State Faces Toxic Waste Logjam, Firm Warns : Environment: A disposal company says California will have an overflow of 500,000 tons by the year 2000.

A French-owned chemical company seeking permission to burn liquid toxic waste in the San Francisco Bay Area has warned that California faces a waste logjam of epic proportions in 10 years.

Even if three waste incinerators now pursuing permits in the state are approved, California by the year 2000 would have an overflow of more than 500,000 tons of liquid hazardous waste for which no legal disposal method would be available, according to a report issued Monday by Rhone-Poulenc Basic Chemicals Co.

The company is a subsidiary of Rhone-Poulenc of Paris, the world’s eighth-largest chemical company, with about $12 billion in annual sales.

Since 1984, the chemicals division, based in Shelton, Conn., has been seeking federal, state and local permits to operate a liquid hazardous waste incinerator at its plant in Martinez, an oil-refining town 30 miles northeast of San Francisco.

That facility is now used to recycle sulfuric acid, which becomes sludge when used by refineries to produce higher-octane gasolines. Rhone-Poulenc said liquid hazardous waste could be trucked in and burned in the same plant once storage and handling equipment was added.

The company has five other similar sulfuric acid facilities nationwide, including one in Carson. Two of the plants--in Houston and Baton Rouge, La.--are allowed to burn liquid hazardous waste.

“We believe (the study) shows that our Martinez facility will provide a vitally needed service for the region,” said John E. Klepeis, director of Rhone-Poulenc’s worldwide recycling and recovery services.

However, Rhone-Poulenc’s effort has met with stiff resistance from community activists, who maintain that the incinerator would expose the town, the seat of Contra Costa County, to the risk of toxic spills and would reduce the pressure on industries to cut their use of hazardous chemicals.

According to the study, beginning in 2000, the San Francisco Bay Area alone will annually generate more than 209,000 tons of liquid toxic waste suitable for incineration, even allowing for a 25% reduction from conservation efforts and better waste management.

Assuming that the region would use all of the proposed incinerator’s 142,000-ton capacity, 67,000 tons would be left over, the report noted. Klepeis said far greater amounts of waste are generated in Southern California, although figures for that area were not broken out.

The study was required by a local committee established to advise the Martinez City Council on the project.

Local, state and federal authorities have been grappling for years with the problem of how to dispose of liquid toxic waste, which is produced mostly by chemical companies, the petroleum industry and utilities.

To date, most such waste has been shipped out of California to incinerators or landfills, notably in New Jersey, Utah, Texas, Arizona and Idaho.

According to Klepeis, the federal Environmental Protection Agency has identified incineration as the best method of treatment and is requiring a movement away from using landfills. However, he added, the nation is woefully short of facilities for burning such waste.

As of now, Klepeis said, only 800,000 tons of the 280 million tons of hazardous waste generated nationwide is burned in the dozen commercial incinerators operating throughout the country. Much of the waste is treated by companies at their own sites.

Klepeis, who said Rhone-Poulenc has been frustrated by the slow permit process in Martinez, said the company is still at least two years away from operating the planned incinerator, even if progress is smooth from here on out.