State Officials Deny Favoring Toxic Waste Incinerator

Environmentalists are accusing California’s new Environmental Protection Agency of being biased in favor of keeping open a Gorman-area plant that is the only commercial hazardous waste incinerator in the state, a charge the state officials deny.

Greenpeace and other environmental activists raised the bias issue Monday night at a public meeting in Lancaster on National Cement Co.’s controversial Los Robles plant. The charge stemmed from a top state health official’s written endorsement of the plant in a memo leaked earlier this year.

James Strock, the head of the California EPA, termed the memo by one of his subordinates “regrettable.” He promised the audience of more than 100 people that the state nonetheless will decide on a strictly impartial basis whether to grant the plant a new permit.

“We do want to be fair about this. There is no preconception,” said Strock, a former head of enforcement for the federal EPA who was picked by Gov. Pete Wilson to run California’s new environmental agency created last July.

The National Cement plant, located just north of the Los Angeles-Kern County line, burns up to 1,200 gallons an hour of hazardous wastes as fuel to heat its cement-making kilns. But the company faces having to discontinue that process unless it gets new state and federal permits.

Environmentalists are trying to persuade the state to require an environmental impact report for the plant--which was not required before the start of hazardous waste burning in 1982--prior to any decision on a new state permit. The company argues that such a report is not needed.

The immediate decision before the state, however, is whether to accept a company-sponsored health-risk assessment that says the plant’s lifetime cancer risk to residents within 12 miles ranges up to 4.3 cancer cases per million. Company officials say those numbers mean the plant is safe.

But officials of the South Coast Air Quality Management District said in a memo released at the hearing that the risk figures may have been understated and the officials challenged the company’s methodology. The memo offered no alternative figure.

Strock predicted a state decision on the issue within several months.

Meanwhile, environmentalists at Monday’s meeting noted that state health officials, whose department makes decisions on such permits, for years have been pushing incineration as the best alternative to landfill disposal of hazardous wastes.

“Now the state is supposed to objectively judge . . . this,” complained Joe Blackburn, an Antelope Valley activist.

“What’s really scandalous is Cal-EPA will tell you to your face they’re neutral,” added Bradley Angel, a toxics campaign coordinator for Greenpeace.

In March, environmentalists released a Feb. 7 memo in which Ted Rauh, a deputy director in the state Department of Toxic Substances Control, pleaded with his federal counterparts on behalf of the plant and warned its closure would be a “tremendous disappointment.”

After the meeting, Strock said Rauh should not have taken that position, calling it inappropriate for a regulator. And Strock said state health officials in recent years have eased their backing for incineration, now perceiving it as a limited rather than potentially widespread remedy.

The cement plant is located on land leased from Tejon Ranchcorp, whose parent firm is 32% owned by Times Mirror Co., which publishes The Times, and Times Mirror Foundation.