times beach

HALL STREET BLUES

The EPA plows ahead With its dioxin cleanup despite workers’ concerns

first published in the Riverfront Times (St. Louis), Nov. 1, 1995

(Beep) Carl, my name is Art Compton. I am an employee of NW (Nationsway Transport Inc.). My father died at Jones Truck Line next door of dioxin-related cancer. We are very upset because the federal government is going to remove that dirt starting next week. And we’ re very concerned about what’s going to happen to the people at NW when they do this. They are going to do this while we are working.They’re having a meeting Monday at NW; the EPA is going to meet with some people. I would like very much to talk to you.

The  week after receiving my first telephone
message from Art Compton, he called again. This time his
voice sounded a little weaker, the words came a bit
slower,  but the 50-year-old Teamster's resolve hadn't
lessened a bit.
     "I don't die easy," said Compton. The Vietnam
veteran had a heart attack at the office of the
Nationsway (NW) truck terminal on the morning of Oct.
23. The seizure occurred shortly after Compton had
argued strongly with federal and state officials over
their plans to excavate dioxin-contaminated soil at the
nearby Jones Truck Lines, one of the 27 sites that are a
part of the Times Beach Superfund cleanup in Eastern
Missouri. Compton has since been released from the
hospital and is now convalescing at home. "I think that
I brought a lot of awareness ... to the EPA
(Environmental Protection Agency) that this is more
serious than they thought, "  he says.
     At the hastily arranged meeting on Oct. 23,
representatives of the EPA, the Agency for Toxic
Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) and the Missouri
Department of Health (MDOH)  fended a barrage of
questions from Compton and other NW employees. About two
dozen employees attended the meeting. The workers and
their representatives from Teamsters Local 600 asked the
EPA to delay excavation at the nearby Jones site. 
     The labor union also requested that the interior of
the NW terminal itself be tested. After the Teamsters
brought in their own health experts early last week, the
EPA acceded.  Initial test results have now verified the
presence of dioxin-contaminated dust at levels as high
as 1.18 parts per billion (ppb) in the rafters at the
truck terminal, union officials say. Last Friday
afternoon , NW management sent workers home early so the
EPA could do further testing, union officials say.  At
press time on Monday, a union spokesman told the RFT
that most of the latest test results from the had been
determined to be invalid. Further sampling is
anticipated.      
     Despite the discovery,  the EPA is plowing ahead
with the excavation of a contaminated section of roadway
behind NW. At the same time,  the agency  has now
acknowledged the existence of dioxin-contaminated soil
at  yet another location -- Gully Transport -- a truck
terminal immediately south of the Jones site. This
latest revelation comes as local environmentalists are
alleging the possible presence of polychlorinated
biphenyls (pcbs) and other toxic substances in the soil
at some of the cleanup sites, including Jones. If proven
true, the additional toxins could invalidate  the EPA's
projections on stack emissions at the incinerator. 
     Contaminated soil at the abandoned Jones truck
terminal on Hall Street was scheduled to be removed
beginning last week. The Times Beach project involves
transporting an estimated 100,000 cubic yards of dioxin
contaminated soil from more than two dozen locations and
burning it at a temporary incinerator that has been
constructed at the site of the former town of Times
Beach in St. Louis County.
     On Oct. 13, the St. Louis County Counselor's office
asked Judge John J. Nangle to temporarily halt use of
the incinerator pending appeal. It is unlikely the judge
will grant the stay, however, since the appeal seeks to
reverse an earlier decision by Nangle in which he
overturned a county ordinance that would have set a
strict emissions standard for the incinerator. 
     Meanwhile, NW  truck terminal employees are
concerned about potential exposure from additional
airborne dust once the asphalt lot at Jones is dug up.
The Nationsway terminal is directly adjacent to the
Jones site.The EPA belatedly acknowledged that dioxin
contamination has migrated from Jones onto the  property
where Nationsway is located (Toxic Migration, the RFT,
Oct. 11). Workers at Nationsway were not informed until
early last month about the imminent cleanup or the
migration problem despite test results being completed
more than a year ago. 
     According to the EPA's tentative time schedule, the
excavations on this portion of Hall Street are to be
finished in a few weeks. The original  plan included
excavating soil both on and off of the Jones site,
vacuuming the interior of the defunct terminal warehouse
and filling in a large sinkhole in the Jones  truck lot.
     
