United States
Environmental Protection
Agency
Office of
Public Affairs (A-107)
Washington DC 20460
Volume 10
Number 8
October 1984
EPA JOURNAL
Controlling
Hazardous Waste
-------
Controlling
Hazardous
Waste
&
The protection of the American
public from threats posed by
hazardous waste is the top
priority of the EPA. In this issue,
the EPA Journal reviews this
urgent concern.
Administrator William
Ruckelshaus leads off the issue
with an overview of the
hazardous waste problem. In an
interview, Lee Thomas discusses
the EPA effort to control
hazardous waste. Thomas in
Assistant Administrator for Solid
Waste and Emergency Response.
EPA Deputy Administrator Alvin
Aim discusses the controversial
question of where to dispose of
hazardous waste.
An article offers an explanation
of why the nation now finds
itself with the tough
environmental and public health
problem created by hazardous
waste. Another piece reports on
a special concern — hazardous
waste around the household and
what can be done about it.
The agency's Environmental
Response Team is featured, as
well as EPA's program of
emergency cleanups. Another
article reports on steps to insure
that wastes from federal facilities
are controlled. EPA's attention to
possible alternatives to disposing
of wastes on land is reviewed.
EPA Region 4's extensive
involvement of the public in
efforts to protect Florida's
Biscayne Aquifer from hazardous
wastes is reported. This article is
the second in a series in the
Journal on major environmental
problems which EPA's regional
offices are addressing.
Six respected observers
comment from a national
perspective on a key
question—how clean is "clean"
in restoration efforts at a
hazardous waste site? The
purpose of Clean Sites, Inc.—a
recently-formed private group
seen as complementary to EPA's
cleanup efforts—is explained by
the organization's leadership.
Concluding the issue are
Update and Appointments—two
regular features in the Journal. LJ
Leaking drums and overflowing waste
lagoons symbolize America's hazardous
waste problem.
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United States
Environmental Protection
Agency
Office of
Public Affairs (A-107)
Washington DC 20460
Volume 10
Number 8
October 1984
v/EPA JOURNAL
William D. Ruckelshaus, Administrator
Josephine S. Cooper, Assistant Administrator for External Affairs
Jean Statler, Director, Office of Public Affairs
John Heritage, Acting Editor
Susan Tejada, Associate Editor
Jack Lewis, Assistant Editor
Bob Burke, Contributing Editor
EPA is charged by Congress to
protect the nation's land, air, and
water systems. Under a mandate of
national environmental laws, the
agency strives to formulate and
implement actions which lead to a
compatible balance between human
activities and the ability of natural
systems to support and nurture life.
The EPA Journal is published by
the U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency The Administrator of EPA
has determined that the publication
of this periodical is necessary in the
transaction of the public business
required by law of this agency. Use
of funds for printing this periodical
has been approved by the Director
of the Office of Management and
Budget. Views expressed by
authors do not necessarily reflect
EPA policy. Contributions and
inquiries should be addressed to the
Editor (A-107), Waters:de Mall, 401
M St., S.W.. Washington, DC
20460 No permission necessary to
reproduce contents except
copyrighted photos and other
materials.
Putting the Hazardous
Waste Issue in Perspective
By William D.
Ruckelshaus 2
EPA Fights Hazardous
Waste
An, Interview with
Lee M. Thomas 4
"Not in My Backyard":
Facing the Siting Question
By Alvin L Aim 8
Why We Have a
Hazardous Waste Problem
By H. Lanier Hickman, Jr. 10
Household
Hazardous Waste:
Everyone's Concern
By Jack Lewis 12
Chemical Detectives at
Work:EPA's
Environmental
Response Team
By Susan Tejada 14
Taking Emergency Action
Under Super-fund
Choices in Disposal
of Hazardous Waste
By Donald White and
Bob Burke 20
Cleaning Up
Federal Facilities
By Josephine S. Cooper
Protecting Against
Hazardous Waste: The
Front Line in Region 4
By Gordon Kenna 24
The Idea Behind
Clean Sites, Inc.
By Charles W. Powers 26
How Clean is "Clean"
at a Hazardous Waste
Site?
Key Observers Answer 28
Update: Recent
Agency Developments 31
Appointments at
EPA 32
Front cover: Sampling drum
contents, pan of a Superfund
removal action at an abandoned
hazardous waste dump in
Northeast, Maryland, At this site,
workers excavated 7,300 corroded
drums, treated over 100,000 gallons
of contaminated water, and
removed 50,000 pounds of
contaminated liquid waste and 5
million pounds of contaminated soil.
Photo credits: Steve Delaney;
Trace/ A. Finger; All-.'n Wilson-
Susan Tejada; Mike Swartz, Valley
Morning News; SCA Services, Inc.,
U.S. Army Aberdeen Proving
Ground; Robert Rubik; Conservation
Foundation; Richard Frear, National
Park Service; Louisiana State Police
, rr,j :••
Ron Fan '
• ,r ;
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Putting the Hazardous Waste Issue
in Perspective
by William D. Ruckleshaus
EPA Administrator
EPA Administrator William D.
Ruckleshaus addressed the hazardous
waste issue in a recent speech in
Philadelphia. He was speaking to the
International Solid Waste
Association/American Public Works
Association Congress and Exhibition.
Here are excerpts of his remarks:
"In the wake of the successful moon
landings of the early 70's we often heard
people say, 'If we can go to the moon,
why can't we...,' and then fill in some
intractable social problem supposedly
solvable by a program matching the
scale and determination of the space
effort. This metaphor may be less
common nowadays, having been
tarnished by sad experience, but I believe
that we in this country retain to some
extent the idea that, having publicly
embraced some goal, we will fail to
achieve it only through the failure of our
political will, or the intervention of some
nefarious special interest.
"Ten years ago, for all practical
purposes, we were unaware that there
was a hazardous waste problem. To
those concerned with solid waste in the
mid-seventies the main problem seemed
to be the management of trash and the
need for recycling of materials. That
curiously innocent world was, of course,
destroyed forever by the revelations of
the late seventies, when the careless
disposal practices of the past began to
turn places like Love Canal and the Valley
of the Drums into images of
environmental calamity. To my mind it is
impossible to assess where we are now
in hazardous waste control without
understanding how utterly shocking
these revelations were and how
unprepared we were to deal with them.
Burial, after all, was the very symbol of
ultimate disposal. Ground water was the
very symbol of purity. People used to
say, 'We don't worry about our drinking
water; we get it from a well.'
"And consider this: in the late
seventies when we began to write
regulations for the control of hazardous
waste disposal required by RCRA [the
Resource Conservation and Recovery
Act], we didn't know where the
generators were; we didn't know what
was in their waste streams, or how much
there was of it or how hazardous it might
be; and we didn't know where it was
going. Moreover, the institutional
structures for overseeing and controlling
this immense traffic were embryonic. In
contrast, when the federal government
decided to take a leading role in air and
water pollution control in the early
seventies it was able to build on decades
of experience and many active and
capable state programs.
"We are building a set of very large
national institutions from the ground up.
The Superfund budget has grown from
$210 million in fiscal '83 to $460 million
in fiscal '84 and will reach $620 million in
'85. We are hiring hundreds of people;
over 100 people have been added to the
RCRA enforcement staff in the past year
and the total Superfund staff planned for
1985, 1,357 positions, is double what it
was in 1983.
"It is not enough to write rules; people
have to understand what is expected of
them under the rules, and the
organizations at the different levels of
government and in private industry have
to learn to work together. This process
requires the production, distribution, and
digestion of an enormous mass of
written information, as well as
knowledge about who to go to for
clarification. We have a RCRA Superfund
hotline at EPA headquarters that handled
50,000 calls last year. The point is that all
this takes time. I'm not sure we could
have got the system to where it is now
any faster if we had twice as many
people.
"It is also essential to remember that
solving our hazardous waste problem is
an immense physical undertaking. Quite
literally, we are moving mountains. The
RCRA regulations now in place influence
the handling of tens of millions of tons of
wastes from thousands of businesses.
And proper disposal of hazardous
waste—under both RCRA and
Superfund—is largely a civil engineering
operation of staggering complexity. A
secure landfill, for example, is not just a
big hole in the ground. It is much more
like a ship. It may have a many-layered
hull, internal barriers, extensive piping,
drains, and pumps. It needs a crew to
watch for leaks, and so on. Incinerators
and other, more sophisticated, disposal
techniques can be similarly complex, and
all disposal methods are potentially
dangerous if not managed correctly.
There's a saying in government that you
never have time to do it right but there's
always time to do it over. This must be
strenuously rejected as an operating
principle in any actions connected with
hazardous waste. We have to insist on
the time to do it right.
"I make these points because I know
how much the nation expects of us in
controlling hazardous waste and because
of how important it is that these
expectations be tempered with realism
about what we can and cannot
accomplish in some particular length of
time. That realism is particularly
important now that our programs have
built up some momentum. For example:
we have taken emergency action to
protect public health at 392 sites; we
have stabilized or otherwise ended the
threat of immediate damage at 328
sites,...Physical cleanup was underway at
120 sites [on the National Priorities List)
in 1984 and will be underway at 221 sites
in 1985. The important fact is that we
EPA JOURNAL
-------
On September 28, 7982, a freight ti
tank cars containing chemical compounds
derailed near Livingston, Loui^
Explosions rocked the -Tee days.
Fires burned continually. More f/v;
agencies and companies worked :
the disaster
know of no NPL site that constitutes an
immediate danger to the public.
"On the RCRA side, we have the
operational pieces of a permitting
program for treatment, storage and
disposal facilities in place at the federal
level and portions of the program have
been established in more than thirty
states. Over 200 Part B permits have
been issued and we expect many more
to be completed next year. We intend, as
part of our new national permitting
strategy, to focus our permitting
resources on incinerators and landfills,
which are the disposal options that
represent the greatest potential for harm
when improperly managed. Our target is
150 permits for these facilities alone. We
also intend to carry out a massive
inspection program on a/I major handlers
of hazardous waste, and all recently
closed sites, to determine if they are in
compliance with RCRA requirements,
especially where the monitoring of
ground water is concerned.
"The emergence of hazardous waste as
a major issue has forced us to think
anew about the ultimate ends of our
whole pollution control enterprise. We
used to throw things away, until we
realized that one person's 'away' was
another person's 'here.' We used the air
and the water as infinite sumps, and
when we learned to stop such
foolishness, we thought we could use the
land in the same way. Now we have a
system that is designed to prevent that
too, to control hazardous wastes from
'cradle to grave.'
"Most of our attention has been
focused on the 'grave' part of the
problem, but sooner or later we are
going to have to think about reducing the
size of the little monster in the 'cradle' as
well: that is, stopping the production of
toxic residues. We have some evidence
that the industrial system is evolving in
the direction of less waste production. As
the price of energy and raw materials
increases, processes that produce a lot of
waste will be abandoned in favor of
those that don't. 'Waste not, want not' is
back in fashion. Recycling of wastes also
appears to be increasing. In our survey,
about half the generators reported that
they intended to recycle wastes, a 25 per-
cent increase from the previous survey, a
year before.
"Most important, irresponsible
dumping is no longer an option, and this
has changed the economic picture for
many important industries. Ten years
ago an otherwise respectable firm could
buy a farm in the back country, dig a
hole, and forget about what they dumped
there. That will never happen again.
Superfund and RCRA have succeeded to
this extent at least: industry is now
reluctant to let any waste out the plant
gate. Concern about the public health
consequences of waste disposal,
bolstered by fears of long-term liability
and adverse publicity, is now strong
enough to make major generators spend
substantial resources on improving
on-site control of hazardous wastes.
"But if the toxic mountain is slowly
shrinking, it remains a fair-sized lump.
Since we are not about to shut down the
national industrial plant pending the
arrival of total recycling, we must insure
that what is produced is kept safely, and
at the same time cope with the results of
past negligence. It is a job that requires
skill, determination, and patience. It
requires well-run, stable organizations,
like those we and the states are now
building. I'm afraid that it is not as
simple or as exciting as going to the
moon. But there is a much nicer planet at
the end of the journey." I i
OCTOBER 1984
-------
EPA Fights Hazardous Waste
An Interview with Lee M. Thomas
To help gain an overview of the
hazardous waste issue and EPA's
responsibilities in dealing with it, EPA
Journal interviewed Lee Thomas, the
agency's Assistant Administrator for
Solid Wasfe and Emergency
Response.The interview follows:
Q
Would you describe the magnitude
of the hazardous waste problem in the
United States?
A
There are two aspects of the
hazardous waste problem that we have
to look at when we talk about magnitude.
First is the volume of hazardous waste
that is being generated today, and will be
generated in the future. We need to know
who is generating it, who is transporting
it, and who is treating it and disposing of
it. In addition, we must look at what was
done in the past, what was not done,
and what this means to public health and
the environment today.
There is a whole series of numbers
available to describe and characterize the
hazardous waste management problem
today. We know that more than 260
million metric tons of hazardous waste
are generated annually, a quantity equal
to more than 70 billion gallons. These are
enormous numbers, although large
portions of the total are mixtures of
hazardous and nonhazardous wastes,
such as wastes mixed with industrial
process liquids.
About 14,000 installations generate
regulated quantities of hazardous wastes,
while more than 4,800 manage them
using various treatment, storage and
disposal techniques. The overwhelming
majority of hazardous waste generated in
this country — 96 percent — is managed
on site.
About 14.7 billion gallons of hazardous
wastes are disposed of in or on the land
each year, while about 500 million
gallons are incinerated.
Hazardous waste generators and
management facilities are concentrated
in manufacturing industries. An
estimated 85 percent of all generators
and 72 percent of all treatment, storage
and disposal facilities are associated with
industrial manufacturing operations. Of
the total quantity of wastes generated,
manufacturers account for 92 percent.
The chemical industry alone is estimated
to generate some 68 percent of the total.
Turning to the legacy of inadequate
waste management practices in the past.
we are still in the process of identifying
where ail of the uncontrolled sites are
around this country. To date, we are
aware of more than 18,000 potentially
hazardous sites that have been reported
to us from a variety of sources. We have
conducted preliminary assessments for
about half of these sites and found that
approximately one in four requires a full
field investigation.
Of more than 3,000 sites where field
investigations have been conducted, we
have identified 538 posing serious
long-term hazards to public health and
the environment. These are the sites
which have been placed on our National
Priorities List. That list will continue to
grow over the coming months and years.
We project it will eventually total
between 1,400 and 2,200 sites.
Q
There are many different wastes
being disposed of in one way or another.
How do we know which are most
dangerous?
