing to report, and it was reported to me, so I don't know
24 if that makes it second-hand or third-hand information —
25
I was told that a survey was conducted and in — in a large
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metropolitan area. And contrary to the Agency's contention
the filters are not readily available. So, this is the
only information I have.
CHAIRMAN DIETRICH: Is there any reason why the
wastes could not be put into fiber packed drums, meeting
DOT specifications, which would eliminate one of the problems
that you cited in moving them to an incinerator and getting
them incinerated.
MR. WALANSKI: It's my understanding and let me
go — I'm an in-house person who tries to help our plants—
I've been asked the question many times, what can I ship
in? And I've done some research on it. I hope I'm giving
you the write answer.
It's my understanding that if the material has
a flashpoint of less than 73 degrees, it must be packed in
a 17HE — the other one escapes me — there are only three
drums which are approved for any material which has a
flashpoint of 73 degrees that would not include a fiber
packed drum.
I would be helpful on those areas where we can
have — where we do ignitable waste with a flashpoint greater
than 73 degrees.
MR. BRAND: If the ban had stayed in effect, what
were you planning to do with all that waste?
MR. WALANSKI: I believe we made some comments to--
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to what we believe will happen.
We are a diverse industry and we are scattered
throughout the United States. We are composed of big people
and little people and I can't tell you what all of the 900
companies are going to do.
Some of the larger companies may go to extremes
in terms of capital investment, to put in some equipment
if they're able to do that under the regulations.
Smaller people, perhaps, will store as we've
10 said in our testimony and kind of hope for the best and
11 hope that something will come out in the next three or four
12 months.
13 I know a paint company that has stored waste on
14 cite for one year, and there were just drums everywhere
15 because they were looking for an alternative, and this
16 happened to pre-date the RCRA regulations. These were
17 state regulations that they were trying to comply with.
18 So, I think — it's difficult to generalize because
19 of the diversity of our industry. I think it's fair to say
20 that we are — everyone will have problems, depending on
21 location, the amount of waste they produce, the type of
22 waste they produce.
23 We may be sitting next to a Rollins (ohonetic)
24 incinerator in one of our paint nlants. We have no problem
25 should the ban continue in effect.
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CHAIRMAN DIETRICH: Somebody in the audience asked
a question, can paint waste be solidified.
MR. WALAMSKI: Solidification is our — is a
technique which has a very attractive feature to it and we
have looked at solidification of paint wastes — at some
paint waste.
The one material which we did look at — I don't
recall the brand name — had a curious aspect to it. We
could solidify a paint waste. In this case it was an
aqueious paint waste.
And in about three days the materials de-solidified
which has a curious twist to it. It could be solid when it
goes to the landfill and can be completely de-solidified
when it's — I think there are some technologies for
providing — for taking out the organic materials — for
example, some recovery techniques.
Actually, our form of solidification, that is
your taking out the volatile fractions or the less viscous
fractions — what remains behind is the viscious material.
But by and large I don't ?cnow the technique which
we can just buy in the form of a black box and test every
paint plant and provide a solid material, no, I don't think
that exists.
CHAIRMAN DIETRICH: To some extent, I'm left
with the impression that a lot of your problem wastes would
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probably appear to be basically not having free liquids
in them. And, therefore, at least pretty much meeting the
goal that a number of people that I've talked to. Is that
a true impression?
MR. WALANSKI: I think there are some wastes which
might. But there are other wastes which are problems because
of face separation.
8 CHAIRMAN DIETRICH: And, so, you get 10 or so
9 percent or more?
10 MR. WALANSKI: Perhaps, yes
CHAIRMAN DIETRICH: Okay, thank you very much.
12 MR. WALANSKI: Thank you for your time.
13 CHAIRMAN DIETRICH: Mr. Ernest Norman, Corporate
14 Counsel for CECOS International.
15 . STATEMENT OF ERNEST NORMAN
16 MR. NORMAN: My name is Ernest Norman and I'm
17 the corporate attorney for CECOS International. And I
13 have a prepared statement I'd like to read. It's not too
19 long. So, if you bear with me.
20 CECOS is a chemical and industrial waste manage-
21 ment firm with operations in Niagara Falls, New York, and
22 Williamsburg, Ohio.
23 I'm here today to express CECOS' concern and
24 opposition to the resuming of the ban on land burial of
25 liquid chemical wastes.
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i In this regard, our concerns are based primarily
2 on environmental, technical and business development
3 reasons.
4 First as to the environmental and technical
5 considerations: in essence, there are four basic environ-
6 mental and technical reasons for CECOS* to the land burial
7 of liquid chemical waste.
8 First of all, deposited liquid waste materials
9 are usually in a highly mobile state and possess the
10 potential for migration beyond the confines of their
11 disposal point into other ares of the land burial facility.
12 This migration and co-mingling of waste
13 materials placed in a land burial facility could precipitate
14 undesirable reaction. These reactions would most likely not
15 occur until degradation of the drum occurred and after the
16 facility was closed, which was at the time that the drum
17 degradation most likely occurred.
18 Reactions after closure would, therefore, be
19 very difficult to detect and control.
20 Our second reason is that many liquid materials
2i which are land buried are known to have adverse reactions
22 on clay and synthetic liner systems. Possible effects
23 includes changes in physical properties of the liners, that
24 is changes in the liner structure and the permeability
25 characteristics.
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1 These physical changes may lead to the structural
2 degradation of the liners. Changes in either the structure
3 or permeability of the liners will reduce the containment
4 capability of the land burial facility and increase the
5 likelihood of migration of the landfill contents into the
6 surrounding environment.
7 Thirdly, if the undersirable reactions described
8 in number one referenced earlier occur they could produce
9 a leachate which is extremely difficult to treat.
10 Constituent interactions may also produce unde-
11 sirable gases which could migrate into the environment or
12 accumulate in the facility.
13 Four, as the deposited drums degrade, void spaces
I4 will be formed in the land burial facility. Since this drum
15 degradation is most likely to occur after the facility .
16 has been closed, the possibility exists that major subsidence
17 threatens the structural integrity of the facility.
18 Even more problematic, because of the difficulty
19 of detection, are cases of minor subsidence which may cause
20 small cracks in the land facility. These cracks may also
21 allow more precipitation to enter into the facility and
22 increase the quantity and formation of the leachate.
23 In contrast to the above, CECOS disposes of waste
24 materials that are essentially in solid form. The only
25 exception to this standard is that such waste may contain
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a liquid content which is not in excess of five percent of
the volume.
When CSCOS receives wastes that have an excess
liquid content above the five percent level, it follows
certain set procedures in order to reduce the liquid level
to the five percent volume or less.
