Hazardous Waste

High levels of hazardous-waste materials exist in a small area of an abandoned waste facility in a remote section of Winslow Township, a representative from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency told 11 Winslow residents and officials last night. An EPA investigation of the site, which was a waste-processing facility in the early 1970s, found higher than normal levels of heavy metals, such as copper, nickel and lead, and volatile organic compounds, such as benzene and arsenic, in the soil, said Marilyn Haye, the enforcement project manager for the EPA. Because there are no drinking water wells or residences near the 10-acre site on Piney Hollow Road, immediate danger is not evident, Haye said at the township environmental commission meeting.

Give of your oven cleaner, your flea powder, your tired paint thinner yearning to breath free. That's what a consortium of local officials would like you to do. The county is sponsoring a free pickup program for household hazardous waste that typically ends up in the trash but should be disposed of in a better way. County residents can take cans of old pesticide; polish; mothballs, and oven, window and bowl cleaner to the Oxford Valley Mall...

An attorney for Waste Conversion Inc., the Hatfield, Pa., hazardous-waste hauler that was fined $3 million last week for improperly disposing of hazardous incinerator ash, has denounced the fine as "pure sensationalism" and said it would appeal the penalty. The company, which was also ordered to surrender its New Jersey hauling license, blamed its predicament on another company that was fined, Rollins Environmental Services Inc., which operates a hazardous-waste incinerator in Logan Township, N.J. The New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection last week announced it had imposed the largest administrative fines in its history against Waste Conversion and Rollins for the ash dumping.

Envirosafe Services of Pennsylvania Inc., yesterday won the first of two approvals needed from the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Resources (DER) for a new hazardous-waste treatment plant and landfill in Narvon, Lancaster County. Red Rose Alliance, an environmental group that has been fighting Envirosafe's efforts for 10 years, immediately announced that it would appeal DER's decision to the state Environmental Hearing Board. Caernarvon Township supervisors also plan an appeal, according to Supervisors Chairman Jerald L. Martin.

In addition to providing products or services, many small businesses ranging from print shops and dry cleaners to garages and laboratories also produce a byproduct - hazardous waste, in the form of acids, solvents, sludge and other chemicals. Until last year, businesses that generated modest amounts of hazardous waste could dump their dangerous chemicals down the drain and toss toxic waste into the trash. Now, such waste must be disposed of under stringent regulations. In March 1986, the federal Resource and Recovery Act was amended to cover operations in which as little as 220 pounds of hazardous waste a month is generated.

Strange bedfellows indeed. There was former New Jersey Gov. Jim Florio, a staunch proponent of strict environmental regulation, lobbying for the hazardous-waste incinerator industry. And the industry, oddly enough, found itself allied with environmental activists and angry PTA mothers. They all descended on the Capitol yesterday to call for tougher regulations for the cement industry. At issue: the increasing use of hazardous waste as an added fuel to heat kilns in the cement-making process.

The Falls Township Zoning Hearing Board has delayed until next month a decision on an appeal to allow a chemical-waste company to open in the township. Residents of the Pennswood Crossing Mobile Home Park persuaded the zoning board members to wait until their next meeting, Nov. 7, before rendering a decision. The proposed company would be adjacent to the mobile home park. The board voted 4-0 to delay the decision until the next meeting. On Feb. 4, the owners of Ronald Hensor Trucking Terminal in Fairless Hills, Ronald and Ellen Hensor, entered into an agreement of sale with Eastern Chemical Waste Systems of Morrisville.

Delaware County Democrats and environmentalists clashed with county officials over operation of the new $320 million Westinghouse trash-to-steam plant in Chester City at a raucous session of County Council this week. The two groups criticized the county at Tuesday's council session for not coming up with a plan to dispose of household hazardous waste, and one Democrat, Larry Arata, contended that the plant was operating in violation of state law. Among other things, the Democrats and environmentalists have accused the council of allowing hazardous waste to be incinerated at the plant, polluting the environment.

If a hazardous-waste storage facility is installed on a Cumberland County site, the waste probably will be trucked through Gloucester and Camden County towns, Cumberland County officials and politicians have said. Residents and politicians opposing the facility's siting in a woodland along the Maurice River in Maurice River Township have warned that if the facility was put in their county, residents of towns along the major highways that criss-cross Gloucester and Camden Counties could expect the waste to be transported through on trucks.

Every year Rohm & Haas, after manufacturing its paints, resins and other coatings, finds itself with a big and poisonous load of garbage on its hands, about 1,500 tons of compounds ranging from acrylic acid to xylene. And the only way it can rid itself of the more than 50 compounds is to ship them to disposal sites in New Jersey, New York and Alabama. By contrast, every year, Drakenfeld Color, a small Washington County company that, among other things, makes possible the greens on the Eagles insignia that decorate gas-station giveaway glasses, must dispose of 60 or so tons of lead, chromium, zinc and organic byproducts.