A
Under the Resource Conservation
and Recovery Act (RCRA), we have the
specific mandate to determine which
wastes are hazardous. We have
developed a list of inherently hazardous
wastes and waste streams, using criteria
established by the statute. Additionally, a
number of wastes exhibiting specific
characteristics established in our
regulations may also be regulated if they
fail tests we have developed to measure
their toxicity, corrosiveness, reactivity, or
ignitability. Each generator has the
responsibility to determine if its wastes
meet certain hazardous characteristics. If
so, the generator must manage those
wastes according to RCRA's cradle-
to-grave regimen — that is, from
the point where they are generated
through to their ultimate disposal.
\-i How did we as a society get into
this difficult situation with regard to
hazardous waste problems?
A
f\ The hazardous waste issue is a
byproduct of this nation's economic
EPA JOURNAL
-------
At Bruin Lagoon in Pennsy/va:
workman gathers iars of soil sami
analysis. The site is on EPA's
Superfund action.
growth over the last 30 to 40 years. As
industry has expanded, we've developed
more and more reliance on a broader
range of chemicals and chemical
byproducts in plastics, automobiles and
other major manufacturing sectors. When
chemicals are used to develop new
products, they frequently yield wastes.
As our economy has grown, and as our
industries have diversified, we have seen
the advent of many new waste streams. I
think that we were slow to recognize the
potential dangers of hazardous wastes. It
was not until the mid-1970s that
Congress enacted RCRA, the first major
hazardous waste regulatory authority,
and 1980 that it enacted the Superfund
statute to deal with past inadequate
practices. By that time, government was
20 to 30 years behind in protecting public
health and the environment from
hazardous wastes.
Q
How long do you think it is going
to take to bring the hazardous waste
problem under control?
r\ We are right in the midst of
bringing it under control. I think we've
made significant progress in our
regulatory program to establish rules that
control the generation of hazardous
waste and its transportation, treatment,
storage and disposal. I think that over the
next three years, you'll see the program
firmly established in every state through
our delegation process. The states have
made real progress during the last two
years in creating strong programs of
their own.
You will see us work through the
existing backlog of treatment, storage
and disposal facilities that the law
allowed to continue operating, and you'll
see many of them close or upgrade their
operations. We have begun an intensive
effort to issue permits for the regulation
of these facilities under RCRA. For the
next two years, we will pay particular
attention to permitting land disposal
facilities and incinerators, those sites
posing the greatest potential danger to
public health and the environment.
As far as cleaning up wastes from past
practices is concerned, I think again over
the next two or three years you'll see us
get a much better handle on defining the
scope of the problem and implementing
solutions. We'll improve our analysis of
sites and we will make significant
progress in cleaning them up. If we can
maintain our momentum, you will see
over the next several years a well-run
cleanup program throughout this
country. I think you'll probably see a
majority of the work completed within
ten years.
Q
Under the Resource Conservation
and Recovery Act, what's the National
Permit Strategy?
r\ Congress gave us authority to issue
permits on a facility-by-facility basis for
industries that treat, store, or dispose of
hazardous waste. Congress also indicated
that until we issued or denied a permit,
each facility in existence when the law
was passed could continue to operate
under interim, self-operating standards.
We have stringent standards for
hazardous waste management facilities
as part of the permitting process. We
make determinations jointly with the
states as to whether facilities will be
permitted and allowed to operate, or
whether they must close under our
guidance because they cannot meet the
standards incorporated in those permits.
Under the National Permit Strategy, we
looked at the problems we were facing in
trying to get the permit process
completed and we made some fairly
significant modifications. We are
accelerating the time frame for issuing
permits on land disposal sites and
incinerator facilities because we think
they pose the greatest potential for
environmental damage.
We're also making a number of
management changes in the way we
process the permits. A significant amount
of additional technical assistance and
resources will go to the states and our
regional offices to process permits.
Additionally, we are laying out a more
extensive opportunity for public
participation in the permit review
process.
So the National Permit Strategy is
really a management review of where we
are with our permits and a major
modification of both the time frame and
the methods that we use to issue those
permits. The aim is to strengthen and
streamline our permit program and issue
permits much more quickly, particularly
for land disposal sites and incinerators.
Q
Could you clarify the role the states
play under the hazardous waste
program?
r\ Congress intended that the states
operate the RCRA program. But the
states had to develop a capability to do
so and, according to the law, had to have
legal and regulatory authority equivalent
to the federal authority before we could
delegate to them the responsibility for
operating a hazardous waste program.
To date, we have delegated final
OCTOBER 1984
-------
authority to operate RCRA programs to
four states. Six more are likely to receive
final authorization by the end of fiscal
1984. There are a total of 32 states where
we plan to delegate full authority by
January. And we have already delegated
portions of the program to more than 40
states.
So we're making a lot of progress in
moving the majority of the management
responsibilities to the states. At the same
time, we are defining what we mean by a
quality program so EPA, in its oversight
role, can insure that hazardous waste
control efforts are managed well and that
the states carry out the responsibilities
given to them.
Q
Q
You mentioned steps to encourage
public participation in the permitting
process. Do you think that people can
ever again be persuaded to accept the
siting of hazardous waste disposal
facilities in their own communities?
r\ There are locations where I believe
people can come to accept a scientific
analysis and presentation of fact as to
how a facility will operate, the potential
danger it presents, and the safeguards
that are in place, and can accept such a
facility in their community. But it's not
going to be easy to do that in many
other locations.
Whether it is a hazardous waste
management facility or some other
controversial site that raises public safety
as well as scientific concerns, it's very
difficult for many people to accept that a
facility is going to be located in their
community. There is often a tendency for
people to say they understand that these
facilities are necessary and must be
located somewhere, "but not in my
backyard."
I think first that we've got to overcome
the public's lack of confidence in the way
we manage our program. That takes
time. It also takes performance on the
part of government and the regulated
community. Second, we have to make a
much more concerted effort to present to
the public just exactly what the facts are
on how these facilities will operate, what
the dangers are, and what the dangers
are not. Yes, I believe over time there will
be communities that will come to accept
facilities that manage hazardous waste.
Why is so much hazardous waste
disposed of in landfills?
r\ The traditional practice of landfilling
or land disposal is still pervasive in many
parts of this country because it's cheaper
in the short run than other waste
management alternatives. But in the long
run, when you take into account the
potential cleanup costs associated with a
poorly managed land disposal facility,
the economics of landfilling are cast in
an entirely different light.
What we're doing through our
regulatory program is: first, ensuring that
those land disposal facilities which do
exist are managed and designed properly
and, second, aggressively promoting
alternative means of disposal. Land
disposal for certain wastes is probably
very appropriate. But wastes may also
require treatment prior to land disposal.
Additionally, other forms of disposal like
incineration offer many advantages over
land disposal. I would say that waste
treatment today is certainly an evolving,
changing industry.
vJ. Do you see an ultimate answer to
the disposal of hazardous waste?
r\ I think that the direction that we are
now taking in our regulatory program is
the ultimate answer. We are reviewing
wastes on an individual waste stream
basis. With a scientific and technical
review, we determine whether or not a
waste should be disposed of on the land,
or whether it needs to be treated prior to
land disposal, taking into account its
toxicity, its mobility, and its propensity to
bioaccumulate. With such a review, we
can also determine whether a waste
should be incinerated or managed by
some other means, such as
neutralization.
Along with this, there needs to be a
concentrated effort to make changes in
manufacturing processes to reduce the
generation of hazardous wastes requiring
disposal. Industries should be
considering how they can either
minimize the volume of waste they
generate or increase recycling and reuse
of those wastes so fewer require
disposal. What is necessary is an
economic incentive to industry sufficient
to foster a reduction in the quantity of
wastes requiring disposal. As the
economics of waste management
change, we will see development of
more efficient production processes and
more recycling, particularly in large
operations.
(J. What are the goals of the
Superfund program?
r\ There are several goals for the
Superfund program. First, we have the
responsibility to identify and analyze all
uncontrolled hazardous waste sites in
this country. Practically speaking, the
uncontrolled facilities are mostly
abandoned sites, those that are not being
dealt with by some responsible party. As
a part of that effort, we have the
ongoing responsibility to review every
new spill of hazardous waste. We have
made tremendous progress in achieving
this goal. We have a good ongoing
emergency response program and we
have assessed over 9,000 uncontrolled
hazardous waste sites to determine the
extent of contamination problems.
The second big goal of the Superfund
program is to respond, or assure that a
response is made, to sites determined to
pose an immediate threat to public
health and the environment. Additionally,
if that site doesn't present an immediate
danger but presents a chronic or
long-term threat, we have a responsibility
to determine the priority and take action.
Finally, we are charged with ensuring
that those who were responsible for the
disposal of the waste — those who
actually caused the contamination in the
first place — are called upon to pay for
the cleanup or to clean up the waste
themselves. This is our enforcement
goal.
vJ. Is it true that EPA has only cleaned
up six sites in three and one-half years
under Superlund?
r\ No, that's really a tremendous
distortion of fact. Just consider where we
are in this program, and think about the
three goals we just discussed. As I
indicated, we have already looked at
more than 9,000 potentially hazardous
sites and have determined that about one
in four of them is a site requiring further
action. At more than 3,000 sites, we've
initiated full field investigations to
determine whether they pose immediate
or chronic threats.
EPA JOURNAL
-------
We have taken emergency action at
392 sites. We have completed work at
328 sites. When I say we have completed
this work, I mean we have cleaned up
more than 150 sites and stabilized the
others. In the latter case, we've dealt with
the immediate threat, eliminated any
imminent danger, brought the site under
control, and begun further assessments
to determine where additional work
needs to be done. Meanwhile, at
locations where there is a chronic threat,
we have initiated detailed engineering
studies at about 300; actual cleanup is
underway at 120 sites.
The figure six refers to the number of
major sites that we've actually removed
from the National Priorities List. We've
established a list of priority sites which
present a chronic or long-term threat
which we update every year. We've
identified 538 sites on that list. Six sites
have been deleted, which means that
we're through cleaning them, monitoring
is completed, and we've taken them off
the list.
I would venture to say that the majority
of sites on the list will not come off for
five to ten years. There are many sites on
the list that will never come off because
we will monitor them in perpetuity to
make sure that cleanup is permanently
effective.
So using the figure six is a gross
distortion of fact. I would say that the
number of sites where we've actually
begun cleanup work — when you
consider both our emergency and
remedial programs — is on the order of
500 to 600. The number where we've
finished cleanup is in excess of 150. The
number stabilized is also in excess of
150. We have a great deal of work
underway at sites all over the country.
Q
Does EPA (the Administration)
favor reauthorization of Superfund?
r\ Absolutely. As you will remember,
the President in his State of the Union
message called for the reauthorization. At
that time, he also asked Congress to
appropriate additional money for the
program in fiscal 1984 and significantly
increased his request for fiscal 1985. The
budget has tripled during the last two
years; the staff has nearly doubled. The
President has suggested that Congress
continue reviewing reauthorization this
year and conclude that process next year
before the existing Superfund taxing
authority expires on September 30, 1985.
I think it is important in the
reauthorization process that Congress
have a chance to consider the
information it asked us to collect in the
original Superfund law. The statute
specifies a series of studies to be
completed by EPA. One assesses the
effectiveness of the program, the
experience we have had, and the
changes that need to be made. Another
major study deals with revenue, the
taxing portion of the law, how effective it
has been, taxing alternatives, and the
effects the tax has had on our balance of
trade.
Congress wanted us to complete these
studies by December 1984. As it stands,
we intend to have drafts ready in October
and to deliver the studies on time.
There has been a great deal of
confusion over the Administration's
position on reauthorization. The
President asked Bill Ruckelshaus to
develop recommendations to be
submitted to Congress next year, as we
move into the calendar year when the
program needs to be reauthorized. Some
have characterized this as opposing
reauthorization, which is the exact
opposite of the Administration's position.
We strongly favor reauthorization, and
have said so on numerous occasions. We
think it should be done thoughtfully,
however, and with as many facts as
possible. We think it should be done
using the time frame originally mandated
by Congress.
Q
What will your office's main
priorities be in the coming years?
r\ Our priorities for the RCRA program
will fall into several categories. We will
continue to place major emphasis on
delegation of the program to the states.
Under our schedule, most states will
receive that authority during the next two
years. Second, we will continue our
regulatory effort, and will expand it to
include generators of small quantities of
waste. Third, we will complete our
permitting process under the National
Permit Strategy. And fourth, major
emphasis will be put on enforcement to
ensure that facilities comply with the law.
We will work closely with the states to
bring prompt enforcement actions
against facilities that fail to meet the
requirements of RCRA.
For the next two or three years under
Superfund, our priorities will be to
complete identification and assessment
of all uncontrolled sites around the
country, build on the momentum we
have established in cleaning up sites
posing both immediate and long-term
threats, and maintain our strong
enforcement effort. Through Superfund's
enforcement program, we have already
secured more than $300 million worth of
cleanup from responsible parties at more
than 100 sites. That money came directly
from private sources, not from
Superfund.
Q
There have been reports recently
about ground-water contamination at
some of the disposal sites operating
under RCRA. How is EPA addressing this
problem?
A
Ground-water contamination is a
major issue and we are doing a number
of things to deal with it. The National
Permit Strategy directly affects our ability
to address ground-water contamination
by placing priority on those sites most
likely to threaten these resources. Where
ground water is polluted, we will employ
our enforcement authority aggressively
to ensure that offending facilities are
either closed or required to clean up the
contamination.
We are also targeting a substantial
share of our enforcement resources to
conduct detailed ground-water
inspections at all land disposal facilities
this coming year to guarantee that those
lacking adequate monitoring programs
will develop and implement them.
Finally, we are initiating a major
training effort both for our own
personnel and those of the states to
ensure that they can effectively help
operators of hazardous waste facilities to
comply with our ground-water
monitoring, site management, and
cleanup requirements. []
OCTOBER 1984
-------
"Not in My
Backyard"
Facing the
Siting Question
by Alvin L. Aim
EPA Deputy Administrator
(These comments are excerpted from a
recent speech by A/vm Aim to the 13th
Annual Airl/e House Conference on the
Environment in Warrenton, Va.)
"The overall hazardous waste problem
is...almost incomprehensible to most
Americans. In 1981, American industry
generated some 70 billion gallons of
regulated hazardous wastes, as defined
under the Resource Conservation and
Recovery Act (RCRA). We at EPA
recognize hazardous waste management
as one of the leading environmental
issues of the 1980s. It ranks as the
number one issue on our agency's list of
priorities.
"Despite the high visibility these issues
enjoy at EPA... we have never engaged in
any concerted effort to regulate the siting
of hazardous waste management
facilities. That is not to say that EPA
activities have no impact on the siting
process. Our programs under both RCRA
and Superfund include elements which
affect every siting decision made at the
state and local levels, and throughout the
waste management industry.
"The comprehensive nature of the
RCRA regulatory program, for example,
has a major impact on the siting process.