These procedures include pumping off any excess
liquids for further treatment in our wastewater treatment
facility and/or adding certain absorbant or reagent
materials which will solidify any excess liquids.
In the event that any of the pumped off wastes
contain organic liquids with BTU fuel value, CECOS will send
these wastes to either recycling or incineration facilities
for further treatment or disposal.
In addition to these initial procedures, CECOS also
takes special care in disposing theri wastes by placing it
into segregated cells in our secure chemical management
facility.
We do this in order to avoide any possibility of
adverse interaction.
We have five main sub-cells which include areas
for heavy metals, pseudometals, general, flammable and
toxic sub-cells.
In addition to those procedures that I noted
earlier, we also place special covers over waste containers
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which will further prevent and minimize any waste inter-
actions which might subsequently occur after placement of
the drums. These would include items such as lime, hydrated,
ferrous sulfides, calcium carbonate, among others.
Besides the technical and environmental reasons,
we also have certain very basic business considerations
that we'd like to speak to.
Besides those points that I above-raised, we feel
that the land burial -- lifting of the ban on land burial
liquids resulted in adverse economic pressures which could
negatively affect our efforts to move towards new disposal
technologies and away from pure land burial, as it is known
today.
Specifically, waste management companies in
states which regulate waste disposal by Federal
standards, that is allowing the disposal of liquids in land,
fills, would be able to offer lower disposal prices than
companies in states with stricter standards.
This puts environmentally responsible companies
at a competitive disadvantage since the disposal of liquids
in landfills is usually significantly less expansive than
the proper pre-treatment of solidification of the liquids
as it is done in the manner of CECOS' — as CECOS has done
as previously stated.
Although many waste management companies have
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CHAIRMAN DIETRICH: Somebody in the audience asked
a question, can paint waste be solidified.
MR. WALANSKI: Solidification is our — is a
technique which has a very attractive feature to it and we
have looked at solidification of paint wastes — at some
paint waste.
The one material which we did look at — I don't
recall the brand name — had a curious aspect to it. We
could solidify a paint waste. In this case it was an
aqueious paint waste.
And in about three days the materials de-solidified
which has a curious twist to it. It could be solid when it
goes to the landfill and can be completely de-solidified
when it's — I think there are some technologies for
providing — for taking out the organic materials — for
example, some recovery techniques.
Actually, our form of solidification, that is
your taking out the volatile fractions or the less viscous
fractions — what remains behind is the viscious material.
But by and large I don't know the technique which
we can just buy in the form of a black box and test every
paint plant and provide a solid material, no, I don't think
that exists.
CKAIRMAM DIETRICH: To some extent, I'm left
with the impression that a lot of your problem wastes would
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which will further prevent and minimize any waste inter-
actions which might subsequently occur after placement of
the drums. These would include items such as lime, hydrated,
ferrous sulfides, calcium carbonate, among others.
Besides the technical and environmental reasons,
we also have certain very basic business considerations
that we'd like to speak to.
Besides those points that I above-raised, we feel
that the land burial -- lifting of the ban on land burial
liquids resulted in adverse economic pressures which could
negatively affect our efforts to move towards new disposal
technologies and away from pure land burial, as it is known
today.
Specifically, waste management companies in
states which regulate waste disposal by Federal
standards, that is allowing the disposal of liquids in land,
fills, would be able to offer lower disposal prices than
companies in states with stricter standards.
This nuts environmentally responsible companies
at a competitive disadvantage since the disposal of liquids
in landfills is usually significantly less expensive than
the proper pre-treatment of solidification of the liquids
as it is done in the manner of CECOS1 — as CECOS has done
as previously stated.
Although many waste management companies have
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J . In this regard, our concerns are based primarily
2 on environmental, technical and business development
3 reasons.
4 First as to the environmental and technical
5 considerations: in essence, there are four basic environ-
6 mental and technical reasons for CECOS* to the land burial
7 of liquid chemical waste.
8 First of all, deposited liquid waste materials
9 are usually in a highly mobile state and possess the
10 potential for migration beyond the confines of their
11 disposal point into other ares of the land burial facility.
12 This migration and co-mingling of waste
13 materials placed in a land burial facility could precipitate
14 undesirable reaction. These reactions would most likely not
15 occur until degradation of the drum occurred and after the
16 facility was closed, which was at the time that the drum
17 degradation most likely occurred.
18 Reactions after closure would, therefore, be
19 very difficult to detect and control.
20 Our second reason is that many liquid materials
21 which are land buried are known to have adverse reactions
22 on clay and synthetic liner systems. Possible effects
23 includes changes in physical properties of the liners, that
24 is changes in the liner structure and the permeability
25 characteristics.
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which will further prevent and minimize any waste inter-
actions which might subsequently occur after placement of
the drums. These would include items such as lime, hydrated,
ferrous sulfides, calcium carbonate, among others.
Besides the technical and environmental reasons,
we also have certain very basic business considerations
that we'd like to speak to.
Besides those points that I above-raised, we feel
that the land burial -- lifting of the ban on land burial
liquids resulted in adverse economic pressures which could
negatively affect our efforts to move towards new disposal
technologies and away from pure land burial, as it is known
today.
Specifically, waste management companies in
states which regulate waste disposal by Federal
standards, that is allowing the disposal of liquids in land,
fills, would be able to offer lower disposal prices than
companies in states with stricter standards.
This outs environmentally responsible companies
at a competitive disadvantage since the disposal of liquids
in landfills is usually significantly less expensive than
the proper pre-treatment of solidification of the liquids
as it is done in the manner of CECOS' — as CECOS has done
as previously stated.
Although many waste management companies have
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a liquid content which is not in excess of five percent of
the volume.
When CECOS receives wastes that have an excess
liquid content above the five percent level, it follows
certain set procedures in order to reduce the liquid level
to the five percent volume or less.
These procedures include pumping off any excess
liquids for further treatment in our wastewater treatment
facility and/or adding certain absorbant or reagent
materials which will solidify any excess liquids.
In the event that any of the pumped off wastes
contain organic liquids with BTU fuel value, CECOS will send
these wastes to either recycling or incineration facilities
for further treatment or disposal.
In addition to these initial procedures, CECOS also
takes special care in disposing theri wastes by placing it
into segregated cells in our secure chemical management
facility.
We do this in order to avoide any possibility of
adverse interaction.
We have five main sub-cells which include areas
for heavy metals, pseudometalsy general, flammable and
toxic sub-cells.