     Officials from the EPA, MDOH and ATSDR all tried to
convince the workers on Oct. 23 that  levels of dioxin
at the Jones site are so low that they pose little or no
health risk. Dioxin levels of more than 400 parts per
billion (ppb) have been found at the site. The 
established industrial standard requires excavating and
removing dioxin-contaminated soil that exceeds 20 ppb. 
The officials stressed that long term exposure to the
toxin is the real danger. Gale Carlson of MDOH told the
workers that diesel fumes they breathe daily contain
higher levels of dioxin than the contaminated soil that
is to be removed. Carlson's  assurances, however, came
before the discovery of the dioxin-contaminated dust in
the NW terminal's rafters. 
     At the same meeting, Gregory R. Evans, a community
health expert at St. Louis University, spoke to the
employees at the request of the NW management. Evans,
who lays claim to more than 20 years of experience in
dioxin-related research, told the workers there is
nothing to be concerned about.
      "I don't care what physician told you what there
has not been a person who has ever been documented to
have died from dioxin. I don't care what any physician
has told you. I've been doing this work for 20 years.We
have evaluated every single person that ever lived in
Times Beach. Every person that has lived in sites that
has levels 1,000 times higher than levels next door
there, and we followed them for years. There has never
been a person who has ever even come down sick with
anything done with dioxin," says Evans. "I'm not saying
that there aren't reports out there that don't say that
it's not dangerous. ...  I'm not saying that if I go out
and spray myself with pure dioxin that there might not
be a problem with that. I'm talking about the site next
door. I'm talking about most of these sites around here
in which we are talking about low-levels of dioxin that
for whatever legal purposes there are, they got to get
rid of," Evans says. 
     Not all health professionals or scientists agree
with Evans, however. Paul Connett, an environmentalist
and chemist at St. Lawrence University in Canton, N.Y.,
is among those who feel that dioxin exposure, at any
level, is more than a legal problem. "He can't even see
the evidence in front of his own eyes," says Connett of
Evans. "There has been a lot of documented sickness in
the people that have lived in Times Beach. Now whether
they've done a good enough epidemiological study to
satisfy themselves,  that's a different issue. The fact
is that many people in the Times Beach area have shown a
litany of sickness, which has not been explained."
     The EPA's  recently finalized reassessment of
dioxin found it to be a probable human carcinogen and
responsible for reproductive and immunological
disorders. In 1993, the U.S. Department of Veterans
Affairs (VA) recognized an association between Vietnam
War veterans exposed to Agent Orange, a herbicide
containing dioxin, and a number of illnesses.  Those
dioxin-related maladies include: soft-tissue sarcoma,
non-Hodgkins lymphoma, Hodgkin's disease, chloracne and
porhyria cutanea tarda (a liver disorder).  Other
diseases are suspected of being associated with dioxin
exposure.
      In 1991,  a St. Louis jury awarded the family of
the late Alvin Overman $1.5 million. Overman, a Hall
Street truck-terminal employee,  died in 1984 of soft
tissue sarcoma. Syntex, the corporation responsible for
the Times Beach cleanup along with  Northeastern
Pharmaceutical Chemical Co (NEPCCO),  and Independent
Petrochemical Co. (IPC) were found liable in the case.
The truck terminal that employed Overman had been
sprayed with dioxin-contaminated waste oil in the early
1970s.   
      Given that fact alone, the Teamsters have
reasonable cause to doubt Evans' reassurances. NW
employees are uncertain why there is a need for the EPA
to now rush ahead with the cleanup. If the agency would
temporarily hold off on the Jones excavation, workers
say the potential for further human exposure could be
lessened because NW's lease expires early next year and
the company has had  longstanding plans to relocate to a
larger facility.  In defense of the agency's plans, 
Mark J. Thomas, the EPA's on-site coordinator, claims
the 1990 federal consent degree, which mandated the
cleanup, requires the EPA to begin excavating at Jones.
There is, however, no time schedule for individual site
cleanups included in the consent decree.
     "These guys probably have been exposed long term,
because before they paved these lots, the dust was
there," says Rick Schleipman, a business agent for Local
600. "In my heart, I believe that they (the EPA) were
just going to come in there, dig it up, move it and be
on there way without our involvement, whatsoever." 
Since the union interceded,  the agency has agreed to
excavate the areas closest to the NW facility over the
weekend, when none of the employees are there. The EPA
has also now decided to store the excavated soil
temporarily in a building on the premises, instead of
simply covering it with plastic, Schleipman says.
     Compton,  the worker who had the heart attack, is
one of two NW employees who say they have deceased
family members that worked at the Jones terminal. In
1971, Russell Bliss sprayed the then-unpaved truck lot
with dioxin-contaminated waste oil as a dust
suppressant. 
     "My father passed away while he was working for
Jones Truck Lines," says Compton. "He had multiple
cancers. Whenever they diagnosed him, they gave him six
months and he died in 29 days."

