EPA Chief Distances Herself From Ohio Incinerator Case

Carol Browner recused herself Friday from her first big decision as head of the Environmental Protection Agency, bowing out of a furious debate over a hazardous waste incinerator because of her husband’s affiliation with an environmental group that has opposed the project.

Her decision came in the midst of a meeting with environmental activists opposing the $140-million facility in East Liverpool, Ohio, and two days before a federal court hearing on a temporary restraining order blocking its initial test burning.

The incinerator, on the bank of the Ohio River downstream from Pittsburgh, Pa., has been the object of an eight-year judicial and administrative struggle. Environmentalists bitterly oppose it because of its proximity to residential neighborhoods, underground water supplies and an elementary school.

Just 12 days before the Clinton Administration took office, EPA gave its approval for a seven-day test burn of the plant designed to dispose of 60,000 tons of hazardous waste per year. But the environmental group Greenpeace asked a federal judge to stop it, and he issued the temporary restraining order.

Activists then appealed to the new Administration to reverse the EPA’s previous approval and to conduct a full investigation of the process leading to the permit for the plant, owned by Waste Technologies Industries, a subsidiary of Swiss steel interests.

Browner, according to activists in the meeting, opened Friday’s session by noting the urgency to resolve the stalemate.

But when the discussion revealed that Citizen Action had opposed the project, Browner conferred with an EPA ethics officer and concluded that she should step aside. Her husband, Michael Podhozer, works for the group.

“Since Browner’s husband is employed by Citizen Action, and she has recused herself from any EPA matters involving site-specific litigation in which Citizen Action is involved, she needs to recuse herself from the WTI case in order to comply with her ethics agreement with the U.S. Senate,” the EPA said.

Although the incinerator has been an intense local issue for years, it gained national attention shortly after the presidential election when Vice President-elect Al Gore declared that the new Administration would not permit commercial operation of the incinerator without more information.

Since being named to head EPA, Browner has brushed aside questions on the issue by saying that she was continuing to review the agency’s earlier decision to permit the test burn.

Activists who met with her on Friday entered the session hopeful that she would extend the ban against the start-up.

When Browner announced that her ethics commitment required her to recuse herself, “we wanted to cry,” said Beth Knapp of Beaver, Pa. “It drained the life out of us, but we are going to win eventually, no doubt about that.”

Local boosters of the project contend that it is needed not only to help address the mounting hazardous waste problem but also to provide jobs and tax revenues in an economically depressed region.

At full operation, the incinerator is expected to employ about 200 people.

The weeklong test burn is required by the federal Resources Conservation and Recovery Act.