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BURN, BABY, BURN
By Cliff Boyer
from Salem Monthly, Section News
Posted on Wed May 30, 2007 at 10:33:12 PM PDT

If you were to drive along I-5 near Brooks, Oregon you might notice a tall smokestack with red stripes. Steam and smoke would be floating up into the air, and trucks carrying smelly garbage would be driving in and out of the building. You’d probably see cows grazing across the street from the fenced-in facility, unconcerned with the steady flow of traffic.

Public concern over toxic emissions and the burning of solid and medical waste at the Covanta Waste to Energy Facility in Brooks has ramped up over the last few months because its Title V Operating Permit is under review for renewal at Oregon’s Department of Environmental Quality. Public hearings were held in February and the permit is pending at DEQ.

Of greatest concern to many local residents is the lack of sufficient testing to determine if there are long-term cumulative environmental and health effects from the emissions, which contain dioxin, mercury, and metals such as lead, arsenic and cadmium.

Susann Kaltwasser, who created waste-can.org, a Web site devoted to the Covanta burner and the issues raised by its incineration processes, said there were four primary areas of concern.

“There is no testing for everything that may be coming out of the burner and the testing that is conducted is done too infrequently,” Kaltwasser said. “The standards used in testing are not based on health standards. The industry is responsible for establishing standards on what the industry does. And finally, no one is looking at the cumulative numbers. Nobody tests the water, soil, crops or milk. There are dairy cows grazing in the shadow of the burner.”

Kyle Elwood, a pharmacist who twice served on the Marion County Solid Waste Advisory Council, was against building the Brooks facility in the first place.

“My biggest concern is that they are not focused on health issues related to incineration. It is a state-of-the-art facility and it has some of the best extraction capabilities out there,” Elwood said. “But they are doing nothing to monitor long-term health effects.”

Elwood said that a baseline has not been established for environmental contamination or for the health of workers at the plant. He feels that testing data is inadequate.

“They take minute and limited tests and then extrapolate that data to say if more waste was added it wouldn’t be a problem. But that’s not proof of anything.”

Tests on emissions are conducted once a year at the Brooks incinerator and contractors bid on the contract. The Environmental Protection Agency established the standards for compliance and DEQ has adopted similar standards, which are stipulated under the Title V Permit. General Manager of the Cavanta facility Russel Johnston said employees at the facility are tested once a year to monitor exposure to lead and cadmium according to OSHA regulations. They are not tested for dioxin or mercury exposure.

Andy Harris, a local doctor with Physicians for Social Responsibility, doesn’t trust the testing data.

“Covanta sets the date for testing and they hire a company they like to conduct the tests,” Harris said. “It’s like the fox guarding the henhouse.”

Harris thinks the potentially serious nature of the toxic materials emitted by the incinerator is being ignored by Covanta.

“They have never tested the area around the incinerator. They should be testing humans who work there and live nearby. It should be a serious health study.”

Marion County Senior Environmental Engineer Jeff Bickford said they have the most stringent air pollution controls in place, but admitted that there is no testing for long-term “Even if we did test for problems and difficulties in the long-term, how would you attribute the source? The Brooks facility is along the I-5 corridor. There are 50,000 trucks driving by every day and they are one of the worst and most significant polluters.”

Bickford said there was testing for environmental effects for 12 years but they were stopped five years ago. There is talk of starting the tests again next year. The numbers were always consistent and the dioxin and lead levels decreased in a linear fashion the further away from I-5 the tests were conducted. Kyle Elwood remains unconvinced.

“If I-5 is a problem, then is it okay to add to it? There is also backyard and field burning, so we add another factor in? I-5 and the Brooks burner together are a potentially bigger problem.” Many residents are concerned about the levels of mercury and dioxin contained in the burner’s emissions. The incinerator burns 550 tons of solid waste a day but Covanta’s tests have revealed that less than 50 pounds of mercury and dioxin are released per year, much less than the 200 pounds allowed by the proposed permit now under review. Some concerned residents, such as Carroll Johnston believe any amount of mercury emitted into the environment is unacceptable.

“Even small amounts of mercury can have a devastating effect on the environment. Less than an ounce of mercury will contaminate a 25-acre lake. The Willamette Valley watershed already has rivers in which fish are too contaminated with mercury to be safe to eat.”