TEAMSTERS FIGHT EPA SECRECY

by C.D. Stelzer

previously unpublished, Oct 18, 1995

Representatives from two federal agencies and a Missouri
Department of Health (MDOH) official fended off a
barrage of hostile questions from employees at the
Nationsway Transport Service Inc. on Monday. At the
meeting,  workers and their union representatives asked
the EPA for a delay to allow independent health experts
to assess the situation.  It was not clear at press time
on Monday whether the EPA would accede to the request. 
     The controversy has risen in advance of the U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) plans calling for
the excavation of  the Jones Truck Lines site this week. 
The abandoned truck terminal on Hall Street is one of
the 27 designated dioxin sites in Eastern Missouri,
which  are scheduled to be remediated as a part of the
Times Beach Superfund cleanup. That project involves
transporting an estimated 100,000 cubic yards of dioxin
contaminated soil and burning it at a temporary
incinerator that is being constructed at the former town
of Times Beach in St. Louis County.
     Nationsway truck terminal employees, most of whom
are members of Teamsters Local 600, are concerned about
the potential exposure they will face when the EPA
begins moving the toxic dirt.  The Nationsway terminal
is directly adjacent to the Jones site.  The  EPA 
belatedly acknowledged that dioxin contamination has
migrated from the Jones site and onto the property where
Nationsway is located (Toxic Migration, the RFT, Oct.
11). Workers at Nationsway were not informed until
earlier this month of the imminent cleanup or the
migration despite test results being completed more than
a year ago. 
      On Monday, a spokesman for the agency told  those
attending the meeting that dioxin has also been found at
Gully Transportation,  the truck terminal to the south
of Jones. Workers there have yet to be informed, says
Mark J. Thomas, an EPA  on-site coordinator. 
     According to the EPA's time schedule, the
excavations on this portion of Hall Street will be
finished in a few weeks. The cleanup  includes digging
up soil both on and off of the Jones site, vacuuming the
interior of the defunct terminal warehouse and filling
in a large sinkhole in the  truck lot.      
     Officials from the EPA, MDOH and the Agency for
Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) all tried
to convince the workers that  levels of dioxin at Jones
are so low that they pose little or no health risk.
Dioxin levels of more than 400 parts per billion (ppb)
have been found at the site. Industrial standards
require cleanups of dioxin levels exceeding 20 ppb.  The
officials stressed that long term exposure to the toxin
is the real danger. Gale Carlson of MDOH told the
workers that the diesel fumes they breathe daily 
contain higher levels of dioxin than the contaminated
soil which is to be removed. 
     Gregory R. Evans,  a community health expert at St.
Louis University, spoke to the employees at the request
of the management of Nationsway. He asserted that
dioxin-exposure has never been proven to be lethal. 
"(Moreover), there has never been a person who has ever
even come down sick with anything done with dioxin,"
Evans told the workers. 
      The recently finalized reassessment of dioxin
conducted by the EPA found it to be a suspected human
carcinogen and responsible for human reproductive and
immunological problems. 
      Given that fact alone, the Teamsters have
reasonable cause to doubt Evans' reassurances. On
Monday, Local 600 officials asked the EPA to delay the
Jones excavation. Thomas of the EPA gave no indication
that the project would be held up more than possibly a
day. In defense of the agency's plans,  Thomas claimed
the 1990 consent degree, which mandated the cleanup,
requires the EPA to begin excavating at Jones. There is,
however, no time schedule for individual site cleanups
included in the consent decree.
      Union members are concerned about the rush and
they question why they were not informed in advance of
the EPA's plans. If the EPA would temporarily hold off
on the Jones excavation, workers say the potential for
further human exposure could be lessened because
Nationsway's lease expires in February and the company
has had  longstanding plans to relocate to a larger
facility. 
      "Our local attorneys are checking into whether we
can get any kind of court order against them (the EPA),"
says Rick Schleipman, a business agent for Local 600.
Schleipman was unsure at press time on Monday what the
union lawyers would recommend. At the same time, the
local has gained the support of its International union,
which is supplying its own health experts. They are
expected to arrive in St. Louis early this week to begin
their own investigation of the Jones site.
      More than one of the Nationsway workers say they
have relatives  that worked at the Jones terminal who
died of multiple forms of cancer. In 1971, Russell Bliss
sprayed the then-unpaved truck lot with dioxin
contaminated waste oil as a dust suppressant.
     "My father passed away while he was working for
Jones Truck Lines," says Nationsway employee Art
Compton. "He had multiple cancers. Whenever they
diagnosed him, they gave him six months and he died in
29 days. Twenty of those days were on morphine." After
arguing with the federal and state health officials at
the meeting on Monday, Compton, 50, had a heart attack
at the scene and has now been hospitalized.