In addition to those procedures that I noted
earlier, we also place special covers over waste containers
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which will further prevent and minimize any waste inter-
actions which might subsequently occur after placement of
the drums. These would include items such as lime, hydrated,
ferrous sulfides, calcium carbonate, among others.
Besides the technical and environmental reasons,
we also have certain very basic business considerations
that we'd like to speak to.
Besides those points that I above-raised, we feel
that the land burial -- lifting of the ban on land burial
liquids resulted in adverse economic pressures which could
negatively affect our efforts to move towards new disposal
technologies and away from pure land burial, as it is known
today.
Specifically, waste management companies in
states which regulate waste disposal by Federal
standards, that is allowing the disposal of liquids in land,
fills, would be able to offer lower disposal prices than
companies in states with stricter standards.
This puts environmentally responsible companies
at a competitive disadvantage since the disposal of liquids
in landfills is usually significantly less expensive than
the proper pre-treatment of solidification of the liquids
as it is done in the manner of CECOS' — as CECOS has done
as previously stated.
Although many waste management companies have
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begun programs which seek to develop new technologies for
the treatment of chemical wastes, no company in this country
has made a more comprehensive financial and technical
commitment to such advanced technologies as ours.
At our Niagara Falls facility alone, we have made
a $55 million commitment over the next 10 years for the
implementation of 16 specific waste treatment technologies
over the period I mentioned.
In spite of the fact that these technologies require
significant development expenditures by disposal firms, as
well as increased disposal costs for generators, there
presently exists very little incentive for industry to move
towards high technology disposal under the present regulatory
framework.
The lifting of the ban on liquids in landfills
will only exacerbate that situation further. To illustrate
this point, for example, let's consider the average present
disposal costs for liquid chlorinated hydrocarbon wastes.
These average disposal costs are as follox^s:
Between 2.5 to 5C per pound as a liquid into a
landfill.
Between 3.5 to 11* per pound as a solidified
liquid into a landfill.
35 to 40
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1 50 to 60* per pound for PCB's into an
2 incinerator,
3 Although, over the short term CECOS remains
committed to the high technology we are seeking, it is not
unreasonable to assume that over the long term the economic
impact will be such that companies like ours will be forced
to reconsider its treatment of disposal choices in serving
its markets needs, when generators in all likelihood will
seek the cheapest disposal option available to them.
10 CECOS has made a firm and realistic commitment
11 to environmentally and economically sound waste disposal
12 method and management practices. We ask that the
13 Environmental Protection Agency reassess and withdraw their
14 full rescinding of the ban on the land disposal of liquid
15 chemical wastes.
16 Thank you. If you have any questions?
17 MR. PEDERSON: Yes. At your landfill facility
18 do you accept drums?
19 MR. NORMAN: Yes, we do.
20 MR. PEDERSON: Do you open all the drums?
21 MR. NORMAN: Yes, we do.
22 MR. PEDERSON: How do you determine whether a
23 drum has 5 percent or — more or less of liquid in it?
24 MR. NORMAN: If the drum has any liquid in it,
25 we, if it's appropriate, we'll drain or pump out the fluid, if
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it can be put in through our wastewater treatment facility,
or if it could be sent to another location for solvent
recovery, etc.
If it's something that we can't do that with,
we put in a — reagents or absorbant materials. It doesn't
matter whether it's 5 percent — we strive to have a full
solid rather than try to quantify it between 5 percent or
10 percent.
MR. PEDERSON: The question I'm getting at is
there have been statements that there are difficulties in
testing to make sure how much liquid is in a drum.
And you had said that you had a cut-off point of
5 percent. Now, your answer, I take it, is you really don't
worry too much about that, you just and try to get the free
liquids down as far as you can?
MR. NORMAN: Well, the 5 percent I mentioned is
a permanent requirement that we have with the State of
New York. And we have that as our guidelines. We don't
try to limit it to the 5 percent content. We try to solidify
it to the full extent.
And I think the 5 percent guideline is nothing
raore than an attempt not to require us to have a 100 percent
standard which might not be reasonably or physically
attainable in every instance.
CIIARIMAN DIETRICH: But it's mostly by observation,
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right?
MR. NORMAN: It's done by physical examination.
The drums are opened. They're examined.
CHAIRMAN DIETRICH: But you don't — you don't always
take a sample and put it on in New York's plain test
(phonetic) do you?
MR. NORMAN: No, we don't. Again, as I mentioned
earlier today, a physical observation is usually sufficient
to determine whether or not there are any liquids, and if
there are, we will add solidification materials or reagents
to solidify it.
CHAIRMAN DIETRICH: Do you open every drum?
If a truckload comes in and it's manifested showing •— the
manifest shows that it's typically all the same waste —
MR. NORMAN: Our operating procedures call for
opening up every drum and examining it.
CHAIRMAN DIETRICH: Do you have to have any
safety —
MR. NORMAN: Yes, we do. That's determined by
the nature of the material that's coining in. We have
various safety procedures and equipment used by the people
who are doing this at the site.
It is done in the confines of the landfill and
we've had no incidents of any problems of any major natures
with the drums causing a problem for those individuals who
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1 || opened them up.
2 II CHAIRMAN DIETRICH: The safety is what, wearing
3 masks —
4 MR. NORMAN: We could have either a full rubber
5 I' suit with an airpack or an airmask, rubber gloves, rubber
6 || boots. It depends on what the nature of the material is.
CHAIRMAN DIETRICH: What percentage of your
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containers do you have to apply those sophisticated safety
precautions to?
MR. NORMAN: Well, you're asking a technical
question which I could obtain the information for your but
I don't have it. I don't know it offhand.
MR. PEDERSON: Suppose that EPA were to adopt the
proposed maximum 25 percent rule, in your opinion would that
have the effect of decreasing the amount of containerized
liquids at landfills compared with the situation of no
regulation?
MR. NORMAN: I can offer you no credible comment
on that. I really do not have any estimate.
CHAIRMAN DIETRICH: Thank you.
MR. NORMAN: Thank you.
CHAIRMAN DIETRICH: We have several speakers from
the Maryland Waste Coalition. The first is Ms. Mary Rosso.
STATEMENT OF MARY ROSSO
MS. ROSSO: I'm Mary Rosso. I'm from the Maryland
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Waste Coalition. Unfortunately, Mr. Antione (phonetic) is
not here, but he did refer to some citizens who would be
very unahppy if this went into effect, and some of those
citizens are here today from Maryland.
It was actually 10 of us that started out on a
little but and two of them had to leave. So, we're still
here watching and listening.
Unfortunately, some of the gentlemen who appeared
earlier — I had some questions for them. I. wonder —
I wanted to say Mr. Fetter is not here. And Mr. Vardy.