Sites must comply with stringent 'cradle-
to-grave' regulations designed to protect
air, ground-water, and surface-water
resources. RCRA also imposes
restrictions on the location of land
disposal facilities in areas where the
likelihood for environmental damage is
significant. Hazardous waste facilities
must also obtain permits spelling out in
detail the engineering and performance
controls to be employed to protect
human health and the environment.
"Under the Superfund program, the
impact on siting is less obvious but can
be significant on a localized basis.
Wastes removed from an emergency or a
remedial action site must be taken to an
approved facility for disposal. Major
remedial sites contain tremendous
quantities of hazardous wastes and
contaminated soil. In some instances,
remedial work at a Superfund site may
tax the disposal capacity of nearby
permitted facilities. As a result, these
sites may reach capacity sooner than
originally anticipated, forcing the siting of
yet another new facility.
"EPA recently embarked on yet another
environmental protection endeavor with
significant implications for those involved
in the siting of hazardous waste
management facilities. We have
developed a ground-water protection
strategy, a truly multi-media effort. That
strategy establishes guidelines for
locating hazardous sites. As we believe
that siting is a matter best addressed at
the state and local level, so too does our
strategy acknowledge the principle
of state control of ground water.
"Given the restrictive nature of the
RCRA regulatory, permitting, and
enforcement programs, and the siting
restrictions inherent in the ground-water
strategy, it is inevitable that shrinkage
will occur in the number of permitted
hazardous waste management facilities
in the years ahead. The cost of disposal
will increase...and available disposal
capacity will decline.
"New facilities will need to be sited. In
light of the difficulties we all anticipate in
the siting process, some suggest that we
explore a national solution through the
development of federal siting criteria.
While some feel a sense of security
whenever the federal government
becomes a direct participant in any
problem-solving exercise, let me assure
you that a federal presence is by no
means a guarantee of success.
"The complexities of addressing siting
at the federal level have been
demonstrated on numerous occasions. It
has not worked in the highly regulated
public power and nuclear industries; it
would stand little chance in the
competitive hazardous waste
management industry. Success in
actually devising an effective federal
siting policy could also have a negative
side to it if state and local governments
used that federal presence to absolve
themselves from coming to grips with
the consequences of siting decisions.
Where hazardous wastes are concerned,
there is no magic answer. Siting is a
public matter, and rightly so. As a
practical matter, it has become a political
decision — not a business or a technical
decision.
"Siting...should incorporate three
fundamental elements: protection of the
environment, equity, and public
acceptance.
"Protection of the environment is a
technical problem. Whether a facility can
adequately prevent environmental
degradation is a matter of some
uncertainty. Unfortunately, it seems,
where hazardous wastes are concerned,
the public trusts neither its governmental
institutions nor the technical experts
when it comes to siting.
"The second element is equity.
Hazardous waste is not only a threat to
health. It also carries a stigma that may
affect property values. Obviously not
every community will have a hazardous
waste site. Thus, a fundamental question
of equity arises every time a new facility
is sited.
"The third element is public acceptance.
We know that people in general are
unwilling to accept a hazardous waste
facility in their community. Faced with
the problems of risk and equity, they see
little advantage to having a site nearby.
EPA JOURNAL
-------
"If citizens are convinced that a facility
is needed, that all reasonable steps will
be taken to make it compatible with the
environment, and that its location near
their homes and businesses represents
an equitable solution to a larger problem,
they will be more inclined to make their
decisions on the merits of the proposal
rather than on the emotion of the
moment.
"I think we learned the extent to which
the public is concerned about hazardous
wastes last fall in Brownsville, Texas,
when we were bombarded with angry
comments during a public hearing over a
proposal to permit the incineration of
hazardous wastes at sea in the Gulf of
Mexico. More than 6,000 citizens
registered for the hearing. Nearly 150
testified; another 2,000 sent written
comments.
"The Brownsville experience
exemplifies the hurdles which must be
confronted virtually every time a new
waste management facility is sited. We
call it the NIMBY Syndrome: Not in My
Backyard. Taken to its simplest terms,
no one wants a hazardous waste
management facility in his or her
community. So, what is the answer?
"Several states have created statewide
hazardous waste boards authorized to
pre-empt or override local opposition to
siting decisions. These panels, consisting
of representatives of all concerned
interests, constitute independent bodies
assigned the chore of identifying
appropriate facility sites, evaluating each,
weighing risks and benefits, and making
the final choice.
"The strength of an independent siting
authority is its impartial decision-making
capability. Yet impartiality alone is not
always enough to overcome strident
public opposition, particularly because it
deals only partially with the issue of
equity.
"One of the brightest examples of
innovation and cooperation in the siting
process is the Southern California
Hazardous Waste Management Project.
Founded in 1981, this locally-led activity
serves an eight-county region including
Los Angeles, with a population of 15
million people. During the coming year,
Demonstrators
gathered at a
public hearing in
Brownsville,
Texas, in
November. 1983
V to protest
incineration of
f. hazardous
wastes on board
the ship
Vulcanus. A
permit to allow
the at-sea
incineration
later denied
NCI™
E6I5
the project expects to site approximately
100 new hazardous waste management
facilities. This progress is being made
possible through a spirit of cooperation
and a willingness to compromise. Each
of the eight participating counties has
agreed to site hazardous waste
management facilities in its own
jurisdiction. Each also accepts the notion
of balance; that it must accept a set of
facilities reflecting its share of the overall
regional waste stream in terms of both
volume and type. Through this process,
less populated counties are protected
against becoming the dumping ground
for the entire region. The public has also
been kept informed of all developments
in building the project. They understand
that alternatives to land disposal are at
the heart of the project, and they support
the concept.
"Beyond open communication and a
substantive public role, other intriguing
new concepts are emerging to deal with
the siting process. The first is mediation,
a process which is being applied to
resolve a wide variety of environmental
disputes. Another technique is
compensation, which deals with equity
problems associated with siting. There is
also a 'stick' available to exact a price
from those who are unwilling to accept
new sites. Options include the
withholding of state hazardous waste
program grants, Superfund cleanup
dollars, and other federal resources from
states that are not willing to site needed
new facilities.
"Beyond economic incentives, both
positive and negative, there are other
innovative approaches to siting new
facilities. Model siting legislation can be
developed, revised and improved over
time to assist state and local leaders
willing to make difficult decisions.
Another innovation would be the use of
interstate compacts to group producer
and disposer states together in symbiotic
relationships. These compacts could be
interstate versions of what the eight Los
Angeles-area counties have done in the
Southern California Hazardous Waste
Management Project.
"The paralyzing fear associated with
hazardous wastes provokes opposition to
siting new facilities and resistance to
using existing ones to dispose of highly
hazardous wastes. Until we can create
processes that the public perceives are
fair, open, and equitable and until the
public is convinced that wastes can be
disposed of safely...we can expect
continued opposition. The role of the
federal government in all of this is to
facilitate the process by encouraging
industry, in conjunction with state and
local governments, to overcome
concerns about health risks and equity.
We at EPA stand ready to help in this
endeavor." D
OCTOBER 1984
-------
Why We Have a
Hazardous Waste Problem
by H. Lanier Hickman, Jr.
It seems relatively easy in 1984 to see
I where we are going with our efforts to
protect public health and environmental
quality from improper hazardous waste
management. But it makes sense to look
back and see how we got to the point
that required the strength of RCRA and
the power of Superfund in order for us to
manage our waste streams. A backward
glance should enable us to make better
decisions about how to implement both
programs.
Wastes that have now been identified
as hazardous have been with us for a
long time. Why is it that now we seem to
be experiencing problems with these
wastes when we did not have those
difficulties in the past?
There are many reasons. Our urban
centers are more concentrated now. The
worfd of chemistry has expanded greatly.
It takes time for the land to react to
abuse. There are fewer places to
leave our wastes around without
causing problems. Above all we are
simply more aware of the health and
environmental dangers associated with
hazardous wastes.
However, there are, in my opinion,
several other basic reasons which got us
to the point that required the dramatic
steps demanded by the Resource
Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA).
The reasons have to do with history and
national policy.
First, our natural inclination in this
country is to leave people alone and not
over-regulate them. We made a rather
large effort in the 18th century to assure
that the individual could do what he
wanted to, within a limited number of
society-imposed constraints. This
national attitude of freedom is clearly
reflected in our reluctance to regulate
and enforce, and is precisely why EPA is
constantly buffeted by outside forces and
(H Lanier Hickman, Jr., is a former Director of
Operations at EPA, with responsibility for
the Office of Solid Waste. He ts now
executive director of the Governmental
Refuse Collection and Disposal Association.)
will always remain at the center of
controversy on environmental issues.
Regulators are not popular. No one in the
U.S. likes to be told what to do or how
to do it.
Our national "hands off" policy was
clearly reflected in the way state (and
federal) government addressed
health and environmental issues. Prior to
World War II, there were no
environmental regulatory programs.
Efforts by state government were
centered around preventive medicine.
(For an environmentalist, this can be
loosely translated as sanitation.) The
activities of both federal and state
governments tended to be advisory and
persuasive. No one understood that poor
solid waste management practices would
result in more than a fly and mosquito
problem. No authority existed to assure
that solid waste management for the
good of society was practiced.
Rivers handled our liquid wastes, and
the open burning dump1 took care of our
solid wastes. But with the end of World
War II and the economic prosperity that
followed, the amounts and types of
wastes present in our society expanded
exponentially. At first, we continued to
deal with those waste streams in the
same manner that we dealt with the
lesser amounts that were present before
the war. The same technology was used,
and the same institutional structures
were in place to see to the management
of these wastes. For the most part, these
wastes went into the streams and skies
of America. The balance went to the
land, where it was browsed over by hogs
and burnt as an offering to our lack of
environmental consciousness.
Water pollution and air pollution
control legislation were not even passed
until the 1950s and 1960s! It may be hard
for many of us to realize that until then,
scant federal attention was focused on
cleaning up the rivers and skies of
America. These landmark efforts by the
federal government led to the
development of federal and state
regulatory programs to require adequate
treatment of wastewater and waste air
streams before they were discharged into
the ambient environment. But as
wastewater treatment plants and air
pollution control systems were built, the
wastes from such efforts were diverted to
the land. No legislation was present to
dictate how the land was to be protected
because few people considered
protection by the federal government
necessary.
The land was protected for the most
part by a myriad of controls emanating
from local government. State
government and federal government
controls have been historically weak;
they remain so today. Local government
control, however, is directed at protecting
the use of land — not its quality.
Consequently, there were no controls to
assure that diversions of concentrated
waste streams from the air and water to
the land did not result in pollution of the
land.
The technology for managing wastes
as they were diverted to the land was not
adequate for the types of wastes
received. The concept of sanitary
landfilling did not really get established
until after World War II, and even then its
ability to deal with liquids, sludges, and
the persistent chemicals in hazardous
waste was not adequate. Pits, ponds and
lagoons utilized for these wastes were
inadequate, too. More sophisticated
technologies such as incineration were
not considered, since the cheap option of
using the land remained.
Authority over land disposal was
limited for state governments, and
nonexistent for the federal government.
Even now, many states are just getting
the authority to regulate wastes which
are disposed of on site by a generator.
Solid waste management programs
rested in the lower echelon levels of
health departments, agencies notorious
for a non-regulatory posture. Therefore,
while we were building state air and
10
EPA JOURNAL
-------
water pollution control programs, we
failed to recognize that the introduction
of these waste streams to the land was
creating more complex problems for the
future.
The 1970 amendments to the Solid
Waste Disposal Act began a reversal of
this process by looking at what we were
doing with these wastes. The emphasis
shifted from waste disposal to waste
management and resource recovery.
Existing regulatory and institutional
arrangements were inadequate to assure
the proper management of hazardous
wastes. Inaction would produce
increased ground-water contamination,
adverse public health and economic
impact, and environmental quality
degradation. RCRA was the response
to that situation, and could just
as aptly have been named the Land
Pollution Act of 1976. It and Superfund
are designed to assure that we don't
continue to abuse the land.
The reasons we are where we are
today are therefore fairly simple:
• As we generated more hazardous
waste, our disposal technologies were
limited to land disposal, a technology not
adequate for many of these wastes.
• The efforts to clean up the air and the
water greatly exacerbated the use of the
land for many complex wastes.
• A regulatory and institutional
framework to insure proper management
of these wastes was not present.
No one individual or group can be
blamed for our hazardous waste
problems. But today we must better
understand the interrelationships
between our physical and societal world
to assure that the quality of life for future
generations of Americans is at least as
good as the one we inherited. D
Past practices, present problems: In
798."
Vent,
County, Missouri, a
.
cont.r
lots ,.
dust
OCTOBER 1984
11
-------
Household
Hazardous Waste:
Everyone's
Concern
_'•
...
by Jack Lewis
In the frantic rush of modern life, the
I average American family hardly has
time to apply advanced scientific
reasoning to the disposal of everyday
garbage. It is currently estimated that the
average American generates about one
ton of waste, hazardous and otherwise,
every year. If only for rhetorical
purposes, therefore, it makes sense to
imagine each American house and
apartment as a mini-factory devoted to a
cottage industry of highly dubious social
value: namely, the daily production of
several pounds of trash. Mingled in with
the eggshells, bones, cardboard, and
tinfoil is a veritable pharmacy of
chemicals, often dangerous to humans
when ingested, touched, or breathed
either separately or in combination with
other substances.
Products containing toxic chemicals
include: garden pesticides; weed killers;
fungicides; paint, paint thinner, and paint
remover; dry cleaning fluids and other
organic solvents; wood preservatives and
strippers; used motor oil; brake fluid and
antifreeze; swimming pool chemicals and
muriatic acid; furniture polishes;
deodorizers and spot removers,
frequently packaged in aerosol cans;
disinfectants; bleach; et cetera, ad
infinitum.
The first person to discover the hazards
lurking within each bulging trashbag is
the trash collector, and there have been
scattered reports of alarming injury to
trash collectors handling their noxious
cargo. However, it is the social, not the
individual, costs of foolish household
waste disposal practices that have
prompted industry, government, and
private citizens to take arms against this
particular problem. Beginning at the
grassroots level in the Pacific Northwest,
consciousness of the dangers in
household waste has spread like wildfire
throughout the United States in the
matter of a few years.
Lest public ignorance and hysteria
create the phantasmagoria of thatched
cottage Love Canals, waste disposal
(Jack Lewis is Assistant Editor of EPA
Journal.)
Trash pickup day in a suburban neighborhood. The average American generates
one ton of waste a year, but has little information on how to dispose properly of
the hazardous household chemicals that make up part of that waste.
experts both in the private and the public
sector have launched innovative
campaigns designed to educate the
public, while at the same time slowly
systematizing the disposal of hazardous
wastes generated daily at the household
level, At the present time, locally-based
programs are underway in such states as
Alaska, California, Washington,
Massachusetts, and Florida.
