EPA Intervenes to Cool Interstate Clash Over Toxic Waste Disposal

Tired of taking North Carolina’s toxic castoffs, South Carolina passed a law barring out-of-state trash.

New York threatened to ban hazardous wastes from Ohio after the Buckeye State shut down a major landfill. Ohio countered with a threat to embargo trash from New York City.

When Texas, with more garbage than any other state, imposed a moratorium on building disposal facilities, adjacent states took legal action to avoid becoming dumping grounds for Texans.

With landfill space dwindling and incinerators increasingly unpopular, efforts to dispose of industrial wastes have ignited a new kind of civil war.

On one side are states that use incinerators and have landfills; on the other are “have-not” states that have dodged disposal problems and look beyond their borders for a solution.

“What is happening is a destructive daisy chain of retaliatory responses (among states) that damages the environment and the economic fabric of the nation,” said Richard Fortuna, executive director of the Hazardous Waste Treatment Council.

William K. Reilly, administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, intervened in the recent clash between the Carolinas by threatening to withhold $12 million in federal aid from North Carolina for failing to plan facilities capable of handling its wastes over the next 20 years--a requirement of federal law.

Congress passed that law in 1986, to make sure the states would have the facilities to treat toxic materials removed from polluted sites under the Superfund program. Every state is supposed to submit a “capacity assurance plan” to the EPA every two years.

South Carolina, with a large landfill in Pinewood and two incinerators, has long attracted industrial dumpers from “have-not” states in the South.

North Carolina is one of the few industrial states with virtually no commercial disposal center for hazardous wastes. Most of the 75,000 tons a year of hazardous wastes produced by furniture and textile manufacturers was being trucked out of the state. A plan to build a waste-water treatment facility was blocked by the legislature in 1987.

In January, 1989, South Carolina Gov. Carroll A. Campbell Jr. signed an executive order barring waste from any state that had legal barriers to the disposal of wastes from its own industries. North Carolina was the primary target.

Ten months later, Campbell helped to fashion a mutually exclusive, cooperative waste agreement with Kentucky, Tennessee and Alabama.

“There’s a fundamental lack of fairness when a state like North Carolina is enjoying the benefits of industrial development without developing the facilities to handle the hazardous byproducts of that industrial development,” said Tucker Eskew, a spokesman for Campbell. “There’s a sense that we’re being dumped on.”

Last fall, North Carolina’s Gov. James G. Martin came up with a plan to build a hazardous-waste facility on state property, but the Council of State, an elected panel, voted it down and North Carolina’s hope of joining the pact was dashed. Both Campbell and Martin are Republicans.

Martin has thrown the issue back to the Legislature while trying to find a locality willing to have a waste treatment plant as a neighbor. “You cannot describe this as a process that’s steaming along,” Martin spokesman Tim Pittman said.

With North Carolina wastes streaming into his state, Campbell came to Washington in February to demand that the EPA enforce the capacity-assurance law and cut off North Carolina’s Superfund cleanup money.

In a March 11 letter to Gov. Martin, Reilly threatened to withhold $12 million. The EPA chief gave North Carolina 60 days to produce a plan for processing Superfund-relocated wastes.

“Why should the federal government provide money to states for Superfund cleanup when the states make no effort to manage the waste from those sites?” Reilly asked in an interview.