Toxic Waste Events Catch a Mere Drop in the Bucket

They’ve seen it all, the hazardous-waste collectors. What looked like sticks of dynamite in the back seat of an elderly woman’s car. A delivery truck full of rotting food.

The “household hazardous waste roundups,” now held regularly throughout the Glendale area, have lured in thousands of tons of motor oils, cleaners, paints and other long-forgotten and problematic items that have languished for years in dank garages. The idea is to recycle toxic household chemicals when possible, and when not, to send them to the proper place for disposal.

But environmentalists agree that the roundups, which have been a local feature for five years, represent a finger in a leaking dike that unsuccessfully tries to keep hazardous wastes from flowing into local landfills where they can contaminate the soil and drinking water supplies.

“It’s fair to say that most household hazardous waste still ends up going into landfills,” said Lance King, community outreach director of an environmental activist group, Californians Against Waste.

Michael Picker, the former West Coast director of the National Toxics Campaign and now chief of staff for Sacramento’s mayor, said he believes the collection programs are only mildly helpful.

“It’s like asking whether ads against violence are going to stop gang violence. It’s better than nothing.”

In 1990, 224,300 tons of household hazardous waste were dumped in California landfills. The same year, only 7,800 tons of household hazardous waste were recycled or otherwise diverted from the landfills or recycled.

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But government officials and environmentalists say it is worthwhile to keep even tiny amounts of household hazardous waste out of landfills. Tom Estes, a spokesman for the California Integrated Waste Management Board, notes that one gallon of motor oil can contaminate 1 million gallons of water, making it unsafe to drink.

The roundups, Estes said, can be an effective strategy when coupled with programs to educate the public about the potential environmental hazards of ordinary household products.

“The roundups go a long way to help,” Estes said. “I’ve yet to hear of one that hasn’t overflowed to capacity.”

Last Saturday at a county-sponsored roundup at Brackett Field in La Verne, the hazardous waste came in by the trunkload and boxful, arriving in 1,300 vehicles during the day.

Hundreds of eastern San Gabriel Valley residents brought their offerings to workers, who were dressed in white protective overalls, safety glass and gloves and who sorted, inspected and stored the materials to be processed for recycling later.

“The ultimate goal is to keep all of this out of landfills, but in the process we also are keeping it out of the storm drains and the sewage treatment plants too,” county Department of Public Works official Joseph D. Reilly said as he surveyed a long line of cars and trucks waiting for their cargoes to be unloaded.

In 1990, state legislation known as AB 939 required cities and counties to implement programs to allow residents to recycle household hazardous wastes. The program is not geared toward business, industry or institutions.

This year, 37 roundups will be held across the county. There will be one on Saturday in Montebello and one in Glendale on Nov. 14.

From 1,000 to 2,500 vehicles arrive at individual roundups. And so far this year, more than 9,500 vehicles have brought items to half a dozen roundups in the San Gabriel Valley.

To pay for the roundups, which cost about $150,000 each, Los Angeles County has placed a surcharge on the “tipping fees,” the rate charged for dumping at landfills.

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Private and public landfills collect the surcharge--56 cents per ton--and it goes into a fund for the county roundups and ones in the city of Los Angeles. Contractors are hired to handle the hazardous materials.

To date in the county program, nearly 725,000 gallons of motor oil, paint and other liquid waste has been collected. More than 90% of this has been recycled.

The latex paint is processed and repackaged in five-gallon buckets for use by government agencies to paint over graffiti.

The oil-based paints and solvents are processed into a liquid that is sold for use as fuel to run kilns at concrete-manufacturing plants in California, Missouri, Kansas and Indiana.

Motor oil is trucked to a refinery in Newark in the Bay Area where it is processed and resold as motor oil.

Corrosive solutions and swimming pool chemicals are sent to a laboratory for neutralization. If heavy metals are found, they are sent to a hazardous-waste landfill in Kettleman Hills.

Pesticides and herbicides are shipped to Utah, where they are burned in a special incinerator. And so are potentially deadly and radioactive chemicals that sometimes are sneaked into the roundups.

Car batteries are sent to a smelter in Los Angeles. In a pilot program that county officials say is the first of its kind, alkaline batteries are being sent to a Pennsylvania firm that is attempting to extract the zinc.

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Other municipalities handle the collection and recycling differently. Sacramento has set up its own curbside recycling program for motor oil. San Francisco has a permanent household hazardous waste collection facility where residents can drop off items. San Diego educates residents about alternative household products that are nontoxic.

In La Verne last Saturday, a cream-colored Mercedes pulled up with a trunkful of contributions.

Workers emptied boxes. The smell of pesticides and paint wafted through the air.

“We figured it was better to bring it here than to send it to the dump,” said passenger Sue Price, 47. Her husband, Jack, also 47, was driving. Their impending move from Claremont to Kentucky prompted the roundup visit.

“The movers won’t move that stuff, either. Some of it is probably 20 years old,” she said.

Sometimes people want to get rid of even older items.

Reilly said a woman once called him to say that her late husband had worked on the Manhattan Project to create the atom bomb during World War II. She said she still had containers in the garage labeled: “Radioactive.”

Reilly, telling her that the program can’t accept explosives or radioactive materials, gave her the phone number of a disposal company.

The driver for the restaurant supplier who brought rotting food was told to take it elsewhere.

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Sometimes, however, the rules are bent for patrons, such as the elderly woman who showed up with what looked like dynamite.

On closer inspection, workers discovered she had something less potent but nonetheless explosive: black powder. She told Reilly that after her husband died, she had found the sticks in a shed in the back yard and just didn’t know what to do.

Reilly took the explosives. “We have to make a judgment,” he said. “If it’s a little old lady with some kind of explosive hazardous waste, it is better for us to take it, rather than to let her drive off with it.”