By far the most thorough program
undertaken to date is the "Amnesty
Days" campaign launched by the State of
Florida in cooperation with Triangle
Resources Industries, a division of SCA
Services, Inc. The term "amnesty" is
used only in a figurative sense, for as
SCA itself cautions participating
households:
"Chemical waste generated by
households [is] exempted from federal
and state regulations governing proper
management and disposal of chemical
wastes. Residents participating in these
programs do not have to worry about
being arrested for storing chemical waste
in an environmentally unsound manner.
The regulations come into effect only
when the wastes are brought to the
collection site. At that time, SCA
Services, Inc., becomes liable for the
proper handling and treatment of that
waste."
"Proper handling and treatment"
equates, at the present time, to the
careful transporting of all wastes out of
Florida to RCRA-approved waste
treatment and disposal sites in other, less
densely populated southeastern states.
Launched in the spring of 1984, and
thus far tested successfully in the Miami
and Tampa metropolitan areas. Amnesty
Days is the driving wedge in a massive
effort to protect Florida's already
imperiled underground sources of
drinking and industrial water. Mobile
collection sites, which are all that public
fears and limited funds permit at the
moment, will — it is hoped — alert the
Florida public to the need for publicly
funded collection sites, open year-round
on a permanent basis.
Florida's aquifers, including the
world-famous Biscayne Aquifer, have
water tables unusually close to the
surface, and this creates potential
hazards in the most rapidly urbanizing
and industrializing state in the nation
(see story on page 24). To cite but one
example, do-it-yourselfers who change
their own oil and then dump the old oil
in a nearby field or drain it down the
nearest gutter run the risk of polluting
thousands of gallons of precious ground
water. Alarming evidence of
ground-water (and surface-water)
pollution in Florida and elsewhere
12
EPA JOURNAL
-------
suggests that orderly waste disposal is
essential if America's vital resources are
to be preserved.
Studies commissioned recently by EPA
indicate that industrial chemicals are
already present in the underground
drinking water supplies of nearly
one-third of American cities with
populations over 10,000, and the
percentage grows larger with each
passing day. The unanswerable question
at this point is what proportion of that
pollution emanates from factories and
what proportion from the homes of
American consumers stumped by the
problem of how to get rid of the
ultra-sophisticated packaged chemicals
they have purchased and used for any
number of sane, rational reasons. David
Galvin, an official who works for Seattle
Metro, has some tantalizing information
to contribute to public discourse on this
subject:
"While researching [wastewater treatment]
systems, we figurefdj that even small
amounts disposed by res/dents could
represents major problem. Industrial
waste makes up 15 to 20 percent of our
flow. We started sampling the residential
flow. We discovered some fish kills
caused by people disposing of pesticides
down drains."
Galvin and his colleagues also found that
even the most responsible citizens were
confronting a bewildering maze of
well-intentioned advice depending on
which "expert" they consulted about the
proper means of getting rid of hazardous
waste: "If you called one agency, you
were told to throw unneeded solvents in
the toilet; if you called another - ours, for
instance - you were told to do anything
but that; and if you called another group,
you might be told to just put it out with
the trash," Galvin reports. "Of course, if
you called a refuse hauler, you were told
to do anything but that." When such
confusion reigns among "experts," panic
can replace an equally dangerous apathy
among the general public.
EPA now hopes to take an active role
in coordinating the energetic state and
local forces emerging, both in the public
and the private sector, to attack this
problem. EPA encourages such state
initiatives as Florida's Amnesty Days and
California's oil recycling program
because the agency sees the problem of
household hazardous waste as falling
properly within the purview of state and
local authorities. However, EPA does
envision a role for itself in spreading
awareness of household hazardous waste
disposal problems to states and localities
as yet less attuned to this extremely
challenging and important national
problem. D
Some Tips About Hazardous Waste
Every reader of this magazine would
do well to ponder how, in a very real
sense, his or her waste basket or
garbage pail is the tip of the national
"wasteberg," the exact dimensions of
which we are only just beginning to
fathom. We all can and should take
immediate action to minimize its as
yet unforeseeable perils, both to
ourselves and to our country. SCA
Services, Inc., and the Florida
Department of Environmental
Regulation - the originators of
Florida's successful Amnesty Days
household hazardous waste disposal
drive - have these specific suggestions
to offer:
DO'S:
Keep wastes separated from each
other.
Follow directions on the label,
including recommended methods of
disposal.
Avoid contact with skin and eyes.
Keep children and pets away from
hazardous materials.
Store chemicals in a dry place. Many
chemicals, particularly those packaged
in cardboard containers, absorb
moisture.
Take used motor oil to a local auto
service center for recycling.
Purchase alternative household
cleaning products which are not toxic.
Reduce your waste and save money
by purchasing only materials you need
and will use.
Businesses should consider waste
exchanges.
Talk to local officials about temporary
storage facilities.
DON'TS.
Do not mix hazardous materials
together.
Do not flush waste down the toilet.
Do not pour waste down household
drains.
Do not bury waste in the yard.
Do not pour waste down storm drains.
Do not throw away waste in
garbage—it will end up in a landfill
where it can enter the ground water
and contaminate drinking water
supplies.
(Reprinted with permission from SCA Services,
inc., and the Florida Department of Environmental
Regulation)
The Municipality of Metropolitan Seattle
Household Hazardous Waste Disposal
Project suggests that consumers begin
shopping differently in the first place so
as to avoid awkward and time-
consuming hazardous waste disposal
problems:
ALTERNATIVES TO COMMERCIALLY
AVAILABLE PRODUCTS
IF YOU HAVE THIS
Ammonia*
and soap
Chlorine*
bleach
Cooking oil
Cornstarch
General purpose
household
cleaner
(powder)
Laundry
detergent
Mineral oil
YOU MAY NOT NEED THIS . . .
Glass polish
Disinfectant cleaner
Mildew-stain remover
Mildew preventative
Toilet bowl cleaner
Tub and tile cleaner
Nonstick cooking spray
Laundry starch powder
Carpet and rug shampoo
Some stain removers
Floor polish remover
Scouring powder
Tub and tile cleaner
Oven cleaner
Laundry presoak
Some household oils
Some rust preventative
oils
Scouring powder Stainless steel cleaner
Aluminum cleaner
Soap and water
Vinegar
Washing soda
Some jewelry cleaner
Plant insecticides
Plastic cleaners
Some stain removers
Stainless steel cleaner
Coffeepot cleaner
Some stain removers
Detergent boosters
Drain cleaners
Household detergents
Water softeners
*Note: Never mix ammonia and bleach, or
get them near each other. The result is a
deadly poisonous chloramine gas.
(Reprinted with permission from the Municipality of
Metropolitan Seattle (Metro) Household Hazardous
Waste Disposal Project)
OCTOBER 1984
13
-------
Chemical Detectives at
Work:
EPA's Environmental
Response Team
With help from two contractors (backs to
camera), team members Harry Allen, with
earphones, and George Prince (right) check
contamination at American Creosote Works
in Pensaco/a, Florida. At the inactive wood
treating facility, polluted wastewater was
discharged into un/ined percolation ponds.
Here a contractor (left) takes core samples
while Allen, using his headset, maintains
radio contact with shore.
by Susan Tejada
Medalists: In December 1983, tin-
I nvuiinmcnt.il H<"..ii'itr,i: /(.vim received an
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wr .-/<.', / to r, team members Mike
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-------
Knowing what has worked and what
hasn't in incidents all over the country is
valuable information. "That's how we
can help the On-Scene Coordinator —
with guidance on what we've seen work
well," says John Gilbert, Chief of ERT's
Operational Support Section. "We try to
eliminate problems before they occur."
With so many years of experience,
have team members reached the point
where one emergency seems pretty
much like another? "Just the opposite,"
declares Rod Turpin. "Certain aspects are
the same, but no two sites are alike, and
that's what makes the job interesting."
Turpin cites the example of a pesticide
facility in Mission, Texas, where the ERT
helped the region investigate soii
contamination. "Pesticide facilities are
relatively routine. But in Mission, the
people who lived around the facility
happened to be of Native American
origin, and studies have indicated that
this group and other similar groups may
have a greater tendency to retain the
chemicals that go into pesticides. So
there was a whole new 'people' aspect to
that site that wouldn't necessarily have
been noticed by someone else. You have
OCTOBER 1984
to have a lot of sites under your belt
before you can start to see relationships
like this."
Weather Extremes
Even the weather has an effect on
responses. Heat stress is common, but all
too commonly overlooked. No air passes
through the protective rubber clothing
that workers have to wear on many sites.
The result is, to put it mildly, heavy
sweating. Working in a hot and humid
climate, surrounded perhaps by fire or
smoke, a person in this gear may be
forced to limit work to 10-minute
stretches.
Freezing weather can be as bad as hot.
Snow can conceal hazardous objects and
obstruct removal operations. Cold can
cause equipment to malfunction.
Lafornara recalls the time when he was
monitoring the air in a Poughkeepsie,
New York, dye factory that had burned
down. The temperature was 9 degrees
below zero, and the wind was blowing.
The On-Scene Coordinator who
accompanied him inside the factory
heard a hissing noise. It turned out to be
the sound of air escaping from
Lafornara's tank.
"Because of the cold," Lafornara
explains, "one of the seals on my
respirator had broken. I had just enough
air to get back out."
Data interpretation doesn't sound like
exciting work, but it is one of the more
important jobs the ERT does. Many
response personnel, including local fire
fighters, state troopers, and technical
crews, know how to operate various
tracking instruments. They have been
trained to monitor the air, take soil
samples, and measure contamination
levels in water. But figuring out the
significance of the readings is another
job altogether, one that may fall to the
ERT.
According to team member George
Prince, the ERT will determine the
reservoir of pollutants at a site, ascertain
what mechanisms of transport the
pollutants are taking, predict what impact
the pollutants will have, and recommend
corrective action to the On-Scene
Coordinator.
The data aren't always what they seem
to be at first. When Lafornara was working
on the dye factory fire, he was part of a
team that had to monitor the air in every
15
-------
Team members George Prince (left) and
Royal Nadeau conduct test at Drake
Chemical, a Superfund site in Lock Haven,
Pennsylvania. Using a portable augur, they
drilled through the ice on a frozen pond to
collect samples of water and sediment.
The team has to cope with weather-related
problems ranging from heat stress and
dehydration to equipment malfunctions.
16
EPA JOURNAL
-------
apartment in an adjacent high rise
building. The residents had been
evacuated because of the fire, and city
officials wanted to determine if the
building was safe for re-entry.
Wearing their response gear, the team
walked into one apartment. The reading
on their photo-ionization meter jumped
up dramatically, and continued to rise as
they moved further inside. They got to
the kitchen. There was a box. They
picked it up. The reading jumped off the
meter. A team member slowly lifted the
cover.
Inside was a batch of homemade
chocolate chip cookies, freshly baked
right before the evacuation. The organic
chemicals that form aroma in food had
accumulated to a high but harmless level
in the confined space of the closed
apartment, and the team hadn't been
able to detect the source because of the
respirators they were wearing.
The ERT is responsible for several
innovations in hazardous incident
response procedures. One is the outdoor
use of instruments that were formerly
used only in factories to measure total
vapor concentrations. Another is the
development and use of new technology.
One of EPA's research and development
laboratories is located in the same New
Jersey facility that houses the ERT and,
according to Dr. Royal Nadeau, Chief of
the team's Environmental Impact Section,
"When we have ideas or problems, we
have an open door to R&D. They develop
new equipment and we use it."
This symbiotic relationship has
produced, among other things, a mobile
laboratory, a mobile carbon adsorption
unit, and a mobile incinerator.
"Sniff a Little Waste"
Perhaps ERT's most significant
innovation has been the development of
standards and procedures for site safety
and worker protection. According to
Steve Dorrler, before the ERT began six
years ago, there were no procedures at
all in this area. Team members who
worked in emergency programs at that
time recall incidents when, completely
unprotected, many responders clambered
over leaking chemical tank cars or
suctioned PCBs off harbor bottoms.
Lafornara calls this the "John Wayne
attitude." "The approach was to go out
there and sniff a little hazardous waste,
and then come back and report about it,"
he says. "We would evaluate the hazards
to the community, without considering
the hazards to ourselves."
Now, though, EPA is leading the way
in establishing and requiring adherence
to certain safety procedures. The ERT has
set up four levels of protection, from
lowest — coveralls and a hard hat, to
highest — self-contained breathing
apparatus and fully encapsulating butyl
rubber "moon suit."
ERT members turn in a safety sheet on
each response, setting forth a site safety
plan and following up with a report on
plan compliance. In training courses that
ERT member Tom Sell coordinates for
response personnel from across the
country, instructors stress when to use
each level and how to implement other
worker safety procedures like medical
monitoring and decontamination.
Now, says Lafornara, "when we do go
on site, we're protected to the degree
that it's possible to protect somebody. If
you can't protect the worker, there's no
use doing the job. Protective equipment
exists, and protective equipment should
be used."
Another improvement that has taken
place over the years is the elimination of
turf battles. According to Dorrler, "so
many agencies once claimed to be in
charge that you almost had to fight your
way into a train wreck. Nowadays, with
state, local, regional, and national
contingency plans, these roles are pre-
identified."
Today, says John Gilbert, there's "an
attitude of,'Let's go out there and get the
job done.' If you've got to stay up all
night, you stay up. If your staying up can
let three other exhausted people get
some sleep, you do it, and the next night
it rotates around. You don't pull rank.
You don't play games. You're ail out
there working for the same goal."
This commitment and sense of
urgency, so often critical to response
operations, is what make the assistance
of the ERT valuable, according to Tom
Massey, an EPA official with years of
experience as an On-Scene Coordinator.
"In a situation," says Massey, "where
real-time problems require real-time
solutions, people on the ERT can equate
scientific data to the urgency of the
moment. They can scientifically evaluate
conditions right on the scene, not back in
the laboratory when it might be too late.
They can give you information in
minutes, not months."
Working in hazardous incident
response is no cushy job. The work is
physically stressful — workers may have
to tote 40-pound air tanks on their backs
for hours, slosh around in cumbersome
and clammy protective suits, and
regularly contend with heat stress. The
work is also mentally stressful — that's
dangerous stuff, not peanut butter, the
workers handle all the time.
Responses often take place in an
atmosphere of controversy, with people
responsible for creating a hazardous
situation complaining about EPA's
overreaction, and residents complaining
about not enough action.
In addition, ERT members spend at
least 40 percent of their time away from
home base, out on sites. That's 40
percent of the time that they're separated
from their families — a 40 percent
chance that they'll miss their kids'
birthdays or have to cancel their
vacations at the last minute.