Toxic Migrant

By C. D. Stelzer

first published in the Riverfront Times (St.Louis), Oct. 16, 1995

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has
discovered dioxin contamination on property in St.
Louis that the federal agency had previously listed
as clean, the Riverfront Times has learned.
 
Soil tests conducted in June 1994 at the
Nationsway Transport Service Inc., a truck terminal
at 5701 Hall St., revealed dioxin levels of up to
15 parts per billion, according to an EPA
correspondence and sampling data provided to the
RFT by an anonymous source. Despite the lapse of
more than a year since the test results were
issued, employees at the terminal and their union
representative were never officially notified of
the contamination by the EPA or the company. 

In September, Bob Feild, the EPA project
manager for the Times Beach dioxin cleanup,
repeatedly told the RFT that samples taken at four
sites in 1994 had uncovered no further dioxin
contamination. "They were found to be clean, ..."
said Feild. 

When asked last week about the Nationsway
terminal, Feild admitted the property was among
those he had previously identified as
uncontaminated. Feild and Martha Steincamp, the
regional counsel for the EPA, now maintain it is
likely that the newly discovered dioxin-tainted
soil migrated from the adjacent Jones Truck Line
lot, and, therefore, cannot be considered part of a
separate site, according to the terms of the 1990
federally-mandated consent decree. 

"I guess we're having a little semantical
problem about whether there are other sites," says
Steincamp. "Superfund doesn't care about property
boundaries, they clean up contamination. ... There
is migration at a lot of the sites," adds
Steincamp. Officials at the EPA and the Agency for
Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) say
the concentrations of dioxin at Nationsway are well
within health-based standards for industrial or
commercial properties and pose little risk because
the contamination is limited to the periphery of
the property. Nevertheless, the EPA says it will to
excavate and burn the toxic soil at Nationsway.