And I think it's an insult to the intelligence of the
citizens all over that are aware of hazardous waste problems
that we don't know the difference between restrict and
ban.
And I think that they have a tendency to sell
the citizens short in many cases thinking we don't know what
hazardous waste is.
Believe me, the citizens out know what it is and
the citizens who are here today are people who live near a
hazardous waste facility, the only one in the state that's
allowed to take hazardous waste at this point and is up for
a permit.
And we've had some problems with that landfill.
Mr. Eishbaum has been very good recently helping us with it.
At any rate, we're here to make a public statement.
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The Maryland Waste Coalition is here to protest the EPA's
decision to lift the ban on liquid chemical dumping in
landfills. We know that liquids leach more readily than
sludges and recognize the increased hazards that this
directive will present to all citizens.
Our state regulations do not permit liquid
dumping. And even though these regulations will still apply
for our state, we know that the economic gains will be an
incentive for the present company now operating our only
hazardous waste landfill, Browning and Fair (Phonetic) to
challenge our state law, and this could cost our State of
Maryland and many citizens tax dollars, not only in court
proceedings, but in environmental damage. -
We respectfully request that this committee
restore this ban and also the Maryland Conservation Council
which is a member of our group just wishes to state they're
an umbrella group representing over 30,000 individuals in
Maryland.
They are opposed to any relaxation of EPA
regulations concerning hazardous waste landfills . In additior
we fsel that the disposal of liquid hazardous waste should —
more compounds the existing contamination problems associated
with so-called secure hazardous waste facilities.
And it — would it be okay if I ask a question,
olease.
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1 CHAIRMAN DIETRICH: Okay.
2 MS. ROSSO: We keep hearing about drums. Was
the questioned raised why they have to be put in drums all
the time? They keep saying it has to be put in drums.
CHAIRMAN DIETRICH: I believe a lot of the small
companies produce — they're medium sized companies and it's
hard to manage their waste in bulk form. It's more
8 convenient and more practical to ship their waste in tons.
9 MR. PEDERSON: But if you don't ship it in bulk,
10 the Department of Transportation makes you use a drum.
11 MS. ROSSO: Well, we kept hearing that. And also
12 we just want to mention that necessity is the mother of
13 invention. And I think it was Mr. Walanski that said about
14 the little black box, and I think we have to do this.
15 if you permit this to happen, we're never going
16 to find a solution to the problem,
17 Thank you.
18 CHAIRMAN DIETRICH: Were there others from your
19 coalition?
20 MS. ROSSO: Ye»sf Mrs. Vitek and Mr. Bellinger.
21 ' MR. BELLINGER: I will take about a minute and a
22 half and mine will be different than the rest of them.
23 STATEMENT OF LEWIS BELLINGER
24 MR. BELLINGER: I've heard enough technology today
25 to last a lifetime.
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(Laughter.)
My name is Lewis Bellinger. And my father was
a supervisor in a landfill in upstate New York. And I
worked for him when I came out of the service.
And I'll tell you it's a disgrace to stand here
and see people put things down on this counter and look
at things — for one thing, those drums would not stay in
place 10 minutes, with a bulldozer going over them. Anybody
in their right mind would know that.
Now, another thing, have any of you people ever
been in a hole 70 feet deep with rubber gloves and rubber
boots on? Well, I have. And I'll tell you, when it rains,
you got to go down there and pump it out before you can
put the waste in.
Now, you have to pump it out in ponds. Now,
what you're — if you're going to put liquid waste in there,
and you pump the water and the leach pond, what are you
going to do, take the leach pond and pump it back in the
dump after you get through. Because that is what is going
to happen.
If you're going to put liquid waste in a dump,
you already got water in there to start with every time
it rains. And that is the thing — I think some people are
real stupid un here today.
They've been talking all the technology, but I
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don't think there's one of them that's ever been down in a
70 foot hole. And I have been down in plenty 70 foot holes.
And I have worked where there's a lumbermill and I've worked
in it.
There's chrome, there's formaldehyde, there's lime,
you name it, they got it. There's 41 operations. And I'll
tell you they dump it all in one place. They don't even
consider it hazardous.
Years ago chrome was not considered hazardous.
10 My father died of cancer. And I figured he was 10 years
11 the supervisor of a landfill and that's what caused his
12 death.
13 But that's what you've got. And _today I live
14 three-quarters of a mile — I come from New York down here
15 and I live three-quarters of a mile from a hazardous waste
16 landfill on one side and a mile and a half on the other
17 side.
18 Now, if we don't get a nice cross-wind, the smell,
19 I guarantee you it's something. And now they want to put
20 a garbage dump another half a mile away.
21 If you listened to the Love Canal, you know
22 that leach got in the water, but where they got the hazardous
23 waste over there, they got two water pipes going within a
24 16th of a mile, it feeds Baltimore, it feeds Annapolis, it
25 feeds all the communities in the Northern of Ann Arundel
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County.
Now, they, want to put liquid waste in. The
pressure acquafeed (ph.) is 100 feet under the ground. And
you let Browning and Fair go 75 feet in the ground to start
a hazardous waste — which leaves you 20 feet.
Now, you go up 55 feet, that's a standard law
in Maryland. How much feet does that give you. All these
people that got wells. Nobody has tested them. The EPA
won't even come out.
They closed Browning and Fair because it contami-
nated the ground on Quarantine Road where they used to have
the quarantined people come in. Now it's contaminated.
They've closed. They don't know what to do, and yet they
want it for another hazardous waste dump there, because
they got so much.
I heard a lot of people snicker in the back
when I was sitting there when they said we have the largest
harzardous waste facility on the Eastern Seaboard.
I sit in my house. I'm retired now and I can
watch them come in from Maine, New Jersey, Pennsylvania,
New York, Delaware, they come in and dump there because
Browning and Fair is in 33 states and that's their biggest
hazardous waste dump on the Eastern Seaboard.
They bring drums in there. That truck goes in
ani 15 minutes later it's out. Do you think they place
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drums on top of one another. No. They pick them up and
roll them down the hill because that's the only way they
can get them in a landfill.
When that guy out that thing here, it was terrible.
It was a disgrace. Anybody in his right mind would know that
you can't put drums in like that. The minute you go over
them with a 10 ton bulldozer, bang, they're busted and
you go-t your liquid waste right back in there where it
9 started from.