Given the stresses of the job, one
might expect the burnout rate to be high
and the retention rate to be low. Not so.
Since the ERT set up shop in 1978, there
has been almost no turnover. Team
members agree that, despite the stress,
job satisfaction is high. Each worker's
efforts are critical to the success of an
operation; feedback is immediate; and
there's something new almost every day.
The satisfactions of the job evidently
outweigh the problems because team
members, most of whom are in their
thirties, have a hard time thinking of
what they would want to do when
they're too old to do what they're doing
now. "It would be very difficult to go
back to a job as a scientist in the lab
once you've had something like this,"
concedes Lafornara.
The work that the Environmental
Response Team and other hazardous
incident response personnel do helps
protect the nation, but it does not
eliminate the problems of toxic wastes.
In cases of abandoned hazardous waste
sites, some damage may already be
irreversible. In other cases, workers may
be able to remove containerized
chemicals fairly quickly, but the task of
removing or cleaning contaminated soil
and water is more difficult and costly.
Sometimes the best that can be done is
to fence off an area and keep it secured
until a feasible cleanup plan can be
formulated.
Still, it is reassuring to know that if the
technology does exist to solve a
problem, the ERT and EPA's regional
emergency response teams will probably
know about it and will be able to help
state, local, and industry response
personnel implement it. "We've been
talking about the 12 people on the ERT,"
cautions John Gilbert, "but there are a
whole lot more than 12 people doing all
this work. It takes a lot of little pieces to
put a response together. ERT is just one
of those pieces." D
(The brochure, Environmental Response
Team, contains more information on the
work of the ERT. Copies are available
from the EPA Public Information Center,
820 Quincy St., NW, Washington, DC
20011.)
OCTOBER 1984
17
-------
Taking Emergency Action
under Superfund
What happens when a truck overturns
on a highway, spilling gallons of
hazardous substances onto the road?
What happens when a factory is
abandoned, with containers of hazardous
substances left to deteriorate on the
premises? What happens when someone
secretly dumps hazardous wastes in a
secluded wooded area in the middle of
the night, or when a factory fire
discharges hazardous chemicals into the
air and water?
In each of these cases EPA can act fast
to remove any danger from hazardous
substances.The front line for such an
18
EPA JOURNAL
-------
operation, called a removal action, is the
Superfund emergency response program.
To date, emergency removal actions
have been taken under the Superfund
program at 392 sites.
Typical emergencies for Superfund
removal action include illegal dumping,
transportation accidents, and release of
contaminants at uncontrolled hazardous
waste sites, abandoned facilities, or
operating facilities where fires or
explosions have occurred. Typical
responses include sampling to determine
type, location, and level of
contamination; fencing; drum removal
and disposal; lagoon and pond control;
monitoring; and provision of alternative
water supplies.
In front of a pile of contaminated soil,
workmen cover deteriorated drums of
lead-based paints with plastic sheetm:;
sheeting will prevent the lead from leaching
into the soil during wet weather. A builder
preparing the ground for house construction
discovered the buried drums in Calverton,
Mary/and. Concerned about off-site
migration of lead, EPA initiated a removal
action to dispose of the drums and pot
soil.
EPA carries out removal actions on
land and in non-tidal inland waters. The
U.S. Coast Guard handles emergencies in
coastal and inland tidal waters, the Great
Lakes, and certain ports and harbors.
Ninety percent of all emergency
cleanups and removals are handled by
the parties responsible for creating the
emergencies in the first place- usually the
generators, transporters, or disposers of
the waste. In the remaining 10 percent of
cases, EPA or the Coast Guard either
leads the cleanup or assists state and
local agencies in doing so.
Variables
Dangers posed by hazardous substances
vary greatly, and responses vary
accordingly. One response may only
require disposal of a few drums washed
up on a beach. Another may be a
complex technological job involving
unknown substances at an abandoned
site. Because of this, the cost and length
of Superfund removals also vary. In most
cases, a removal action must be
terminated within a six-month and $1
million limit. The average completion
time for removals initiated in fiscal year
1984 is 33 days. The average cost of
those initiated and completed in fiscal
year 1984 is about $162,000.
EPA has completed emergency
responses in 46 states and U.S.
territories. Of the states, Texas had the
most responses—30, followed by
Pennsylvania with 27, California and
Michigan with 20 each, and Illinois
with 17.
Top priority
Removal actions are EPA's number one
priority. The injunction to "stabilize
imminent threats at uncontrolled
hazardous waste sites through Superfund
removal actions" is at the top of the
agency priority list for fiscal years
1985-1986.
To address this priority, EPA has been
transferring certain operations from
headquarters to regional offices so that
regions can respond to emergencies
more quickly. For example, regional
administrators now have authority to
commit up to $1 million to start removal
actions without waiting for prior
headquarters approval. Some regional
administrators have delegated similar
authority for up to $50,000 to On-Scene
Coordinators, who direct the on-site
response. Also, regional offices now
establish their own financial management
procedures and prepare their own
interagency agreements for removal
actions.
In addition to removal action,
Superfund specifies another kind of
hazardous waste response: remedial
action. The two types of responses differ
in purpose and duration. A fast-track
removal action is a first-aid effort to meet
an emergency. A remedial action is a
long-term effort to provide a permanent
remedy to an environmental problem
that is serious but not immediately
life-threatening.
EPA has established a national priority
list of hazardous waste sites, ranked by
their potential threat to health and the
environment (see item on page 31). Sites
on the list are candidates for remedial
action. Remedial cleanups are complex
and can require several years of
engineering analysis and design work. As
one more way to accelerate hazardous
waste cleanups, EPA will, when
necessary, take emergency remova!
action at remedial sites, concurrent with
developing long- term solutions for those
sites. [
(A 28-minute videotape documentary looks
at a removal operation at the abandoned
hazardous waste site in Maryland pictured
on the cover. The presentation shows the
activities involved in investigating such a
site, safety precautions required, and
equipment used in cleanup. It features
interviews with local residents, and with
federal, state, and local officials. Copies of
the documentary, "Toxic Wastes
Discovered in Cecil Quarry, " are available
for loan from EPA's regional Offices of
Public Affairs, or from EPA, Office of Public
Affairs (A-107), Room W327C. 401 M St.
SW, Washington, DC 20460.)
OCTOBER 1984
19
-------
Choices in
Disposal of
Hazardous
Waste
by Donald White
and Bob Burke
The discovery of thousands of
hazardous waste dumps in recent years
has made the public acutely aware of
the casual and often illicit ways that
many dangerous wastes have
traditionally been disposed of.
Government and the private sector face
a complex challenge of immense
proportions in finding new and cost
effective ways to safely dispose of the
tons of hazardous wastes that are
generated each year in the United
States.
This article describes the major
problems associated with disposing of
many forms of hazardous wastes in
land facilities, and several alternative
technologies for treating and recovering
them that are being examined by EPA.
Continued disposal of many forms of
hazardous wastes in land facilities can
be both shortsighted and
environmentally harmful. The fact that
land disposal generally costs far less
than most other treatment or recovery
alternatives serves to obscure its serious
long-term problems.
A recent survey by EPA of more than
900 waste disposal facilities, for example,
produced disturbing findings about the
environmental and health problems
attributable to the disposal of certain
hazardous wastes in land disposal
facilities. The surveyed areas included
both active and inactive facilities that
ranged from landfills and lagoons to
tanks and open dumps. Contaminated
soils or polluted ground and surface
(Donald White is program manager of the
Treatment, Recycling and Reduction
Program in EPA's Office of Solid Waste.
Bob Burke is on the staff of the agency's
Office of Public Affairs.)
water were suspected or documented at
about 90 percent of the sites where
wastes apparently had leaked into the
neighboring environment. About 25
percent of the sites showed direct and
specific threats to human health and the
environment, including contamination of
drinking water supplies or property
damage.
To prevent future problems such as
these, EPA has issued a series of
regulations for disposing of wastes on
land under the Resource Conservation
and Recovery Act (RCRA). These set forth
the responsibilities for generators and
transporters of hazardous wastes, as well
as owners and operators of hazardous
waste treatment, storage or disposal
(TSD) facilities. Standards have been
established to prevent hazardous wastes
from getting into the environment during
the time a land disposal facility is
operating, and for minimizing damage
once it ceases operation.
But even the toughest regulations can't
assure the long-term containment of
many kinds of hazardous wastes from a
facility to the neighboring environment,
and subsequently to wherever the forces
of nature choose to carry them. Liners,
for example, which are required to
contain wastes in landfills, aren't
foolproof. Clay liners can be an effective
barrier for containing most kinds of
wastes, but they can be degraded by
some hazardous materials, and some
leakage occurs. Synthetic liners also
provide a strong measure of protection,
but their service life is more limited, and
they can be penetrated by pinhole size
punctures, or by the transport of vapors
and volatile compounds through the liner
systems.
In view of limitations such as these,
there is a growing consensus that wastes
from land disposal facilities eventually
find their way into the environment at
some unknown rate and concentration,
and that the nation should move as
rapidly as possible toward treatment and
recovery as the preferred methods for
managing the nation's hazardous wastes.
In the currently drafted (1984) RCRA
reauthorization bills, Congress has
proposed that the land disposal of
particular wastes be prohibited unless a
finding can be made that human health
and the environment would be protected
during the full life of their disposal. Even
without this legislation, EPA would
proceed with land disposal restrictions in
a similar manner.
Alternative Treatment
Technologies to Land Disposal
The major mission of EPA's Treatment,
Recycling and Reduction Program is to
search out, test and promote feasible
technologies for treating and recovering
•••
Operator mans the control room at SCA
Chemical Services incineration facility in
Chicago. Conditions inside the incinerator
are monitored around the clock.
those kinds of hazardous waste that are
ultimately banned from land disposal.
Here are the major treatment
technologies that this office is currently
examining:
• Biological treatment processes that
employ living microorganisms to feed on
and decompose certain wastes.
• Dechlorination that detoxifies
chlorinated substances by adding
nontoxic products such as hydrogen.
• Carbon adsorption involving the use of
specially treated carbon to pick up
wastes, a technique which has proven
particularly useful for removing organic
compounds from wastewater.
• High temperature incineration leading
to thermal destruction of wastes which is
effective in removing many organic
compounds.
• Neutralization of wastes that are either
too acidic or overly alkaline.
Neutralization is basically accomplished
by combining proper concentrations of
acid substances or wastes with alkaline
substances or wastes.
• Oxidation of primarily organic
materials such as cyanides, phenols and
organic sulfur compounds, essentially
involving a chemical reaction
transforming these hazardous wastes
into harmless carbon dioxide and water.
• Precipitation technologies which turn
certain compounds in liquid wastes into
solid materials that are suitable for
EPA JOURNAL
-------
Main combustion chamber of the Chicago incinerator is in the foreground On cilh-,
of it arc the two scrubbing towers — a vertical pack scrubber and on ionizing wet
scrubber. In the rear is the stack: and, next to that, the lime tower ased in ti-
neutralization process.
sedimentation. Precipitation is
particularly useful for removing metals
from water.
• Recovery/reuse/'recycle processes
which not only remove hazardous wastes
from the environment but provide for
their productive reuse. Solvents, acids
and metals are among the products
frequently recovered.
• Solidification and stabilization
processes which ultimately turn wastes
into a solid mass. The wastes cannot
then be easily transported by water or by
other liquids into the environment.
Our existing research suggests that
many of these alternative technologies
can be used or are already being used to
treat and recover various kinds of
OCTOBER 1984
hazardous wastes. Many solvents, for
example, are already being recycled or
incinerated. But it is going to take an
impressive amount of future research
and field work as well as an ongoing
partnership with the private sector to
make sure that these alternatives are
wholly feasible.
A major problem with most
alternatives is that they currently cost
more than land disposal. A limited study
of 11 Superfund sites, for example,
estimated that the average cost of
incinerating wastes was approximately 8
to 10 times higher than that paid for
landfilling, while the cost for solidifying
wastes prior to landfilling averaged
approximately 3 to 4 times higher.
Clearly, we must find ways to narrow
these cost differentials.
EPA's Treatment,
Recycling and Reduction Program
EPA's Treatment, Recycling and
Reduction Program has been created to
study these various treatment
technologies. The program is specifically
directed toward gathering and
disseminating technical information on
currently available or emerging treatment
and recovery technology and on existing
treatment capacity. A regulatory
framework will also be established to set
treatment standards and compliance
dates if needed to control certain
chemicals.
Initial activities are focused on the
technologies available to treat the
specific wastes which will most likely be
the first banned from land disposal.
Among the present candidates are
wastes containing solvents, dioxins,
metals, halogenated organic compounds,
corrosives, cyanides and other reactives.
Reports on these wastes and on
technologies available to treat them
should be finished by the end of 1984.
Additional studies addressing the costs,
effectiveness, development time, and the
current capacity of specific treatment
technologies will begin shortly.
In addition to technical and regulatory
efforts, a three-way information program
will be undertaken with industry,
hazardous waste regulating agencies,
and the public to exchange information
about EPA's alternative technology
program, the results of our technical
studies, and what others are finding.
Field measurements and demonstration
projects will also start in 1985 to evaluate
the applicability of certain technologies
to particular wastes. These studies are
needed to fill data gaps in the existing
technical literature and will be conducted
primarily by EPA's Office of Research and
Development.
While the Treatment, Recycling and
Reduction Program is charged
specifically with studying alternatives for
disposing of wastes in land disposal
facilities, the applications should benefit
several EPA programs that are concerned
with preventing waste products from
threatening public health or
contaminating the environment. In some
instances, such as with RCRA and
Superfund, the relationships between
regulatory goals and alternative
technologies are direct and obvious. But
they are also vital for achieving the goals
that have been established for several
other mandates, from Clean Water Act
and Safe Drinking Water Act programs to
the agency's new ground-water
protection strategy. A successful search
for the right alternatives to land disposal
will make the agency's regulatory burden
somewhat easier and more manageable.
G
21
-------
Cleaning Up
Federal Facilities
by Josephine S. Cooper
EPA Assistant Administrator
for External Affairs
On September 13 at n, Defense
Secretary Caspar W< • ! PA
Administrator Wi/liam /-it; i . (seated, I
' :.i joint resolution iiirdijing
cooper citivt "i the
quality of (.' ./ The resolution
covers more than 50 Department of
• :.';l filiation-, in '• ;ea.
Looking on, I to r, are Maryland Reps. Roy
Dyson and Maijono Hall, and Virginia Sen.
John Warner
The executive branch of the federal
government owns 387,396 buildings
spread among 27,071 installations, on
729 million acres of land. Many are
hospitals, laboratories, manufacturing
plants, and other technical installations
which generate toxic wastes. If
uncontrolled or untreated, these
emissions pose the same problems that
privately-owned facilities do.
