Widespread Violations Suspected : U.S. Wastes Reportedly Exported to Mexico Sites

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

In interviews in recent weeks, environmental officials said they suspect that the 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 and 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 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.

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

“The dilemma is that we’ve got enough problems on this side,” said Harry Seraydarian, director of the Toxics Division of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s San Francisco regional office. “How much of a priority can we give the Mexicans? That’s what it really comes down to.”

In recent months, a task force headed by the U.S. attorney’s office in San Diego has set up a border roadblock to try to intercept illegal shipments, and EPA officials have been writing new regulations to tighten control over waste exports beginning in November.

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 foreign policy implications of waste export are enormous,” said an official in EPA’s 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.”

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

In California, only four facilities for certain types of toxic wastes remain open. None of the four is in Southern California, and disposal rates have skyrocketed.

The average price of dumping a ton of hazardous waste in a solid form at Chemical Waste Management’s Kettleman Hills site in the San Joaquin Valley has risen from $55 to $95 a ton since 1981, Steve Drew, a company spokesman, said. The price of disposing of liquids has gone from 35 cents a gallon to as high as $1.85 a gallon.

Under existing federal regulations, exporting toxic wastes is relatively easy.

Notification Needed

All a firm has to do is to notify the EPA in writing at least four weeks before the first shipment to each country in each calendar year. It must identify the waste and give the name and address of whoever will dispose of it in the foreign country.

EPA’s office of international activities then notifies the foreign country that the firm intends to begin shipping waste. There is currently no requirement that the country approve the shipment before the firm proceeds with its plan.

The firm is not asked how much waste it intends to ship or how many shipments it might make in a year. Nor does the EPA determine how the waste will be disposed of or whether the disposal facility meets any environmental standards like those in the United States.

In Sacramento on Tuesday, Peace raised questions about shipments of contaminated waste ink from Southern California printing presses to an asphalt plant near Tijuana. The wastes come from a waste hauling firm that contracts with a wide variety of sources, including the San Diego Union and Tribune, the Orange County Register and Times Mirror Press, a subsidiary of Times Mirror Co. that publishes telephone directories.

Shipping Manifests

Peace said he and his aides found the companies’ names after reading hundreds of hazardous waste shipping manifests on file with the state Department of Health Services. He said his findings focused on newspaper companies but added that 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 that 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 asphalt plant outside Tijuana.

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

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

‘Exist Anywhere’

“It’s probable that there are facilities operating clandestinely,” said Cesar Velarde of Mexico’s 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 last two years that they intended to ship waste to Mexico, according to EPA documents received by Peace. However, Velarde said his office had only been notified once by his superiors and that notification led to the discovery of the Tecate dump.

Shown the names of the Mexican firms that EPA officials were told would receive the waste, Velarde said his agency had never licensed any firms with those names.

Velarde said the only licensed facilities in Baja California are a radioactive waste dump and a pesticide dump. 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.

Border Crossings

“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.”

The wastes export law is scheduled to change in November, requiring estimates of the frequency of proposed waste exports and a description of how they will be disposed of or treated. It will also require that a foreign government give its consent before any shipment is sent there.

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