10 Thank you.
11 CHAIRMAN DIETRICH: Thank you. Carol Vitek?
12 STATEMENT OF CAROL VITEK
13 MS. VITEK: My name is Carol Vitek and I represent
14 the United Council of Civic Associations in Ann Arundel
15 County. I'm also with the Maryland Waste Coalition.
16 We do live within a half a mile of the dump
17 and I wish Mr. Fetter was here, because he's the only one I've
18 ever heard say that that was a beautiful dump. And I'm
sure that Browning and Fair belong to the National Waste
20 Management group.
21 And I can tell you living near that dump, it's
22 probably the worst dump. And it's not a landfill, but it's
23 considered a landfill. And it's terrible. Our soile is
24 contaminated. And the only time we knew about our soil
25 being contaminated was when the snow turned green and I
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think that's a well-organized, secure landfill for you.
Anyhow, listening to some comments made up here
and I'd like to kind of make some comments back.
If you permit, as you claim, 25 percent, or
shall we permit diminutive amounts, any time you permit
by permit — allow this to happen, there are going to be
people that will go over that percentage.
If you ban it, then if you're going to get the
diminutive things, you've got some control over what you're
taking in. But you give them a 25 percent limit and you
know they're going to get 50 percent. And that's been
our problem.
And I can guarantee you that the citizens will
never ever let you place a facility if we've got to take
liquid waste.
In Maryland, we're just starting to address
the problem. They have convinced us in Maryland that we
do need landfills. There are some chemicals that have to
landfilled. If you put liquid waste in those, you'll never
get a site, because people will violently opoose them, and
they will stand there.
I know for myself I have been convinced by the
Booz-Allen report and the Little report that there are
chemicals that have to be landfilled and I'll accept that
as long as it's secure. As long as we thought we've had —
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1 if the state wasn't enforcing our laws that the EPA was.
2 The EPA isn't doing their job. Number one, they're cutting
3 the budget. Number two, you've taken away the RCRA act
4 that we've waited years for implementation of that.
5 I think it's an absolute criminal intent to hurt
6 the citizens of this state and this country. And I think
7 it's unconscionable that you would do something like that.
8 The citizens have waited a long time for the RCRA
9 to be implemented. What has happend before this Act is
10 fully implemented — this Agency's function is to protect
11 the environment. It is now permitting liquid hazardous
12 waste to be dumped in landfills.
13 I as a citizen find this decision close to a
14 criminal act against the citizens.
15 Previous testimony has already been — has
16 already discussed the problems and the risks this directive
17 will have on our health and environment.
18 Hazardous waste landfills in Maryland are existing.
19 'VJe already have existing what they call solid waste land-
20 fills, then they were giving permits to nut hazardous
21 waste landfills in.
22 Thesa facilities as the Browning and Fair solid
23 waste are situated near bodies of water. Both of our
24 landfills are situated — both of them on the tributaries
25 of the Chesapeake Bay.
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1 We have had leachate. They're going right into
2 those tributaries. We have had soil contamination, and we
3 have had opssible contamination to our ground water.
4 j It appears that no one is sure exactly how hazardous
5 waste landfills are supposed to be designed, since those
6 that supposedly meet regulations and criteria, we are still
7 have huge problems with containment.
8 Sure we have clay liners, etc., but we are
9 also — it is cracked and it also erodes. You can hit
10 sand lenses (phonetic) and here again there are no
11 regulations on how to patch sand lenses.
12 And if we allow industry to patch them, which we
13 don't know what's going to happen to those patches — and
14 once you have a sand lense you're going to have the liquid
15 go out into the groundx^ater.
16 It was under the Republican Administration that
17 wo ended up with the EPA. It is now under the Republican
18 Administration that you are trying to tell the citizens of
19 this country we're not concerned or you're going to ignore
20 the facts.
2i Maryland has — Mr. Eishbaum started to address
22 the disposal of hazardous waste. And we're taking steps to
23 protect our health and safety, yet, we as citizens thought —
24 we need EPA, not just for our state, but if we in Maryland
25 ara going to address the hazardous waste problems, vhat if
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Virginia doesnt? What if Delaware doesn't? We've
accomplished absolutely nothing unless we have a national
policy that each state has to address that problem and do
it in an environmentally safe way, because you can't get
back your drinking water once it's destroyed.
I find the action by this present Administration —
Republican Administration and the Director of EPA certainly
not in the best interest of the citizens or the environment.
Industry can find ways to detoxify, but as long
10 as the EPA is going to allow them to dump cheaply into
11 landfills, they will never find a way to detoxify this
12 thing.
13 And I think the man from IT said, there's probably
a way to detoxify all hazardous waste except you let them
15 in landfills they're never going to put in the money to
16 detoxify.
17 Thank you.
18 CHAIRMAN DIETRICH: Thank you. Is Mr. Ambrose
19 Kelly here?
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Statement of Ambrose B. Kelly
MR. KELLY: Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank all
of you who have been here all day. I will be as brief, as mud
as possible. I represent an association of insurance
companies which is starting to write pollution liability
insurance.
We oppose the lifting of the ban in this case for
one very simple reason, and I can't put it in less than thirty
seconds. We feel that a landfill which has had liquid wastes
put into it is a greater hazard than one that has not.
Since we are interested in reducing hazards when
we're writing insurance, we are in favor of the procedure
and the technique which will give us the lowest test. It is
for this reason that my Association supports the continuation
of the ban on the disposal of liquid waste in landfills.
I won't go into any of the technical things.
Thank you for listening.
CHAIRMAN DIETRICH: Thank you very much. Is Bruce
Molholt here?
DR. MOLHOLT: Yes.
CHAIRMAN DIETRICH: Bruce is with the Delaware
[Valley Toxics Coalition.
Statement of Dr. Bruce Molholt
DR. MOLHOLT: I will certainly honor the tenet of
the previous speakers and try to make this very brief.
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As was said, my name is Bruce Molholt. I'm a
Ph.D, I am Director for the Center for Environmental Health
in Philadelphia, and I'm here representing the Delaware Valley
Toxics Coalition which is a coalition of two dozens environ-
mental, labor, and citizen action groups in Philadelphia.
Their primary concern is with the contamination
of the Delaware River and of different aquifers within the
Delaware Valley Region, primarily by hazardous wastes.
Just a brief word about my background — I came to
the Director of the Center for Environmental Health position
from 15 years of teaching in graduate schools and medical
schools and doing research into molecular genetics and into
the basis of cancer. This is why I have a.professional
concern with the involvement of toxics.
I'd like to just briefly go over two reasons that
both my organization and myself are opposing the rescission
of the ban- at present, and we would like to see the ban
in toto reinstated.
First of all, I believe the Chairman, Gary Dietrich
here today, earlier expressed that we should consider the
health hazards of permanently allowing 25 percent liquid waste
to be put back into landfills. So, I will be considering
that in a little detail; it will probably take about five
minutes.