The abandoned Jones Truck Line property, at
5601 Hall St., is one of the 27 designated sites
that are part of the EPA's Times Beach Superfund
cleanup. The project involves transporting and
burning 100,000 cubic yards of dioxin-contaminated
soil in Eastern Missouri. As a part of the plan, an
incinerator is now being built at the site of the
former town of Times Beach in West St. Louis
County. Test burns may start before the end of the
year. The EPA intends to use some of the
contaminated soil from the Jones site as feedstock
for those burns, which will require that the
cleanup at the Hall Street location begin soon.
 
As of last week, no one yet had informed
Nationsway employees about the imminent excavation.
In 1983, the EPA deemed the site -- formerly known
as Trans Con -- to be clean, but workers at the
terminal have long been concerned about potential
dioxin exposure.

"As far as I know there hasn't been any
announcement of any plans to clean it up," says
Rick Schleipman, the business agent for Teamsters
Local 600, who represents many of the workers at
the Nationsway terminal. "If there is something
wrong on the property, they should definitely let
them know," says the labor official. 

When risk manager Jerry Baer was contacted at
Nationsway's corporate headquarters in Denver, he
denied any knowledge that dioxin contamination had
been found at the company's St. Louis facility.
"Our understanding is that there is dioxin at the
site next door," Baer says. He refused to talk
about the company's policies regarding notifying
employees of potential dioxin exposure. He would
only say: "I know that they are aware of it, (but)
I don't know how they became aware." Nationsway --
an international transport company -- is controlled
by Jerry McMorris, the owner of the Colorado
Rockies baseball team.

The property on which the Nationsway terminal
is located is owned by Justin Williamson III of
Ladue. In a letter dated August 8, 1994, the EPA
notified Williamson of the dioxin contamination. "A
review of the data shows that 2,3,7,8-TCDD (dioxin)
was detected on your property ranging in
concentration from 0.336 to 15.0 parts per billion
(ppb)," the letter states. Williamson, a prominent
St. Louis businessman and philanthropist, also owns
Midwest Transfer, another transport company located
on Hall Street. He says he informed the management
of Nationsway about the dioxin contamination, and
otherwise bears no responsibility in the case.
Williamson has owned the property for four or five
years, he says. He refused further comment.
 
"He is essentially an innocent landowner,"
Steincamp, the EPA lawyer, says of Williamson. "In
other words, the contamination came to be located
on his property through no fault of his."

An estimated 3,278 cubic yards of toxic dirt is
supposed to be dug up at the 5.65-acre Jones site
and hauled to Times Beach for incineration,
according to the EPA's Engineering Evaluation/Cost
Analysis (EE/CA). Excavation, at this site alone,
will cost more than $1.3 million. The total price
tag for incinerating the tainted soil at Jones is
expected to be more than $4.2 million. In addition,
more than 182,000 square feet of the contaminated
soil will at capped with asphalt and remain at the
location. The cost of capping the remaining soil
will be more than $500,000.

The ostensible purpose of the
scorched-earth-and/or-asphalt policy is, of course,
the protection of human health. Established EPA and
ATSDR standards require residential property be
cleaned up to below one part per billion (ppb). The
same guidelines, however, allow dioxin levels of up
to 20 ppb in certain commercial or industrial
areas. The reasoning behind the double-standard is
that children are more vulnerable to the effects of
dioxin. The toxin is a suspected human carcinogen
and is known to cause immunological and
reprodcutive problems. "Children are just more
sensitive and they also, through their play habits
and eating habits, ingest more dust, more soil than
a worker does," says Denise Jordan-Izaguirre of the
ATSDR. The federal health official says that
studies "have shown that adult, healthy men, in a
work place, are exposed to much higher levels (of
dioxin) without any impact on their health." 

Opponents of the EPA's plan see things
differently. "It's a liability removal project,"
says Steve Taylor, an organizer for the Times Beach
Action Group (TBAG). "It's very suspicious that
these sites haven't been cleaned up for 20 years.
TBAG has long demanded that public officials help
us to uncover the dioxin coverup."

