U.S. Toxic Waste Shipments to Mexico on Rise, EPA Says

There is mounting evidence that industrial wastes from the United States are being transported across the Mexican border to be dumped or burned at unregulated sites, according to federal, state and local officials.

In interviews in recent weeks, environmental officials said they suspect shipments have increased as U. S. environmental regulations have tightened, closing hazardous-waste landfills in California and raising the cost of disposal.

Responding to the problem, Assemblyman Steve Peace (D-Chula Vista) on Tuesday called for a halt to all shipments of waste from California to Mexico until there is an overhaul of the state system by which they are tracked.

He and others say the discovery by Mexican officials last month of an illegal dump containing U. S. wastes in the Mexican border town of Tecate may point to a widespread pattern of illicit dumping. They say that Mexico’s comparatively lax environmental laws and its largely isolated, 1,900-mile land border with the United States have made it an attractive location for U. S. waste haulers.

Behind U. S. officials’ interest in the possibility of increased toxic-waste shipments is a fear of an environmental and public health catastrophe abroad caused by waste from the United States.

“The foreign policy implications of waste export are enormous,” said an official in the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) international activities office in Washington who asked not to be named. “Major diplomatic incidents can happen if a country, particularly a developing country, wakes up with a lot of waste in its jurisdiction that can’t be handled.”

Nevertheless, there has been little effort to measure the phenomenon on this side of the border or to explore its consequences on the other side, U. S. officials acknowledge. They say hazardous-waste export is barely regulated and that many of the known shipments are technically legal.

Only in recent months have EPA officials begun writing new regulations to tighten control over waste exports. And, last summer, a task force headed by the U. S. attorney’s office in San Diego set up a border roadblock to try to intercept illegal shipments.

Meanwhile, environmental officials from both countries have been meeting in Mexico and the United States, trying to draw up a plan to handle hazardous-waste emergencies that occur along the border and to train U. S. and Mexican customs agents to better recognize toxic wastes.

“The dilemma is that we’ve got enough problems on this side,” said Harry Seraydarian, director of the toxics division of the EPA’s regional office in San Francisco. “How much of a priority can we give the Mexicans? That’s what it really comes down to.”

Regulators as well as businesses that produce and dispose of hazardous wastes say that tightening of regulations on toxic-waste disposal in California has inspired businesses to look elsewhere for cheaper methods of disposal.

In California, only four facilities for certain types of toxics remain open. None are in Southern California, and disposal rates have skyrocketed. The average price of dumping a ton of hazardous wastes in a solid form at Chemical Waste Management’s Kettleman Hills site in Kings County has risen from $55 to $95 since 1981, said Steve Drew, a company spokesman. The price of disposing of liquids has gone from 35 cents a gallon to as high as $1.85 a gallon.

“We’re desperate,” said Don Albin, manager of a tank-truck-cleaning firm in Long Beach that had planned to send waste to the Tecate site until he learned that it was illegal. He described the possibility of cheaper disposal as “just like a life preserver.”

Others say waste export is not the answer.

“The solution to our problem here is not shipping hazardous materials to our Mexican neighbors, who may not be as aware of the dangers,” said Francis Passarelli, an executive in a waste hauling firm and vice president of the Hazardous Waste Assn. of California, a trade group. “It’s just not morally correct.”

Exporting toxic wastes is relatively easy under existing federal regulations.

Currently, all a firm need do is notify the EPA in writing at least four weeks before the first shipment to each country in each calendar year. Firms seeking to ship the waste must identify the material and give the name and address of whoever is intended to dispose of it in the foreign country.

The EPA’s office of international activities then notifies the foreign country that the waste is coming. There is no requirement that the country receiving the waste give its approval.

Companies are not asked how much waste they intend to ship or how many shipments they might make in a year. Nor does the EPA determine how the waste will be disposed of or whether the disposal facilities meet any environmental standards like those in the United States.

In Sacramento Tuesday, Peace raised questions about shipments of contaminated waste ink from 10 Southern California publishing firms to an asphalt plant near Tijuana. The sources of the wastes include Times Mirror Press, a subsidiary of Times Mirror Co. that publishes telephone books; the San Diego Union and Tribune; and the Santa Ana-based Orange County Register, public documents indicate.