I would like to say that the reason we are so
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opposed to the lifting of the ban on dumping is because first
of all, the constituency groups — I've talked to many of
them through the Delaware Valley Toxics Coalition — are
already concerned that there has been a lot of water over the
dam since the ban was lifted on February 18th.
I don't know if you'd call it so much water over
the dam or leachate over the retainer. We urge that the ban
be made permanent immediately.
We join with many other groups such as you heard
earlier from the State of New York in the banning of all
liquid and commercial landfills. We agree with the banning
of all hazardous wastes in landfills, as stated by California,
and you've heard several other people — Mr. Eichbaum today
from Maryland. You've heard some people from other areas of
the country in which they ban either on a State-wide basis
or a Region-wide basis the bearing of hazardous wastes either
in liquid form or in solid form in some cases, in their
commercial landfills.
We have become impressed that alternate technologies
are available. These are not only alternate technologies for
the qualitative handling of different kinds of wastes, but
also for handling the quantities of wastes.
The capacity is there, and we think it ought to
be implemented. This morning, for those of you who have
stayed the entire day, there was a raging argument between two
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xperts, arguing whether the 55-gallon drums would decay first
or the retainers would decay first; which would happen?
Would you have corrosion of the drum before the
liner gives out or will the liner give out before the
corrosion of the drums? I don't care which one happens first.
In either case, the loser of that argument is the
public, so we feel that any attempt right now — and it's
going on right now, of course — to put these liquid wastes in
drum form, with or without a retainer; the fact that there
won't be a stiff retainer requirement; the fact that it won't
be a leachate collection requirement in the EPA proposal in
the future makes the situation that much worse. We feel
that this is not in the best interest of the public whatsoever
Hazardous wastes in landfills, in liquid form,
are just time bombs. We are just putting off the necessity
for cleanup until sometime in the future. These are stable
compounds — heavy metals, chlorinated hydrocarbons. You know
that these do not atrophy in the environment and they will be
there to face us again at some time in the future, likely in
a more diffuse form, likely in a very expensive form to clean
up.
The only sanity is to detoxify every material before
it is disposed of, and the technologies do exist. Now, I'd
like to spend just a few moments on a situation that has shown
the folly of such practices in the past.
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We haven't had much example in terms of a scientific
assessment, and I'd just like to spend a few moments on a
scientific assessment recently done in cooperation with the
EPA as to the toxics inventory which has gone into the
Cohancy (phonetic) Aquifer which is in the Eastern part of
New Jersey from a hazardous waste site called Price's Pit.
First of all, Price's Pit was a gravel and sand
pit up until about 1968 when it was turned over to a brother
in the family for a commercial landfill. The commercial
landfill operation occurred for about two years, at which time
apparently, with State complicity, toxic chemicals were dumped
on the site.
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In 1971 and 1972, nine million gallons of toxic
chemicals were put into the Price's Pit landfill. Ten years
later, now here's the situation. There are, in that Cohancy
Aquifer, which is moving toward Atlantic City and which is
the source for thirteen public wells for Atlantic City,
there are now eleven toxic chemicals in very high concentra-
tions, nine of which are carcinogens.
I will only read you the concentrations in terms of
parts per billion for the first three of this; that is,
I Benzene is there in 7,900 parts per billion; dichloroethane is
there in 128,000 parts per billion; and dichloroethylene is
there at 3,000 parts per billion. Those are on the down-
gradient side of the Price's Pit landfill moving toward
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Atlantic City. We know that the front of that edge, the
contaminated aquifer edge, has reached the first of the public
wells now, feeding Atlantic City. Four of the public wells
out of the thirteen are directly in the plume path from the
pit and, as you may know, Atlantic City not only feeds
40,000 people that are permanent residents there, but because
of the casinos and because of the industry for tourism there
are populations that run up between 15 and twenty million per
year that consume that water supply.
If one takes the ambient water criteria and applies
those criteria to the contaminants of the aquifer "as could
be intercepting the four public wells and if one assumes just
for the worst offenders, the four leading carcinogens of that
list, and one calculates how many people would contract cancer
from drinking that contaminated water, you find that fully
one-fourth of the people in their lifetime could contract
cancer from that source of pollution alone.
I believe that this is an adequate symbol of what
can happen when liquid hazardous wastes are placed improperly
into a landfill; that at some time in the future, and in the
Price's Pit case it was only ten years, you may have to pay
the price for that.
The price of the clean-up now, of course, is
absolutely immense; there are not funds available.
Thank you.
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CHAIRMAN DIETRICH: Thank you. Last but not least
is Donald Carruth, President of the American Eagle Foundation
of Chevy Chase, Maryland.
Statement of Mr. Donald Carruth
MR. CARRUTH: I thank you for the privilege of
allowing me to comment on several of the other comments.
I want you to know that the American Eagle Founda-
tion is a national encironmental organization. I left the
federal government after 33^ years to create an environmental
organization to help do the things we couldn't do in the
government because of the red tape.
I was, for about ten-and-a-half years, the Chief
Management Staff Officer to the Director of the old Bureau of
Commercial Fisheries, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, now
known as the National Marine Fisheries Service under NOAA
and Commerce.
There are a few points here that I'd like to raise
over and above what has been raised. Number one, I would like
to state to begin with that I was very much involved — our
foundation was — on the closing of the chemical landfill on
St. Stephen's Church Road right outside of Annapolis, right
over the Magathey Aquifer.
I've never seen so much red tape in my life in
trying to get something done in the State plus trying to get
the federal government interested in what was happening to a
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bunch of people that really just finally banded together and
said look, we're going to raise all kinds of Cain to get this
thing stopped. They finally did; it was like Al Capone. They
couldn't get him for shooting people, but they got him on an
income tax evasion charge and put him in jail.
That's the same way it happened in Anne Arrundel
County. Let me read you — oh, I forgot to tell you, too,
that for about five and a half years, I served as Charter
President of the National Foundation for Cancer Research.
I helped establish cancer research laboratories in
the United States and overseas. At the last count, we had
32 laboratories, most of which are in this country; all but
one are affiliated with very prestigious universities in
Sydney, Australia and Japan and we even have one back of the
Iron Curtain in Czchekoslovakia.
My point being, I like to approach this situation
from not only the reprehensible dumping of hazardous and
toxic chemical wastes into landfills which even the State
of Maryland, their chief hydrologist said, "If I was to chose
a landfill in the whole State of Maryland, the last place I
would chose would be the Beam Joy (phonetic) landfill because
of the geologic structure of the land".