The Compliance Program
Under its operating statutes and
Executive Order 12088, "Federal
Compliance with Pollution Control
Standards," EPA is not only charged with
the enforcement of pollution standards
for individuals and businesses, but also
for federal facilities. The key to the
effectiveness of the agency's Federal
Facilities Compliance Program lies in
obtaining the cooperation and interest of
other federal agencies in meeting
environmental standards. EPA's Office of
External Affairs serves as the National
Program Manager and the focal point of
this effort. Within the Office of External
Affairs, the day-to-day program
management and coordination with other
federal agencies is handled by the Office
of Federal Activities, headed by Dr. Allan
Hirsch.
The agency's federal facilities
compliance role involves insuring that all
federal agency officials understand that
they must comply with national
environmental laws, regulations, and
standards. EPA is charged with providing
22
advice and assistance concerning
compliance, and conducting reviews and
inspection of federal facilities. The
agency works cooperatively with specific
agencies and facilities to bring them into
compliance and to take necessary
administrative actions under Executive
Order 12088 to assure compliance.
The federal government facilities
comprise, depending on the method of
measurement, from two to five percent
of all pollution control facilities in the
United States.
Of the 544 major facilities failing to
comply with the effluent limitations
required by the Clean Water Act at the
beginning of fiscal year 1984, 32 (or six
percent) were federal facilities. Of the 328
significant violators of clean air
standards, six (or two percent) were
federal facilities. Of the 523 major
hazardous waste handling facilities with
significant violations, 30 (or six percent)
were federal facilities.
EPA, through the Office of Federal
Activities and the affected program and
regional offices, has taken a number of
steps to improve the federal compliance
record.
Defense Department Compliance
Because the majority of federal
installations needing pollution abatement
facilities are owned or operated by the
Department of Defense (DOD), effective
federal facilities compliance demands a
solid working arrangement between EPA
and DOD, at both the national and
regional levels. In the past year, EPA and
DOD have undertaken several initiatives
to improve and clarify that relationship.
Among these initiatives were the
negotiation and signing of a
memorandum of understanding for
cleanup of hazardous waste sites at DOD
facilities and an agreement on PCB
disposal timetables and EPA inspections of
Defense-related PCB disposal shipments.
Of particular note is a joint EPA/DOD
initiative to give special attention to
facilities on the Chesapeake Bay, as part
of the accelerated state/federal effort to
restore the Bay's ecological balance. In
addition, the emphasis placed by both
EPA and DOD on a good working
relationship is indicated by the exchange
of liaison officers between the two
agencies.
Major problems at some DOD
hazardous waste sites, such as the
Alabama Army Ammunition Plant,
McClellan Air Force Base, the former
Olmstead Air Force Base, the former
Lowry Bombing Range, and the Rocky
Mountain Arsenal, brought national
attention to DOD's management efforts.
Less well known is the Defense
Department's progress in implementing
its overall Installation Restoration
Program, a four-stage program to clean
up and bring into environmental
compliance all DOD facilities.
Approximately $23 million was expended
in 1983, $150 million is budgeted for the
current fiscal year, and more than $300
million is planned for this program in
fiscal year 1985.
EPA JOURNAL
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EPA and DOD are also coordinating on
other Defense environmental efforts. For
example, EPA's National Enforcement
Investigations Center in Colorado assists
in the routine review of DOD contracts
for hazardous waste disposal, and EPA
program offices provide technical
assistance for some of DOD's
regulations, policies, and procedures for
pollution control. In particular, EPA and
DOD have undertaken joint research
projects on open-burning/open
detonation and on in-situ impoundment
closings.
Other Federal Agencies
Next to DOD in numbers of facilities
requiring pollution controls or possible
cleanup are the Department of Energy,
the Department of Interior, and the
Department of Agriculture.
Because a number of federal agencies
have not fully developed their
environmental programs, especially
under the relatively newer provisions of
the hazardous waste control and cleanup
laws, EPA published, in 1983, a basic guide:
"Resolution of Compliance at Federal
Facilities." Then, in February of 1984,
EPA sponsored a government-wide
conference to promote environmental
auditing among all federal agencies.
In addition, EPA's Office of Solid Waste
and Emergency Response (OSWER) and
the Office of External Affairs are jointly
undertaking a notification and follow-up
program to insure that all possible
federal hazardous waste sites are
properly identified and included in the
agency's inventory and data base. EPA is
also providing advice to other federal
agencies on effective hazardous waste
management techniques and cleanup
strategies where appropriate.
The importance of these tasks was
underscored by a recent General
Accounting Office report indicating some
discrepancies and gaps in EPA's
information on federal sites.
Insuring federal facilities' compliance
with environmental laws is an on-going
process. While one-time actions often
gain attention, much of the real work is
accomplished through the day-to-day
routine, such as EPA's review of federal
agency environmental projects and
assistance to federal agencies in
development of their environmental
budgets. A great deal of time and effort
is required, not just in headquarters, but
in the regional offices where federal
coordinators work with regional
program people and with their
counterparts in other agencies to build
the cooperation and trust necessary for
better environmental results.
Personnel from the Environmental Management Offic- •
collect samples from Mosquito Creek, which feeds into Chesapeake Bn\
U.S. Army installation in Mary/and, is covered by the EPA/ D • ution on
pollution abatement in the Chesapeake.
Conclusion
Federal facilities' compliance stresses
that environmental statutes apply to
everyone: to individuals and businesses,
to corporations and departments, to
companies and federal agencies. We in
the federal sector should serve as role
models for compliance with
environmental laws; our efforts should
set the example for effective, expeditious
pollution control in all sectors of society.
For us to live up to the letter and spirit of
our environmental laws will require not
only the best efforts of those of us within
EPA, but continued communication and
cooperation between EPA and other
federal agencies.
In this day of computerization,
biotechnology, sophisticated analyses,
and cost-benefit studies, it becomes too
easy to overlook the obvious: our
environment is the only one we have. As
individuals and as government
employees, our responsibility is to insure
that we apply the nation's environmental
statutes with equal fairness to both the
public and the private sector. D
OCTOBER 1984
23
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Protecting against Hazardous Waste
The Front Line in Region 4
by Gordon Kenna
This is the second article in an EPA
Journal series on major environmental
problems which EPA's regional offices
are helping to address. This article
reports on public involvement in Region
4's effort to protect the Biscayne
Aquifer in Florida from hazardous
waste. It is by Gordon Kenna, a former
community relations specialist in the
Region 4 Office of Public Affairs.
Three million people live within 5 feet
of the Biscayne Aquifer.
This unusual situation has made
southeastern Florida's drinking water
exceptionally vulnerable to
contamination and created some of
EPA's most complex and far-reaching
public education challenges.
Throughout Broward, Palm Beach, and
Dade counties the surface soil lies only 2
to 5 feet thick above the water-laden rock
that provides the area's only potable
water. Omnipresent canals and frequent
flooding quickly spread any contaminants
that penetrate the porous soil, thereby
involving all southeastern Florida
residents equally in every
water-threatening situation.
EPA is about to complete the final
phase of a 3-year study of ways to
reduce existing and future pollution in
the Biscayne Aquifer. When the study
was initiated, the agency realized that
not only would vast numbers of
consumers be directly involved, but the
state, county, and municipal
governments would be concerned with
the impact the study's results and
recommendations might have on zoning,
land use, and waste disposal decisions.
The need for the cooperation and
participation of so many people—as
opposed to the relatively few living near
most water-polluting sites—dictated a
community involvement program of
major proportions.
The Aquifer
The Biscayne Aquifer extends south from
Palm Beach County to the Atlantic Ocean,
underlying parts of four counties and
much of Everglades National Park. It is
very shallow and highly permeable—
extremely susceptible to contamination
from many and various sources.
Localized ground-water pollution has
been documented in a number of areas,
leading to serious concern about the
possible magnitude and extent of aquifer
contamination. Eight major sites that
may be contributing to aquifer
contamination have been placed on
EPA's National Priorities List (NPL) of
sites eligible for Superfund monies.
Three of the NPL sites which are near
each other have been treated by the
agency as a single management unit
referred to as the Biscayne Aquifer Site.
These are the Northwest 58th Street
Landfill (located near Hialeah), Miami
Drum Services (a former drum recycling
facility in the City of Miami), and Varsol
Spill (designating several spills and leaks
at the Miami International Airport).
The Site Study
Phase I of the Biscayne Aquifer site
study, conducted in 1982, evaluated
existing data and identified information
gaps. The data indicated the presence of
dispersed, low-level concentrations of
several toxic contaminants in the ground
water.
Phase II investigations were begun in
late 1982 to locate any highly
contaminated zones that might exist in
the area and to provide data essential to
remedial action decisions. Extensive
ground-water sampling revealed
widespread low to moderate levels of
several toxic contaminants, mostly
volatile organics. Four of 135 community
water supplies sampled had
contamination exceeding state limits.
Phase III opened with an initial
screening of 22 alternatives proposed to
either control the pollution sources or to
remedy existing contamination. From
these, specific recommendations are
being developed that, when
implemented, will provide protection
against increased contamination and
guide officials in cleaning up the
Superfund sites.
An Unusual Approach
Take three million sophisticated
consumers whose health and livelihood
depend upon a single, vast, and fragile
ecosystem, add lots of media coverage of
threats to that ecosystem and stir in
hundreds of technicians sampling wells
and drilling new ones all over the place,
and the likely result will be a stew of
fears, rumors, and reactions thick enough
24
EPA JOURNAL
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B/SCAYNE AQUIFER
PROTECTION PLAN
Lake Okeechobee
^
W. Palm Beach
Hollingsworth
Broward County Disposal Facility
Munisport
Pepper Steel and Alloys
-^_^ Miami Drum — ^w
N.W. 58th St. Landfill-^x* /'
_. *%._-..^ Miami
Spill'
Gulf of Mexico
[ | Biscayne Aquifer
""] Additional Area Supplied by Aquifer « *
1 ' p
Hazardous Waste Site
Key West
Atlantic Ocean
Jim Orban. EPA project
manager fof the
Biscayne Aquifer
protection effort, takes
questions from the
audience at a public
meeting last July in
Miami Springs, Florida.
At the meeting, EPA
officials explained the
results of o cleanup
i'ty study.
Map of South Florida
showing extent of
Biscayne Aquifer and
locations of hazardous
waste sites on the EPA
National Priorities List.
to bog down the most determined public
servant.
From the beginning of the Biscayne
Aquifer project, it was obvious that typical
community relations programs would be
insufficient to clarify the situation.
Public meetings were, of course, held
frequently, and were designed to truly
educate and communicate information,
not just to satisfy legal requirements. But
a decision was made to supplement the
normal meetings and announcements
with an innovative newspaper written
just for concerned residents of
southeastern Florida.
The paper. Remedies, provided
updates on the three-phase Biscayne
Aquifer site study; information on major
contamination sites; explanations of the
extent, degree, and complexity of risk
assessment problems; and other useful
information such as dates and agenda for
public meetings.
Remedies proved to be an effective
innovation. The newspaper contributed
significantly to opening up lines of
communication between EPA and the
public. Receiving copies of Remedies in
advance gave the community an
opportunity to become informed
participants during public meetings.
The public meetings themselves gave
the best proof of the effectiveness of the
Biscayne community-involvement
program in general and of Remedies in
particular. The success of the entire
project is due, in no small measure, to
the especially high level of trust and
confidence between the public and EPA
that was the hallmark of the meetings.
Data on the presence of toxic
chemicals in drinking water is never as
complete as would be preferred, and
very little is known of the effects on
humans of long-term, low-dose
exposures to such chemicals. No one
knows all the right answers to the
problems of the Biscayne Aquifer.
Nevertheless, everyone involved in the
project, both citizen and public servant,
can be proud of the way in which a
matter of such extreme complexity and
sensitivity has been efficiently handled.
D
OCTOBER 1984
25
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The Idea Behind Clean Sites, Inc.
by Dr. Charles W. Powers
Clean Sites, Inc., is a new nonprofit
corporation formed on May 31, 1984,
"specifically to encourage, contribute to,
and bring about the cleanup of
hazardous waste sites in the United
States." Its Board of Directors includes
two former EPA Administrators (one of
whom now heads a major environmental
organization), two presidents of major
universities, three chief executive officers
of major U.S. firms, a leading state
official, the head of a major conservation
research foundation, and the head of an
environmental health research
organization.
Why do we need such an institution,
particularly one with this level of
leadership? Don't we have a law
(Superfund) which gives EPA broad
authority to achieve this same purpose
and which defines private parties who
are liable under it? Hundreds of private
firms are offering services in various
aspects of waste site analysis and
cleanup. Why do we need another? What
is the "value added" brought by Clean
Sites?
Our answer must begin with a
clarification: Clean Sites is not an
alternative to a strong EPA program, but
an additional resource, its purpose is to
help speed cleanup activity by providing
resources and skills at the points where
existing institutions are limited in what
they can do and where complex
agreements often get stuck.
But real understanding of why we need
Clean Sites comes when we remember
how complex and diverse this waste site
cleanup task is and why progress has
been slow despite the fact that it is in the
basic interest of all affected parties
(government, industry and local citizens)
for the cleanup process to move very
rapidly.
Each inactive waste site is a separate
local environmental problem that can
best be addressed by its own separate
environmental program. Each is a
distinctive mix of materials set on a
Dr. Charles W. Powers, President ol C.lenn
Sites, Inc , HI the press conference May 31
in Washington, D.C., to launch the new
• • ; to Powers is Dr.
Jny t). Hnii, I x'.H.utivt: Vice President of the
National Wildl'!' ition and ,i member
of the steering committee that developed
'>'/
distinctive land mass. For each site there
is a separate story — usually convoluted
and often only partially recorded — about
how the hazardous substances got there.
At many sites, time may make the
wastes an even more serious risk than
they are now. Wastes at other sites may
remain stable over many years. At some
sites, local citizens live in active fear for
their health and that of their children.
Other sites primarily threaten non-human
ecology. At many sites, the remedial
steps are relatively obvious and the
technology — at least for the initial
phases — is simple and readily available.
Other sites strain not only the technology
to achieve an adequate cleanup, but even
our ability to decide on a cleanup plan.
But for all sites, delay only drives up
both public risk and the ultimate price tag.
The Superfund law specifies that where
there is release or threatened release of
certain categories of hazardous
substances, the government will take the
remedial action unless the government
can determine that the cleanup "will be
done properly by the owner or
operator...or by any other responsible
party."
The major choice at the level of
cleanup analysis and implementation is
who will do it:
• Will government set the rules and
reach an agreement with or order the
responsible party or parties to do the
job? That is how we have addressed
almost every other environmental
problem in our history.