According to Peace, he and his aides found 38 manifests documenting shipments to Mexico after reading hundreds of the 400,000 hazardous-waste shipping manifests on file with the state Department of Health Services. Peace said the state health department has no procedures for knowing whether a facility in Mexico is legal and safe, or whether the toxic material ever actually arrives at its destination.

“If you ask them if a shipment (of hazardous waste) bound for place X got there, they can’t tell you,” Peace said. “Does the department monitor the shipment of waste to Mexico? The answer is, quite simply, no.”

Peace said the 10 companies failed to get required signatures from the facility near Tijuana showing that the waste ink reached its destination. He said his findings focused on newspaper companies but noted that “every other waste-generating industry in this state is shipping waste being monitored. This is just one example of a much more vast problem.”

Gary Gaston, president of Waste Disposal Systems of San Pedro, the licensed waste hauler who contracted with the publishing companies to dispose of the waste, said last week that the ink was legitimately recycled and burned as fuel by the Mexican plant.

“I know they have all the permits in the world,” said Gaston, referring to the Mexican firm, Industrias de Monte Cristo.

But a spokesman for the Mexican environmental agency said Monday that the facility has no permit to burn or recycle waste ink. He said his agency had never issued permits to four other Baja California firms that EPA documents say are receiving California wastes.

“It’s probable that there are facilities operating clandestinely,” said Cesar Velarde of the federal Secretariat of Urban Development and Ecology. “. . . It appears the business could be attractive. . . . This kind of clandestine activity can exist anywhere.”

Eight firms have notified the EPA over the past two years that they intended to ship waste to Mexico, according to EPA documents received by Peace. However, Velarde said his office had been notified only once by his superiors--about material that ended up in Tecate.

Shown the names of Mexican firms that EPA officials were told would receive American waste, Velarde said his agency had never licensed any firms with those names. He said any firm recycling or disposing of hazardous materials would be required to have a permit.

Velarde said the only licensed hazardous-waste disposal facilities in Baja California are a radioactive waste dump and a pesticide dump, both near Mexicali. He said the nearest facility licensed to accept a broad spectrum of hazardous waste is in San Luis Potosi, about 1,500 miles away in the interior of Mexico.

Because of the Tecate incident, Velarde said that Mexican authorities have instructed customs posts throughout Baja California to inform environmental officials of any suspected waste shipments crossing the border. However, he acknowledged that the customs officers had to rely largely on suspicion.

“We don’t have the capacity to be physically at every one of the border crossings, permanently watching shipments,” Velarde said. “We have confidence in Mexican and American border authorities and American environmental authorities.”

County, state and federal environmental and health officials say illegal exports are not being ignored. But many insist that they cannot discuss the issues in detail because they have investigations in progress and are wary of tipping off suspects.

The state Health Services Department recently dispatched an investigator to begin exploring the problem with Mexican officials. Officials in the San Diego County district attorney’s office, the U. S. attorney’s office and U. S. Customs all alluded to pending investigations.

Meanwhile, a U. S.-Mexican border toxics group that Seraydarian chaired until recently has been meeting since 1984 to discuss toxic-waste issues, in keeping with a bilateral border cooperation agreement signed by President Reagan and Mexican President Miguel de la Madrid in 1983.

The two sides agreed last summer to develop a contingency plan for mutual assistance if there is an incident along the border. But asked what else the working group had to show for its activities, Seraydarian answered candidly, “Not that much.”

Until the U. S. law governing waste exports changes, Seraydarian said he has neither the jurisdiction nor the manpower to scrutinize waste exports more closely.

The law is scheduled to change in November, when stricter guidelines governing waste exports go into effect. Among other things, the changes will require estimates of the frequency of proposed waste exports and a description of how they will be treated or disposed.

More importantly, the new regulations will require that the foreign government give its consent before any shipment is made. A copy of the country’s written consent will have to be carried with the manifest that travels with all hazardous waste, and will be checked at the border.

That provision should give U. S. officials more control over U. S. firms, Seraydarian said. Eventually, he said perhaps the two countries will ban export of certain types of waste. But he said that is a long way away.

“Really, it’s Mexico’s problem right now,” he said. “If . . . we have an agreement that makes it a mutual problem and we stop that waste, then we might have more control. But right now, it’s their problem. Our regulations limit what we can really do.”

Times staff writer Jill Stewart contributed to this article from Sacramento.