It was strictly a political set-up and it's
surprising how an elected delegate on the one hand should be
representing the people of Anne Arrundel County and yet he
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turns around and represents Beam and Joy, the people that
are dumping all of this crud in the landfill.
I would like to read to you a very short statement.
I'll give you this statement as my prepared statement, but I
want to comment in addition.
This is a statement that I prepared and gave to
quite an interagency assembly on May 13th of this year. It
was before the Inter-Agency Collaborative Group on Environment
al Carcinogens and that is chaired by a Dr. Herman Herdell
(phonetic) who is an assistant to the director of the
National Cancer Institute.
I'll stick by the points that the American Eagle
Foundation — I'll just give it to you in a nutshell, this
first part of it. It was appointed by Hansa Line in Bremen,
West Germany, the owners of the motor transport, Volcanis.
We were apointed in 1973, August 23rd, as their
U.S. environmental representative for a demonstration project
in the United States for the destruction by very high temper-
ature burning — we mean 1650 degrees Celsius or 3,002 degrees
fahrenheit — the burning of chlorinated hydrocarbons.
This first test was on four shiploads of 16,800
metric tons total of Shell Chemical Company out of Deerpark
Texas. Now, combining that background and the fact that we
worked a year and a half before we could even interest the
Environmental Protection Agency in touching the project with
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a ten-foot pole. They still haven't been too sold on it,
because they have not yet issued the regulations telling
industry what the destruction efficiency level of American
incineration tank ships has to be.
I know it's in draft form, but it hasn't been
issued yet; they could have issued that in August of 1975
when they came out in July of '75 with the results of a very
detailed monitoring operation that showed that that ship could
destroy a five-streamed chemical waste product from Shell
Chemical out in the Western incineration zone in the Gulf of
Mexico.
The destruction efficiency level exceeded 99.93
percent. Anyway; all right, I'll get back to this. There are
several points in here over and above just dumping crud in the
land. I'll start over here.
The safe and rapid destruction of approximately
57 million metric tons of hazardous waste which EPA estimates
were produced in the United States in the year 1980 should be
one of the national priorities for America.
In the June 6, 1980 written testimony of Dr. David
P. Rail, Director, National Institute of Environmental Health
Sciences, Department of Health and Human Services, to a Senate
Judiciary Committee Hearing, included, among other things,
the following statement:
"The ideal way to protect people from health
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problem s due to chemical exposure is to identify the chemical
and study the toxicity of the chemical in laboratory animals
r
before exposure. This has historically been an effective way
of projecting certain health problems from single chemicals.
"However, some of these studies take many years
and are inadequate for predicting effects such as neuro,
behavioral and reproductive damage. We in the National Toxi-
cology Program in Health and Human Services are trying to
develop better, less expensive and more rapid test methods
to identify accurately these effects.
"One research area that is not adequately developed
concerns the toxicity of many chemicals acting together."
And, if you think you don't get many chemicals,
various chemical analyses types in — just for instance,
the Beam Joy landfill out in Maryland and other types of
landfills, you can see what this man is talking about.
We do not have the scientific tools today to
estimate the toxic effects of twelve, 24 or 36 chemicals to
which a person may be exposed simultaneously. We're talking
about drinking water and a few other things.
This was the problem in Love Canal, where residents
were exposed to not a dozen, but to perhaps two or three dozen
or more chemicals at the same time. The most we can do at
this time is examine the toxicity of single chemicals and
project human health effects.
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Because today we cannot generalize about the toxic
effects of multiple chemical exposure, it is almost impossible
to estimate the health impacts of such exposure other than to
assume that they are simply addicting.
In the 1970 report for the Surgeon General in a
report titled "Evaluation of Environmental Carcinogens"
prepared by the ad hoc committee on the evaluation of low
levels of environmental chemical carcinogens, the National
Cancer Institute, notes in its recommendation number eight:
"A basic distinction should be made between
intentional and unintentional exposures. No subs-tance
developed primarily for uses involving exposure to man should
be allowed for wide-spread human intake without having been
properly tested for carcinogenicity and found negative.
"Any substance developed for use not primarily
involving exposure in man but nevertheless resulting in such
exposure, if found to be carcinogenic, should be either
prevented from entering the environment or if it already
exists in the environment, progressively eliminated.
In the Sixth Annual Report of the Council on
Environmental Quality dated December of '75, Chapter One,
Carcinogens in the Environment, it notes that chemicals intro-
duced into our environment by our consumption pattern and way
of life can cause cancer and that much of the cancer is
probably associated with carcinogenic agents produced by man.
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We are now coming to recognize and accept the fact
that mere "disposal" of hazardous and toxic chemical wastes
by dumping in landfills, well injection, spread of material
over open ground and storage should not be concluded to be
feasible alternatives to ocean incinerations since there has
been no demonstrated destruction efficiency factors stipulated
for these alternatives for disposal of such chemical wastes
or concerns.
It should be noted that neither government nor
industry is capable of reproducing in their laboratories the
scope of tremendous pressures exerted by nature on the Earth's
fragile crust.
Of the many millions of tons of hazardous and toxic
chemical wastes dumped into land injections in each year in
the United States, there are no data which has been made
available to this Foundation to show that groundwater in the
general area of the injected waste cannot eventually be
contaminated by such waste.
The proven technique for destroying incineratable
chemical wastes by high temperature controlled incineration
tankships operating far at sea and away from masses of people
is probably the safest method available to government and
industry for the destruction of those chemical wastes that
contribute to the causing of cancer and malformations in the
human body.
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When we speak of high temperatures, we mean the
capability of the vessel to sustain temperatures up to and
including 1650 degrees Celsius in each incinerator unit,
America should give no less consideration to over-
coming the detrimental effects caused by a ravaging, deadly
disease which attacks America's human resources than it does
[to the destructive effects of a hurricane or other disaster,
I The same effort of dedication by the government
should apply to resolving both types of problems. Finally,
|it may be of interest that the following is the last paragraph
in an April 17, 1974 — that's eight years ago —'letter from
the research and development department of a large chloro-
carbon manufacturer in the United States to a representative
in New York of the motorship Volcanus.
"We believe that a long-term disposal service
operating out of U.S. ports such as you now provide for
European customers might satisfy a real need of North
American industries and we hope that you will find it attrac-
tive to eventually establish such a service."
Let me add that our foundation works with anyone
and everyone. We work with the people who have the problem,
which is the generators of these hazardous and toxic chemical
wastes. We've had very excellent working relationships with
the Chemical Manufacturers Association. Over the years, they
have published in their monthly document, titled Chemicology,
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articles beginning as far back as February '74. I'll give
you these so that you can see what they were doing.