• Or will government itself conduct or
have conducted the whole cleanup and
then submit the bill to the responsible
party or parties?
Which approach is better? Which
approach will get a specific site cleaned
up first and in a way that is
environmentally adequate and publicly
acceptable? When this criterion drives
the choice of implementation methods,
law and policy will permit that preferred
method to work.
Clean Sites believes that in very many
cases the best resource is the private
sector. When it comes to developing
solutions to the problems at sites—even
multi-party sites—the generators
probably know most about the
substances and how to treat them
without increased risk to cleanup
personnel and local citizens. Generators,
along with transporters and owners,
probably know most about what is at the
site and how it got there. The researchers
and engineers who work for the
generators probably have the most
technical expertise. And finally, the
responsible parties provide an important
set of resources, particularly
management resources, to augment
those available in EPA and other
EPA JOURNAL
-------
governmental organizations. In the battle
against hazardous sites, these capabilities
are crucial.
Private sector cleanup, however, poses
tough issues about how to coordinate
with government oversight and how to
determine financial responsibility. Clean
Sites was created for the sole purpose of
addressing these issues and fostering the
process of agreement at those sites
where effective and rapid cleanup can
best be achieved by private parties.
Clean Sites hopes to do this by
providing resources at a number of steps
in the process, particularly at the
transition points where:
OCTOBER 1984
• the effort to reach agreements
between responsible parties themselves
and with the government and other
publics traditionally breaks down;
• there is a need for third-party,
independent help in apportioning
responsibility in difficult cases;
• government needs to be assured that
proposed settlements are worthy of
commitment of its scarce human
resources;
• a mechanism is needed to allow public
and private funds to be mixed to secure
a better and more rapid cleanup.
The ten-month Conservation
Foundation effort which led to Clean
Sites' creation pinpointed the need for a
third-party institution. The Clean Sites
Board of Directors has been painstakingly
chosen to engage a group of Americans
who can ensure commitment to
environmental protection; foster
innovative ways to keep affected publics
informed and to seek their views and
their acceptance; provide resources for
technical competence; and spur creativity
and effectiveness in the development and
acceptance of site remedies. It is a group
of persons chosen to develop the
confidence and respect of all affected
segments of our society.
And it will not be a board in name
only. It has met four times in the initial
two and a half months of Clean Sites'
existence and is intimately involved in
the search for a qualified staff, in
reviewing the set of institutional
procedures that will govern Clean Sites'
work, and in developing criteria for
choosing among the many sites that
government, responsible parties or site
community organizations have asked us
to address.
Bringing the hazardous waste site
problem under control involves drawing
upon the resources of the responsible
parties whenever the federal government
can ascertain that the remedial activity
"will be done properly." Clean Sites
exists to help responsible parties and
government carry out that mandate more
effectively and in a way that earns the
respect of affected citizens. This is a
complex task, especially for an
organization that must build its
independent institutional resources while
it also begins to act. Clean Sites will not
work miracles. But we believe that within
two years, its solid record of
achievement will sustain the judgment
that a new initiative can make a
substantial difference in resolving this
important national issue. D
27
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How Clean is "Clean"
at a Hazardous Waste Site?
Key Observers Answer
EPA Journal asked six respected
observers from different vantage
points their views on this issue.
Their answers follow:
Lois Marie Gibbs
Executive Director
Citizens Clearinghouse
for Hazardous Wastes
Former res/dent of Love Canal
Citizens across the country living near
hazardous waste sites have been
asked their opinions on how much of the
contamination should be removed as
part of the site cleanup. Their answer has
been consistent: clean up the site until
the area is the same as it was before the
chemical wastes were deposited there.
From the perspective of the local
communities, there can be no less than
total cleanup. After all, they didn't make
the waste or reap the profits, nor did
they make the conscious decision to bury
it there. All the community residents
received from such a site is physical,
emotional, and financial damages. They
have been victimized! Furthermore, it is
the citizens who will ultimately pay the
highest costs of cleanup — through
consumer product prices increased by
industry to pay the upfront cleanup
costs, through public taxes used by
government agencies at such sites, and
through personal, physical, and financial
losses. Since people are paying the bill,
they should be the ones to decide the
extent of cleanup actions.
Therefore, the answer to how clean is
clean is: put it back the way it was. There
are already too many involuntary risks in
our daily lives, and it is unfair to ask
waste site communities to take on
additional risks, for which they receive no
benefits.
R.G. Kissell, Jr.
Senior Consultant
E.I. du Pont & Co.
A I participants in our nation's waste
site cleanup program agree that
remedial actions at sites must provide
adequate protection of human health
and the environment. Difficulties arise
when we attempt to define what
constitutes adequate protection. Every
waste site is unique and requires an
equally unique solution. This situation
precludes adoption of any uniformly
applied set of standards, but instead
requires that sites be addressed on a
case-by-case basis.
Consensus on appropriate remedial
actions can be reached, and has in fact
been achieved successfully, at many
sites. Often, measures are easily identified
and require little study to support their
adoption. Every effort should be made to
implement such measures expeditiously,
even if they represent only partial
solutions. Great progress can be made
by proceeding in this incremental
fashion.
More difficult decisions involve the
allowable level of wastes that remain at
sites and the points at which these levels
are to be achieved. Even here, ample
opportunity exists to arrive at a
consensus.
Determination of, and agreement on,
the acceptable concentrations of residual
wastes can be made in several ways. At
many sites, cost-effective remedial
actions, such as preventing migration of
contaminants or removing the material
from points where exposure could
reasonably occur, will eliminate all
exposure to the waste. Where residual
wastes remain, acceptable levels may be
derived using relevant standards
promulgated under other environmental
statutes, but only when such standards
reflect comparable types of exposure.
Risk assessment represents potentially a
valuable tool for defining appropriate
exposure levels, even though procedures
are only now being developed for waste
site applications.
Agreement on the locations where
acceptable exposure levels will be met is
equally important in the selection of the
appropriate remedy at a site. These
locations can be defined for ground
water, soil, or releases emanating from
remedial operations. They should reflect
existing activities of human and
biological populations or those that could
be reasonably expected to occur. The
appropriate remedy will then be the most
cost-effective set of actions that assures
acceptable exposure levels where
exposure is possible and precludes
exposure to any higher concentrations of
wastes. Overall, opportunities appear to
be good for reaching agreements on
appropriate remedial actions at most
waste sites. Prospects will continue to
improve as experience is gained in the
program.
Ridgway M. Hall, Jr.
Attorney
Crowe/I & Moring
Former Associate General Counsel for
Water, EPA
28
While Superfund calls for cleanup and
remedial action to abate "imminent
and substantial danger," and speaks of a
"cost-effective response," it nowhere
defines the desired level of cleanup. EPA
EPA JOURNAL
-------
has provided such a performance
standard in the National Contingency
Plan, which is the blueprint for
Superfund response action. It requires
consideration of relevant factors,
including the toxicity of the substances,
how they behave in the environment, the
extent to which they pose a danger to
public health or the environment, and the
relative costs and effects of alternative
response actions. The remedy to be
selected is that which is "the lowest cost
alternative that is technologically feasible
. . . and which effectively mitigates and
minimizes damage to and provides
protection of public health, welfare, or
the environment." This is good as far as
it goes, but implementation is the key.
A properly implemented performance
standard under Superfund should
embody the following elements:
1. Reasonable protection. Protection of
human health and the environment is
inherent in the statute. In defining the
protection level, Congress, EPA, and the
vast majority of scientists and
policy-makers have recognized that we
do not live in a harm-free or risk-free
society, nor can we expect to. Therefore,
the level of cleanup should protect
against substantial or significant harm, or
unreasonable risk of such harm. It cannot
protect against all risks.
2. Consideration of costs in relationship
to benefits. We do not have unlimited
cleanup dollars, and we must do what
makes sense with them.
3. Clarity means simply that the cleanup
standard must be understandable,
workable, and reasonably easy to apply.
4. Flexibility requires that the standard
not be so rigid as to be incapable of
taking into account the fact that no two
hazardous waste sites are identical.
Substances behave differently in different
environments. Population exposures and
uses differ. What is cost-effective at one
site may not be at another. Therefore, I
am skeptical of recent proposals to set
mandatory cleanup standards by
reference to pollutant standards adopted
under other laws without regard for their
appropriateness in the context of a
specific site.
5. Consistency is required to ensure that
the program is being applied
evenhandedly and with a measure of
predictability from case to case.
6. Fairness. Finally, the standard must
produce results which are fair. It must be
fair to those who are to be protected, and
fair to those who must pay the costs.
Furthermore, once a remedy is selected,
it is reasonable to consider in
apportioning the costs the extent to
which a non-negligent present site owner
should pay for the cleanup of substances
OCTOBER 1984
deposited long ago by others in a
manner which was lawful and thought to
be sound at the time, or whether part of
these costs should be borne by the fund.
Ultimately, the application of any
cleanup standard depends on the
informed and reasoned judgment of
those applying it. At a time when
election-year politics are in full swing, it is
worth remembering the admonition of
Harvard Law Professor Paul Freund, that
"there are, I am afraid, no absolutes in
law or art except intelligence."
Jane L. Bloom
Senior Project Attorney
Toxic Substances Project
Natural Resources Defense Council
With an estimated 2,000 priority
dumpsites likely to be added to the
National Priorities List before the end
of the decade, the credibility and
effectiveness of EPA's Superfund
program will depend heavily on the
agency's answer to the critical question,
"how clean is clean?" To date, EPA has
not established any uniform or objective
goal for cleanup. Instead, the agency has
opted to establish the level of site
cleanup on an ad hoc, site-by-site basis,
using quantitative risk assessment and
monetary cost as guideposts.
The effectiveness of site cleanup under
the present program cannot accurately
be assessed until EPA undertakes more
than its current total of six "completed"
sites. However, we are concerned about
recent reports that some wastes are
being removed from Superfund sites
only to be disposed of at another land
disposal facility that may not be able to
insure adequate protection.
In NRDC's view, to instill public
confidence in the program and provide
the protection envisioned by Congress,
EPA must set uniform and stringent
cleanup standards to be applied at all
Superfund sites. Although defining the
appropriate standards is a difficult task, it
is an essential one. Without an objective
cleanup goal, there is no assurance that
cleanups performed under EPA auspices
will accomplish the results that the public
has a right to expect: a cleaner
environment, protection of public health,
assurance of a permanent solution to
waste site contamination, and a
consistent level of protection throughout
the country. Health-based federal
standards under other environmental laws
(e.g., Clean Water Act, Clean Air Act, Safe
Drinking Water Act), where applicable,
should be used in defining the goal of
cleanup.
To achieve the cost-effective solution
mandated by Superfund, emphasis
should be placed on achieving a
permanent cleanup solution and utilizing
alternative technologies, rather than on
mere redisposal. Land disposal methods
may cost less in the short run, but they
cannot be relied upon to provide a
permanent remedy. Treatment and
destruction technologies that remove or
significantly reduce the health threat now
and for the future should be given
preference whenever possible. With
public health at stake and limited
resources available for cleanup, we
cannot afford to "solve" our present
problem by delaying effective measures,
or worse, creating a new generation of
Superfund sites.
Edmund B. Frost
Attorney
Kirk/and & Ellis
Former General Counsel, Chemical
Manufacturers Assn.
//l~Negree-of-cleanup" has been and
LJ remains the most difficult and
fundamental issue for waste site cleanup
confronting the Superfund program. The
development of appropriate and sensible
criteria for waste site cleanup is critical
for att least three reasons. One, such
cleanup criteria will determine whether
the public health and safety is adequately
protected under Superfund. Two, the
cleanup criteria will ultimately define the
scope and cost of both individual
cleanups and the overall Superfund
program. Finally, adequate, sensible
cleanup criteria are necessary to assure
2S
-------
public confidence and support for the
program.
Waste site cleanup criteria must
ultimately be based on careful
determinations of the adequacy of the
level of protection provided by the
cleanup. The first step in making a
"degree-of-cleanup" remedial
determination is therefore to understand
the risks presented by a particular site
and to decide the degree to which these
risks must be abated to adequately
protect public health, welfare or the
environment. Only after determining an
adequate level of risk abatement and
protection should cost and
cost-effectiveness considerations come
into play, requiring the selection and
design of the least-cost remedy which
affords adequate protection.
The first step — a remedial
investigation designed to determine the
specific risks presented by the site — is
complex but essential. The nature of
materials at the site, the extent of any
releases or potential releases, the
pathways of exposure, and the level of
exposure to people and the environment
must all be assessed. Then the risks of
this exposure must be evaluated on the
basis of scientific knowledge of the
toxicity of any materials reaching people
or exposed environmental receptors.
Finally, an acceptable level of risk or
exposure must be determined for each
affected receptor.
Selection of the acceptable level of risk
or exposure at a site is perhaps the most
difficult part of the process. Regulatory
standards, such as drinking water
regulations, may be useful when they are
appropriately applicable to the situation,
but often there will be no appropriately
applicable standard. Design and
specification standards, such as Resource
Conservation and Recovery Act
regulations, are not helpful in
determining the degree-of-cleanup. Such
standards do not address the specific
risks under consideration. Indeed, they
are not risk-based, but rather technology-
based. In the end, there may often be no
mechanical way of determining
acceptable risk levels and the
determination will have to be based on
sound judgment and community
acceptability.
Once a cleanup objective is determined
on the basis of acceptable risk levels, the
appropriate remedial option should be
selected, first by determining which
options meet the cleanup criteria, and
second by evaluating cost-effectiveness.
Issues of technical reliability must be
considered in determining whether
options meet the cleanup criteria. Under
this evaluation scheme, removal options
will often be undesirable because of
excessive cost and the creation of
additional risk. Containment-in-place
options may be appropriate, if adequately
reliable. Treatment options, although
desirable, may be impractical and too
expensive.
The foregoing model will assure that
Superfund cleanups fully protect public
health, welfare and the environment in
the most efficient manner. Some suggest
that remedial determinations should be
further simplified by the imposition of
mandatory design standards. This
approach, however, would often be
unnecessarily expensive, and would
surely delay the program by ending most
voluntary cleanup. Instead, cleanup
decisions should be improved by
perfecting the administrative process
under the National Contingency Plan and
by adopting risk-based cleanup criteria
which assure the public that the effort to
save costs will not be allowed to interfere
with the objective of protecting health.
Victoria J. Tschinkel
Secretary
Florida Department of
Environmental Regulation
Those of us involved in toxic waste
cleanup are developing split
personalities. I enjoy reading articles and
philosophizing over the apparently
endless subject of "how clean is clean"
as much as the next regulator. This is
intellectually stimulating, helps take me
above the day-to-day problems and
makes me feel very "cap-and-gown" and
self-confident. The other half of me is a
sort of glorified refuse shoveler with very
grimy hands. Let's face it—the stuff is out
there, threatening us. We have to contain
and remove it, or contain and treat it, or,
in some cases, be satisfied to contain it.