It is contaminated with PCBs, and it might pose a danger to the endangered shortnose sturgeon in the Delaware River. So on Tuesday the Environmental Protection Agency added a Trainer, Delaware County, industrial-waste site near the Delaware River to its Superfund national-priority list, making it eligible for a federal cleanup. EPA said that the main source of contamination at the facility once operated by the bankrupt Metro Container Corp. is a half-acre toxic disposal lagoon.

With more Superfund sites than any state in the country and more than 16,000 hazardous-waste cleanups pending, New Jersey's industrial landscape has long made it a punch line of pollution jokes. But now that state environmental officials are trying to trim the backlog by handing control to the private sector, they are facing a backlash from both the state's environmentalists and its industrial and chemical companies. Under plans still being reviewed, state-licensed environmental professionals will be granted day-to-day autonomy, relegating state bureaucrats to the role of auditors on the majority of cases.

LOS ANGELES - Americans bought 2.9 billion toys last year. As I stumble through the house after play dates, it sometimes feels as if my 8-year-old son owns all of them. Our living room is exploding with Lego bricks, Nerf weaponry, and rubbery bounce balls. My son's bedroom is, more often than not, carpeted with Pokemon cards and comic books, Matchbox cars and MythBusters science experiments. It's a problem that's a lot like bedbugs. I have no idea where a lot of these toys even came from, and getting rid of them responsibly is a lot more difficult than I'd imagined.

The Streets Department wants your hazardous waste - and they want it now. The department's Sanitation Division is inviting Philadelphians to dispose of, or recycle, unwanted pesticides, oil-based paints, solvents and flammable liquids, among other things, at a citywide household hazardous waste collection event Saturday. From 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., the Streets Department training center at State Road and Ashburner Road, in Upper Holmesburg, will accept trash that may be harmful to the environment if disposed with regular household garbage, or poured down storm drains.

A 3,500-acre hazardous-waste site at McGuire Air Force Base in Burlington County will be cleaned up under an agreement signed this week between the Air Force and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the EPA said yesterday. The agreement calls for the removal of nickel, mercury, PCBs, and other contaminants at the McGuire Air Force Base Superfund Site in New Hanover Township, the agency said. It "is a significant milestone that will benefit the people of New Jersey and the environment," said George Pavlou, acting EPA regional administrator.

Is junk mail recyclable? Must newspapers be bagged, and in what kind of bag? Which day do the trucks come? Some questions can actually be answered. Philadelphia   (215-685-7329). Bucks County   (215-345-3400). Chester County   (800-626-0067). Delaware County   (610-892-9627). Montgomery County   (610-278-3618). Burlington County   (609-499-1001). Camden County   (856-858-5241)

In 2000, businessman Joel D. Udell faced a serious problem. The EPA had determined that his crowded Pottstown warehouse was so hazardous - filled with leaking, corroded drums of chemicals - that it qualified for Superfund status. He had an order to empty and clean the place. And quickly. So that summer, Udell allegedly shipped 300 tons of the toxic stuff to a port in Rotterdam, Netherlands, listing a Nigerian company as buyer. Problem was, the buyer didn't exist, according to a government filing unsealed yesterday in federal court in Philadelphia.

It's not good when the groundwater is bright yellow. But that's the problem underneath the former Chem-Fab Inc. site in Doylestown Borough. Nine years after federal agencies held an emergency cleanup at the metal etching and electroplating company, the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection is working on a plan to remove the remaining contamination. The DEP will hold a public meeting on June 22 to discuss several plans to remove chromium and other chemicals in the groundwater, a tricky process that could cost $4.7 million, said April Flipse, the DEP project officer in charge of the site.

Each year, Pennsylvania spends about $50 million to clean up hazardous waste sites. But the tax that funded the efforts is being phased out, and officials wonder how they will fill the financial hole. There is enough money left in the fund, about $100 million, to carry the Department of Environmental Protection through 2005, said David Hogeman, DEP director of the land recycling and waste management bureau. If the amount in the fund drops to $5 million, the state's general fund is supposed to kick in $30 million.

A few weeks ago on a hot, muggy Friday night, I had the misfortune of being stuck in a standstill on the Pennsylvania Turnpike en route to my home in western Chester County. A tractor-trailer had jackknifed two miles ahead of us, spilling hazardous waste across the road. The hazardous-materials crews were dispatched, but the cleanup would take several hours. Traveling with my son, my daughter, and her three middle-school friends who were returning from a basketball camp near Doylestown, we crept to a halt in the westbound lanes of the turnpike just west of the Northeast Extension.