In this article, in 1974, it says, "Ocean incinera-
tion, a new weapon for toxic wastes." I'm only telling you
this because it's been proven. It's been proven by EPA when
they were interested in doing the kind of a job that's
necessary to be done to destroy these wastes and not open
up a can of worms on a hot stove; that's what they're doing
in the situation as it relates to the present concerns here
today.
Here is one that's reprinted from Popular Science
with the permission of the outfit. It says, "A converted
cargo ship destroys a deadly chemical and proves a new method
that's 99.9 percent efficient."
Well, this talks about Herbicide Orange; it talks
about other activities; and here's what I said in the
article. "Destroying wastes before they reach the ocean is
far preferable to direct dumping on a land-based method such
as deep well injection."
Donald Carruth of the American Eagle Foundation,
one strong proponent of at-sea incineration says, "It's
cheaper than land incineration which requires scrubbing of
the emissions and operational costly facilities."
Here is the last paragraph: "The Environmental
Protection Agency, which hasn't yet issued final regulations
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on the method, should actively encourage the building of
incinerating ships 1 One source of ships could be the Maritime
Administration which offered in 1976 to sell small dry cargo
vessels from the National Defense Reserve Fleet for conversion
into these floating furnaces.
I'll also give you this and these for your
information. This is my document that I gave to the carcino-
genic group. Just retitle it for this. Now, in addition —
CHAIRMAN DIETRICH: We're tired, you know.
MR. CARRUTH: Well, this is important and I've sat
through it all day long to do specifically what will take
about ten minutes more and then I'll quit.
All right, we couldn't get operations through the
State — that was back in 1980, early in '80. We couldn't get
the type of operations to the State of Maryland to close the
landfill. Finally, they decided to transfer the function from
the Department of Natural Resources over to Baltimore to the
Health Department where it is now.
So, in- order to move this along, I ask the people
from EVOKE, which some of you people from the Maryland delega-
tion know about — I asked them to get some signatures for me
relating to the closing of that big landfill.
They only came up with an original handwritten
signatures for 343 people. They said, "Do you think that will
be enough?" I said, "I think so." I went over to see
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Congressman Barley Staggars and he just about jumped through
lis skin. That was on the Interstate and Foreign Commerce
Committee.
I said, "I'm aware of your Committee's jurisdiction
over the Safe Drinking Water Act and several statutes
pertaining to solid and hazardous waste. I have been working
with a number of people that had the State of Maryland investi
gate the Beam Joy hazardous waste landfill and so forth."
A relatively large number of residents in the
general area have found groundwater contamination. Your
committee should investigate this matter so as to determine
the nature and extent the groundwater is contaminated and
the threat to human health posed by the improper disposal of
hazardous waste.
Enclosed is a petition from citizens who have an
interest in your committee investigating the matter. It
appears the State of Maryland has not acted to the satisfac-
tion of these citizens; therefore, I feel that the federal
government's intervention is called for at this time."
This letter was dated June 23rd. The three letters that I
have were also dated June 23 of 1980; one of them is addressed
to me, Donald Carruth, President of the American Eagle
Assocation and so forth, signed by Ha-ley Staggars.
"Thank you for your letter of June 23, the same
date, concerning the Beam Joy hazardous waste landfill.
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Enclosed are a copy of a letter to The Honorable Bob Eckhart,
Chairman of our Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigation
and The Honorable Douglas M. Costell, Administrator of the
Environmental Protection Agency, concerning the landfill.
When I hear from these individuals, I'll let you know."
These two letters are somewhat similar, except it
was a more direct order to Congressman Eckhart, Chairman of
that Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations.
He says: "I am concerned about improper hazardous
waste disposal and its effect on our environment, especially
sources of drinking water." I'd appreciate it and-so forth.
Here's the one to Dough Castle — "Enclosed is a
letter", and so forth. "Mr. Carruth and other concerned
citizens feel that the Beam Joy hazardous landfill poses a
health hazard, so I'd appreciate it if you would investigate
the situation."
They did and about four days later, they came in
with a report saying, "We don't find any problem there. We
don't find any problems." So, there are people — I will tell
you this. There are people in the Congress today, The
Honorable James R. Jones, I wrote him a letter. The letter
was dated February 10th, 1982 and he was Chairman of the
Committee on Budget.
Dear Mr. Chairman, in the review by the Budget
Committee of the President's proposed budget for fiscal year
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'83 and hearings relating thereto, it is requested that this
letter and attached exhibits be included as part of the
official records of such hearings." I went on to say that
where funds were appropriated to the U.S. Congress for carryin
out authorized programs by the Executive Branch of government,
the American people have the right to expect the Executive
Branch to use a reasonable degree of judgment in the expendi-
tures of such funds.
The Courts have gone beyond the point of general
expectations of the public and have included references to
the use of common sense in carrying out the requirements of
Congress. They wouldn't define what common sense was.
Here it says7 "For the year" — oh, okay, "It
should be noted" — "In the year 1980, EPA estimated that at
least 57 million metric tons of hazardous wastes were being
produced in America.
It should be noted, however, that a lack of good
supportive rules and regulations in EPA has made it very
difficult for the incineration at-sea program to function."
That includes the Chemical Manufacturers Organiza-
tion that has been strongly supportive of this technique for
j
[destroying waste. Another problem arising — well, all right.
There is a very big need to improve and thoroughly
revise EPA's permit program into a practical and effective
support mechanism. 'The last paragraph: It is requested
,v,icy.
Chiu..p, •'••>-- L —
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that your Committee give very in-depth consideration to the
1983 budget requirements for the Environmental Protection
Agency not alone from the standpoint of the role that the
American people expect of the Agency in protecting the quality
of our human and natural resources, but also from the use of
appropriated funds. Where common sense is greatly needed by
the Agency and a number of its personnel in order to effective
ly carry out the mandate of Congress.
I have a lot more. That's enough to let you know
that there is a way it can be destroyed; they don't even have
the regulations that have been issued yet that permits this
to be done. They only have one vessel in existence that was
the one that we were representing the owners of back in '73
and '74. Then it was taken over by EPA but only for the
demonstration monitoring aspects. Thank you very much.
CHAIRMAN DIETRICH: I did promise that I would open
it for comments. Does anybody have any comments?
(No response.)
CHAIRMAN DIETRICH: Does anybody have any rebuttals?
(No response.)
CHAIRMAN DIETRICH: I appreciate your attendance
here and I will close this hearing.
(Whereupon, the hearing was concluded at 5:20 p.m.)
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