EPA Discovers Military Sales of Toxic Wastes : Environment: A House panel accuses the Defense Department of fraudulently disposing of hazardous materials to avoid disposal costs.

In selling a wide variety of surplus materials, the Department of Defense has at times resorted to public sales as a mere sham for hazardous waste disposal, according to an internal memorandum of the Environmental Protection Agency made public Tuesday.

The memorandum, from the EPA’s regional administrator in San Francisco, included an account of six instances in California where hazardous substances originating with the military had wound up endangering the environment.

The department “has gone to great lengths to sell as much hazardous material and hazardous waste as possible to the general public,” said Rep. Vic Fazio (D-Sacramento). “While the Department of Defense contends this is a means for generating revenue for the Treasury and providing the public with access to usable, surplus items, in reality the sale of many of these hazardous materials is nothing less than a fraudulent disposal of hazardous waste in order to avoid the high cost of proper disposal.”

Fazio’s comments came during hearings he and Rep. Mike Synar (D-Okla.) co-chaired in Sacramento Tuesday.

The problem came to light last summer when EPA regional administrator Daniel W. McGovern in San Francisco wrote agency headquarters after the discovery that 40,000 gallons of hazardous solvents, thinners, lacquers, and acids were purchased by a businessman and left in a warehouse in the town of Collinsville.

The leaking drums created a million-dollar cleanup task whose bill is still being debated. The memo noted five other cases in which military surplus items auctioned to civilians created similar hazards.

On the basis of those cases, the EPA regional office warned that the Defense Department’s sale of a sweeping variety of hazardous items to the public had become a national problem.

The report, along with a follow-up study by the General Accounting Office, was made public in Sacramento Tuesday as the Government Operations subcommittee on energy, environment and natural resources heard calls for tighter regulations of government sales of hazardous materials.

The Collinsville case and the investigations that followed, Fazio said, shows that the Defense Department “mismanages the hazardous materials it uses and the wastes it generates at unnecessary expense to the taxpayer, and in some instances at substantial risk to human health and the environment.”

In the investigation requested by Fazio and Synar, the GAO found the Defense Department had sold hazardous materials and waste with an original acquisition cost of $116 million for about $7 million between October, 1986, and March, 1989.

The Defense Logistics Agency, it said, estimated that the sales had avoided disposal costs of $170 million.

The GAO said the government should provide safeguards against improper use of hazardous items that it sells. It added that steps should be taken to ensure that buyers are informed of special handling requirements.

After receiving the report from the regional administrator in San Francisco, the EPA’s federal facilities compliance office asked the agency’s nine other regions for reports on similar experiences.

It is now preparing an agency position paper on the issue. It is also preparing actions against the Defense Department to recover cleanup costs in cases in which auctioned materials created environmental hazards.