Fred Striley of the Dioxin Incinerator Response
Group (DIRG) shares a similar view. "The plan says
that they can cap over dioxin-contaminated soil,
and that will be safe. They've capped over a lot of
soil and its been that way for ten years," says
Striley. "I don't see why they have to burn it, if
it's safe to cap it. Why not cap it all, if it's
safe? I don't believe it is safe in the long term,"
says Striley. "I think the sites should be cleaned
up and the stuff should be stored." 

The dioxin-contaminated soil in the St. Louis
area was created as an unwanted byproduct at the
Northeastern Pharmaceutical and Chemical Co.
(NEPACCO) plant in Verona, Mo. in the late 1960s
and early 1970s. NEPACCO manufactured
hexachlorophene, an antiseptic, which has since
been banned by the U.S. Food and Drug
Administration. At the time, the company also
leased part of its facility to Hoffman-Taff, a
producer of Agent Orange, the herbicide used in the
Vietnam War. Syntex Agribusiness Inc. later
acquired Hoffman-Taff. During this period, NEPACCO
contracted Independent Petrochemical Corp. (IPC) to
dispose of the dioxin. IPC then hired Russell M.
Bliss. Beginning in 1971, Bliss mixed some 18,000
gallons of the dioxin residue with waste oil and
sprayed it as a dust suppressant at horse areas,
parking lots, truck terminals and the unpaved
streets of Times Beach. Bliss' folly did not become
publicly known until late 1982.

Six of the 27 confirmed sites sprayed by Bliss
were truck terminals in the city of St. Louis. 


In late 1994, more than 50 former
dioxin-exposed employees of Jones Truck Lines or
their surviving family members received an out-of
court settlement for a suit filed in 1983. The
defendants in that case included, NEPACCO, IPC and
Syntex -- the company liable for the Times Beach
cleanup. 

The same parties were defendants in a 1991
civil trial. In that case, a St. Louis Circuit
Court jury awarded the family of deceased truck
terminal employee Alvin Overman $1.5 million.
Overman died of soft tissue sarcoma, a rare form of
cancer associated with dioxin exposure.

"We are not more worried about company owners
than the people that work there," says Steincamp,
the EPA counsel. The lawyer remains firm in her
conviction that the agency she works for stnads by
its name and is more concerned about public health
than private interests. Steincamp, however, would
probably have a difficult time convincing former
Teamster Ken Manley of this. 

In the early 1980s, Manley helped run a dioxin
task force for Local 600. He recalls the Teamsters'
investigation initially received the support of the
Centers for Disease Control (CDC), and got
favorable coverage in the daily newspapers. A
health study proposal sponsored by the union
identified 700 members who had worked at three St.
Louis truck terminals that were then known to have
been sprayed by Bliss. 

"Then all of a sudden it just stopped," says
Manley."I can't tell you exactly what happened, but
somewhere along the line the issue just got shut
down. I mean it literally got shut down." 

Not long before the task force folded, Manley
received a tip that a playground on the near
Southside by Ralston Purina had been contaminated
with dioxin, he says. "I informed CDC and EPA,
(but) by that point they weren't doing any further
testing."

TRYING TIMES

BY C.D. STELZER

first published in the Riverfront Times (St. Louis), Sept. 20, 1995

Fifteen environmental activists are charged with trespassing for their Times Beach protest

“It’s kind of easier to just close your eyes to what’s going, on” says Jillian Borchard. The thought causes her to do just that. She shakes her head, unfurling hanks of tousled brown hair. Traffic noise envelopes her laugh, which is lost in the chatter at the sidewalk cafe on Delmar.

The levity of the moment masks serious concerns the young woman has about her future. Brochard is a 22-year-old art student at Washington University . She is also a criminal in the myopic vision of the St. Louis County prosecutor’s office.