Johnston said that many of the toxic pollutants, such as mercury and dioxin, accumulate in the environment over time so that emissions within a specific year might seem to be at acceptable levels.

There has been public outcry as well over the importation and burning of medical waste at the Brooks incinerator. Covanta’s Russel Johnston said they burn about 800 tons of medical waste per year, less than half of one percent of the total waste burned. Medical waste is brought to the facility in sealed boxes and is carried to the furnace on a conveyor belt which layers it with the rest of the solid waste being processed.

Marion County Director of Public Works, Jim Sears said that there is no testing of medical waste at the facility because not enough is burned.

Susann Kaltwasser said this should be cause for alarm.

“We don’t know what’s in the burner when they are testing. There is no way to know what emissions are from medical waste. They don’t test for everything that comes out of the stack.”

Russel Johnston said that recycling is a major component of the solid waste removal process and that Marion County has achieved a 57 percent recycling rate, one of the highest in Oregon.

Neha Patel, a Program Director with the Oregon Center for Environmental Health, said that phasing out incineration altogether is the goal.

“With recycling efforts and newer technologies for waste disposal, we believe landfills are a better alternative to incineration.”

Kaltwasser also believes “zero waste” through recycling and new technologies is an attainable goal.

“We need to raise public awareness. There are many countries and cities that have adopted plans to move in this direction. My hope is we can start getting a community dialogue started as we explore alternatives.”

COMMENTS

Post A Comment| BURN, BABY, BURN | 2 comments

Incinerators (#1)
by Anonymous on Sat Jun 02, 2007 at 06:51:12 AM PDT

I have just read "Burn, baby, burn" and feel that those concerned about health issues related to PM2.5 emissions from incinerators might be interested in repoprts by Dr Dick van Steenis MBBS, which are listed at the bottom of the home page at www.countrydoctor.co.uk and also in reports etc. at www.ukhr.org

I have been examining infant mortality rates, and other data, in the 625 electoral wards in the Greater London Authority's area, here in the UK.

There are several incinerators within this large urban area, and also a major incinerator just outside the western boundary.

The electoral wards with high infant mortality rates are all associated with PM2.5 emissions from the incinerators.

I've also examined the percentages of babies born with low birthweight, ie less than 2,500 grams, and the electoral wards with the high percentages of low birthweight babies also shows correlation.

It's not just incinerators that produce toxic PM2.5s, and the coloured ward map in the incinerator section at www.ukhr.org shows a group of orange-coloured wards downwind of Ironbridge Power Station where there were fifty-one infant deaths and 6,591 live births recorded by the Office for National Statistics during the eight-year period 1998-2005. Six of the seven green-coloured wards, which are "upwind" of the above power station, had zero infant deaths and 1,302 live births recorded by ONS during the same 8-year period.

I've not got any medical qualifications, but I can tell the difference between fifty-one infant deaths and zero. I've been doing this research in recent years as my wife and I have buried two of our children, our only daughter died at 14 weeks in 1985, and our 2nd son died of leukaemia in 1999, aged 19 years. The Shrewsbury Hospital incinerator near our house burnt clinical & radioactive waste until it was forced to either close or comply with emission regulations in 1995. It chose to close and the infant mortality rate in my electoral ward fell to zero.

Here in the UK, the "authorities" tell us that incinerators are safe and yet they fail to examine any data.

The electoral ward with the highest 2003-5 infant mortality rate was Harrow Weald, where the rate was 19.1 deaths per 1,000 live births, ie more than three times higher than the national average for England & Wales.

Sixty-nine of the 625 electoral wards in London had zero infant deaths in 2003-5 and those wards are all free from PM2.5 emissions from incinerators.

I wish Susann Kaltwasser, Kyle Elwood and others all the best and would like to share something my late father told me many years ago when I was too young to realise exactly what he meant. "Children are a poor man's riches."

Kind regards,

Michael Ryan, Shrewsbury

Burn, Baby, Burn by elna, 06/06/2007 07:30:13 PM PDT (none / 0)

Post A Comment| BURN, BABY, BURN | 2 comments