A few years ago, we environmental
agency directors lived in Eden and did
the right thing. More recently, scientists
offered us an apple labeled
"dose-response curves and risk
assessment," which turned us into
indecisive nail-biters.
How can we regain our self-confidence?
First, we need to estimate the risk from
exposure at each hazardous waste site.
In Florida, where 90 percent of us rely on
ground water for our drinking water, in
many cases from shallow wells, we have
adopted standards for a number of toxic,
carcinogenic or mutagenic substances in
ground water and drinking water. And,
although we recognize that certain
assumptions of risk must be made, many
times based on inadequate information,
it should also be a top priority to adopt
standards nationally. Assessing risk when
soils are contaminated is more difficult,
but there are ways of doing it. Where
there are no standards, a miniature
standard-setting process should be used
to establish target levels at each site.
Sometimes we are left with nothing more
than detectable limits as a goal—but at
least it's a good place to start.
Then, as in any enforcement case, once
the scientific data are in hand, social,
technical, policy, and economic
considerations enter into the equation.
The following, for example, need to be
considered:
• Risks from contamination to public
health and safety.
• Impacts on the designated use of
surface and ground water.
• Existing and future land use potentially
affected by migration of the pollutants.
• Available cleanup technology.
• Available financial resources.
• Other policy, social, and economic
considerations.
Florida is following these guidelines in
its enforcement cases and in
implementing the state's $8.5 million a
year hazardous waste site cleanup
program. We are currently involved in
state-funded cleanup at 17 sites. Federal
funding has been used at 13 of 29
Superfund sites in the state for either
evaluation or cleanups and the EPA has
assisted the state with a number of
emergency responses.
I am sure, as we work through these
tough issues, that we'll make mistakes.
But I'm proud of the work we're doing.
As in any new field, patterns of decision-
making, good and not so good, will
emerge. Then, using our successes as
models, we'll be able to write the
definitive work on "how clean is clean."
In the meantime, we'll just keep
working—alternating between
cap-and-gown and grimy hands. D
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EPA JOURNAL
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Update
A review of recent major EPA activities and developments in the pollution control areas.
AIR
Tampering and Fuel Switching
Survey
EPA released its 1983 Motor
Vehicle Tampering Survey which
shows that fuel switching and
tampering with emission control
devices is continuing at
disturbingly high rates.
Twenty-six percent of the 1975
to 1983 model automobiles
sampled in the survey had at
least one emission control device
tampered with. The survey also
found that 14 percent of the
vehicles were subject to fuel
switching {using leaded gas in
vehicles requiring unleaded fuel).
In July EPA proposed to
reduce lead content in gasoline
by 91 percent by 1986 and
possibly institute a total ban by
1995.
EPA's 1983 survey is based on
observations of over 1,800 cars
in six areas around the country:
Arizona, California, Colorado,
Illinois, Kansas, and Texas.
Inspection teams visually
examined emission control
devices and measured amounts
of carbon monoxide and
hydrocarbon exhaust emissions.
To provide information on fuel
switching, inspectors took
samples of gasoline from the
vehicles for later laboratory
analysis for lead, tested for lead
deposits in tailpipes using
chemically-treated test paper,
and checked for the condition of
the fuel filler inlet restrictors.
The survey found significant
rates of tampering with certain
critical components. For
example, the rate of catalytic
converter tampering was 7
percent. The exhaust gas
recirculation system tampering
rate was 13 percent. Other forms
of tampering found included
altered filler neck inlets to permit
leaded gas use in cars requiring
unleaded gas, disabled air
pumps and evaporative systems,
and positive crankcase
ventilation (PCV) tamperings.
State Petitions Denied
EPA proposed to deny petitions
filed by Pennsylvania, New York,
and Maine claiming damage
from interstate air emissions
emanating from sources in the
Midwest.
The petitioning states claim
that the emissions interfere with
their ability to meet federal air
quality standards, interfere with
visibility, and cause acid rain.
The petitions, filed in 1980 and
1981 under Section 126 of the
Clean Air Act, generally ask EPA
to impose more stringent
emission limits on numerous
sources of sulfur dioxide in the
States of Ohio, West Virginia,
OCTOBER 1984
Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky,
Michigan, and Tennessee.
EPA's proposed denial of the
petitions is based on both legal
and technical grounds. While the
agency recognizes the existence
of interstate air pollution, Section
126 of the Clean Air Act
addresses interstate pollution
only when it causes a state to
violate national ambient air
quality standards for one or
more of the criteria pollutants,
the prevention of significant
deterioration (PSD) increments,
or visibility requirements. Neither
acid rain nor the long-range
visibility effects cited in the
petitions are addressed under
Section 126.
The agency's proposed denials
find that the petitioning states
have not made a persuasive
technical case that the existing
requirements of the Clean Air
Act are being violated by
interstate transport of air
pollutants.
Polycyclic Organic Matter
EPA has decided not to regulate
polycyclic organic matter (POM)
as a class of compounds under
the Clean Air Act until it has
enough information to determine
if regulation is appropriate.
POM is a large class of
chemicals released into the air as
a result of incomplete
combustion from sources
ranging from wood stoves and
fireplaces to vehicles and
incinerators.
Although EPA has not
regulated POM compounds as a
class, POM emissions are being
reduced as the agency regulates
air pollutants, such as paniculate
matter and hydrocarbons, which
include POM compounds.
EPA, concerned about the
cancer-causing potential of POM,
for several years has been
collecting data on POM
emissions and considering ways
to regulate those sources that
produce most of the POM
compounds. Although not every
POM compound causes cancer,
all combustion produces some
cancer-causing POM
compounds.
Under the Clean Air Act, EPA
must review all the relevant
information to determine
whether POM emissions into the
ambient air endanger the public.
A U.S. District Court ruled last
fall that EPA had to make its
determination by August 2, 1984.
Since the agency had not yet
collected enough information to
support regulation, it decided
against regulating POM for the
time being. A decision to
regulate POM under the court
order would have committed
EPA to writing regulations within
a few months.
HAZARDOUS WASTE
National Priorities List
EPA has officially added 128
sites to the National Priorities
List. Most of the sites had been
proposed for inclusion on the list
last September. The addition
brings the NPL total to 538 sites.
Later this year as many as 250
sites will be proposed for further
addition to the NPL
Sites on the list become
eligible for long-term, large-scale
cleanup under Superfund to
restore their environmental
integrity. Any perceived
imminent threats to the health of
the population have already
been addressed through
emergency response actions.
Being listed on the NPL is not a
prerequisite for emergency
action.
EPA, state governments, and
private parties are now at work
on almost all sites on the NPL.
Such work involves various
engineering studies and
administrative negotiations that
pave the way to cleanup action.
It is projected that the National
Priorities List could eventually
grow to between 1,400 and 2,200
sites.
PESTICIDES
EDB Tolerance Levels for
Imported Mangoes
EPA has proposed setting
temporary tolerance levels for
the pesticide ethlylene dibromide
(EDB) on imported mangoes.
All use of EDB on any food
product in the U.S. was
cancelled effective September 1,
1984.
The residue levels of the
pesticide on imported mangoes
would be limited to 30 parts per
billion (ppb) until September 1,
1985. After that date, any
detectable residues of EDB on
mangoes would render them
adulterated and subject to
federal enforcement action under
the Federal Food, Drug and
Cosmetic Act. The temporary
tolerance will protect public
health and allow for the
development of alternative
quarantine treatments for
mangoes to prevent the spread
of destructive species of fruit
flies. There are currently no
available alternative quarantine
treatments.
The agency previously
imposed a ban on all domestic
use of EDB on mangoes,
including use at U.S. fumigation
centers which treat imported
mangoes, effective September 1,
1984. These fumigation centers
include ports of entry in the U.S.
and its protectorates, including
Puerto Rico.
Based on consultations with the
U.S. Department of Agriculture,
the agency believes that the
current use of EDB on
domestically grown mangoes is
virtually nonexistent. According
to the information available to
the agency, mangoes grown in
the U.S. (with the possible
exception of Puerto Rico) have
not generally been fumigated
with EDB in the past. Thus, the
proposal to limit EDB residues
applies only to imported fruit.
TOXICS
Revised Acute Toxicity Testing
EPA has completed revisions to
its acute toxicity testing
guidelines to emphasize
scientifically sound ways of
reducing the number of animals
used in the tests.
These guidelines, which have
been forwarded to the National
Technical Information Service
(NTIS) for publication, recognize
the need for animal data to
predict potential human health
effects as well as the continuing
need to protect the welfare of
laboratory animals.
Although the revised
guidelines contain few technical
changes, they reflect the agency's
policy which:
• discourages the use of animals
solely for the calculation of an
LD50 (dose lethal to 50 percent of
the tested animals);
• encourages the use of data
from structurally related
chemicals, when possible, to
make preliminary judgments
about chemical safety without
going through independent tests
using additional animals;
• suggests utilizing a "limit" test
which employs ten or fewer test
animals to determine a lethal
dose. If additional data are
needed, a three-dose study with
approximately 40 animals is
recommended as opposed to the
"classic" LD50test which may
employ up to 200 animals;
• recommends the study of
acute responses during toxicity
testing to gain the maximum
amount of data from a limited
number of animals.
EPA is aware of a variety of
research efforts that are
underway to develop and
validate test methods that may
replace animal testing. As soon
as the alternative methods are
accepted as valid by the
scientific community, the agency
will aggressively encourage their
use.
31
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WATER
Agreement with General Motors
EPA and the Department of
Justice announced the filing of
civil complaints and
simultaneous consent judgments
requiring the General Motors
Corp, to comply with standards
limiting the amount of metals
and toxic substances discharged
into public sewage systems by
electroplating operations at eight
automobile assembly plants.
Attorney General William
French Smith said the suits were
the first filed by the federal
government to enforce the
electroplating pretreatment
standards of the Clean Water Act
that became effective last June 30,
The case was developed
jointly by the Environmental
Protection Agency and the
Justice Department, Attorney
General Smith said.
The judgments cover General
Motors assembly plants in
Arlington, Tex., Van Nuys,
Calif.; Doraville, Ga.; Atlanta,
Ga.; Kansas City, Mo,; Kansas
City, Kan.; Newark, N.J.; and
Cincinnati, Ohio.
Appointments at EPA
AGENCYWIDE
EPA Recruiting in Puerto Rico
EPA recently completed an
intensive recruiting program in
Puerto Rico which resulted in the
hiring of 31 university students
for jobs at EPA regional offices
in New York City, Philadelphia,
and San Francisco, as well as in
Washington, D.C., headquarters.
The recruitment program was
managed by a team of EPA
officials from headquarters and
regional offices. Team members
travelled to Puerto Rico during
April to interview almost 200 job
applicants at two campuses of
the University of Puerto Rico.
The 31 individuals selected by
the agency are all engineering
graduates. Most have already
begun employment in positions
dealing with EPA's hazardous
and solid waste and water
pollution management
programs.
The recruitment program in
Puerto Rico was originally
developed in EPA's Region 2
(New York City) office which has
jurisdiction over the
Commonwealth of Puerto Rico.
The program was initially
devised and planned by Herbert
Barrack, Region 2 Assistant
Administrator for Administration.
His leadership in this effort was
recently recognized when he
received the National President's
Award from IMAGE, a national
organization concerned with
employment opportunities for
Hispanics.
Christopher J. Daggett has been named
Regional Administrator of EPA's Region 2
office in New York City. Daggett comes
to EPA from the State of New Jersey,
where he has served as Cabinet
Secretary to Governor Thomas H. Kean
since 1983. Prior to holding that position,
he was Deputy Chief of Staff to Governor
Kean. Daggett's previous experience
includes service as Vice President of
Public Affairs Consultants, a Springfield,
N.J., firm.
Daggett holds the degree of Doctor of
Education from the University of
Massachusetts as well as a B.A. from the
University of North Carolina/Chapel Hill.
Immediately after graduating from the
University of Massachusetts in 1977, he
directed an in-service training program
for professors at McGill University in
Montreal. Later he consulted on similar
programs at several other U.S. and
Canadian colleges and universities.
David P. Ryan has been appointed
Director of the Budget Division of EPA.
Since November 1983, Ryan has been
Acting Director of the Budget Division,
Office of the Comptroller. From
December 1981 to November 1983, he
was Supervisory Program Analyst in the
Comptroller's office.
Ryan came to EPA's Budget Division in
1978 from the government of New York
State. He began his EPA career as a
program analyst in the Comptroller's
office. For his work in the design and
execution of the Superfund multi-year
resource analysis, Ryan received the
Office of Planning and Management's
John Muir Analytical Award in 1980.
Ryan worked as a budget examiner
with the New York State Division of the
Budget from 1973 to 1978. He served in
the Air Force between 1968 and 1973.
In 1967 Ryan received his B.A. in public
administration from St. Johns University.
He completed an M.A. in economics and
public administration at the State
University of New York in 1975.
Alan B. Sielen, who is currently Director
of Multilateral Affairs for EPA, has recently
been appointed U.S. Coordinator for the
NATO Committee on the Challenges of
Modern Society (CCMS). He will carry out
his new duties in addition to his present
responsibilities in the Office of
International Activities.
The CCMS program adds a social
dimension to NATO's security and
political activities by promoting
cooperation among the Allies in such
areas as public health, transportation,
and historical and environmental
preservation.
Sielen has been at EPA since 1975; his
previous positions in EPA's Office of
International Activities include Director of
the Oceans and Regulatory Division and
Special Representative for Marine
Negotiations.
Sielen received an M.A. in 1974 from
the Johns Hopkins University School of
Advanced International Studies. He
received a B.A. in political science in
1971 from the University of California at
Berkeley, where he graduated with
honors in international relations and was
elected to Phi Beta Kappa. D
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EPA JOURNAL
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I
I
i
Member of a cleanup crew puts on
protective clothing at the Chem-Dyne site in
Hamilton, Ohio. The now-defunct chemical
waste storage facility once handled a wide
variety of hazardous wastes. Legally
responsible parties paid $2.4 million
towards the cost of surface cleanup. The
site is on the Superfund priority list.
Back cover: Aerial view of Lverglades
National Park. The Biscayne Aquifer,
threatened by hazardous waste
contamination, underlies large parts of the
Everglades and major urban areas in
southern Florida. See story on page 24.
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United States
Environmental Protection
Agency
Washington DC 20460
Official Business
Penalty for Private Use
$300
Third-Class Bulk
Postage and Fees Paid
EPA
Permit No. G-35
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