Trans-border Toxics
June 3rd, 2008 at 1:33 pm
The Bush administration is building a wall ostensibly to stop undocumented Mexicans from entering the U.S., yet it seems perfectly content to let up to 40 million pounds of banned PCBs from Mexico into the country. The EPA is recommending that Veolia Environmental Services be allowed to import and burn the chemicals in the company’s Port Arthur incinerator, the same facility that is under contract with the Army to incinerate hazardous wastewater containing the nerve agent VX. (See the Observer’s “A Lot of Nerve.”)
The manufacture and importation of PCBs - a class of chemicals that can cause cancer, birth defects, immune suppression, and other health problems - was banned by Congress in 1979, but a loophole allows the EPA to grant exemptions if the risk to health and the environment is not “unreasonable” and an alternative cannot be found.
In EPA filings, Veolia argues that it makes more sense to permanently remove the PCBs from Mexico – where no incinerator facility exists – than to leave them intact. The company claims its method is 99.9999 percent efficient, effectively burning up almost all of the PCBs in the incinerator. But the Sierra Club and the Community In-Power and Development Association in Port Arthur think the whole idea stinks.
“These old dinosaur incinerators, they have problems – explosions, fires, leaks,” said Neil Carman of the Sierra Club. The Sierra Club is calling on the EPA to explore an alternative to the Veolia proposall: portable, non-incinerator technologies that can be deployed to Mexico.
Carman, a former state air pollution regulator, points to EPA data that show Veolia’s Port Arthur facility released just under 2,000 pounds of PCBs in 2006, the most in the nation.
“To me, that doesn’t sound like a 99.9999 percent efficiency,” he said. Once in the environment, PCBs decompose very slowly and tend to work their way up the food chain, accumulating in fish and cattle. Farmed salmon in particular can be laden with PCBs.
Port Arthur, a poor, mostly black “fenceline” community, lives in the shadow of a dense concentration of refineries and chemical plant. Residents, especially those who reside in the economically depressed West Side, are plagued with a disproportionate number of respiratory and skin ailments. If the EPA and Veolia get their way, they can add PCBs to the menu of toxic soups present in the neighborhood.
Sierra Club says it will sue if EPA does not reject Veolia’s proposal.
The public comment period for the EPA proposal ends Thursday. An informal public meeting will be held in Port Arthur on June 19.