Last Friday, Borchard and 14 other environmental activists were formally charged with first-degree trespassing for their involvement in a protest that took place at the site of the Times Beach dioxin incinerator on July 27. On that day, St. Louis County police arrested the demonstrators who stepped past a gate at the Superfund site entrance. The maximum sentence for the offense is six months in jail or a $500 fine, or both.

Opponents of the incinerator say stack emissions will endanger public health by dispersing dioxin into the air. Officials for the Missouri Department of Natural Resources (DNR) and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) contend that the plan is safe. Test burns may begin as soon as November, with the incineration of some 100,000 cubic yards of dioxin-contaminated soil from 27 sites in Eastern Missouri scheduled to begin early next year.

Borchard and Sarah Bantz, another of the protestors who was charged, are members of the Student Environmental Action Coalition (SEAC) at Washington University. Both suspect that the timing of the issuance of the charges was more than coincidental. In their opinion, the legal hurdles are being used to diffuse opposition to the project as the date of the test burn approaches.

Efforts to stop the incinerator continued last Tuesday, when more than two dozen opponents took over the agenda of the monthly Dioxin Monitoring Committee meeting. In addition, U.S. Rep. Jim Talent (R Chesterfield) met with four West St. Louis County mayors the preceding day. The elected officials discussed seeking a delay in the project. In the past, Talent has asked that the incineration be halted at least until the completion of a congressionally-sponsored study.

Neither Brochard nor Bantz have been informed by the county of the charges against them. Instead, they learned of their legal situation from a news account. “I don’t understand why the public knows about this before the person involved,” says Bantz.

Both women say they felt compelled to commit civil disobedience after other means failed. “Nobody wants this,” says Bantz. “It just seems like everything has been tried, and nothing works. It is not easy to get involved. You’re not expected to do anything except maybe vote,” says Bantz. “You reach this point,” she says, “where you have no option other than throw yourself at the authorities and say, `I am willing to put my body on the line to stop this.'”

Ten of the 15 defendants charged with trespassing at Times Beach are women. Organo-chlorines — including dioxin — have been blamed for increased levels of breast cancer. There is evidence women are at higher risk because dioxin-like chemicals are absorbed by fat and females naturally have a higher percentage in their bodies.

Bantz and Borchard have begun to decorate a wall of their apartment with the responses that they have received from elected officials, all of whom are males, incidentally. There are letters from the governor, the congressman and the county executive. “They’re just all the same,” says Bantz. “I’ve gotten so many responses saying it’s going to be safe — don’t worry about it.”

A benefit concert for the Times Beach 15 is tentatively scheduled for Oct 7 at Washington University. For more information on how to contribute to the legal defense fund call 458-5026, or write: P.O. Box 50, Clarkson Center, Suite 493, Chesterfield, Mo., 63017.

DEATH ON THE HIGHWAY

BY C.D. STELZER

first published in the Riverfront Times (St. Louis), Aug. 30, 1995

If the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has its way, thousands of dump-truck loads of dioxin-contaminated soil will begin rolling through the St. Louis area as soon as November.

The time schedule for excavating and transporting the toxic material from 26 sites in Eastern Missouri is contained in the Engineering Evaluation/Cost Analysis (EE/CA), published late last month by the EPA. The little-publicized study includes the proposed routes and estimated costs of burning the waste at Times Beach, where a temporary incinerator is now under construction. The cleanup of individual sites over the next year is expected to take anywhere from a few days to several months. The total cost of this portion of the project is earmarked at $113.6 million, according to the EE/CA. The EPA has extended the public comment period on its transport plan until Sept. 7.

On Aug. 15, following the release of the EE/CA, federal district Judge John F. Nangle turned aside an effort by St. Louis County to regulate dioxin emissions through a local ordinance passed in February. Nangle ruled the EPA and Syntex, the company liable for the cleanup, are bound only to applicable standards in force at the time of the Record of Decision (ROD), in 1988. The judge has jurisdiction over the settlement by way of a 1990 court-negotiated consent decree.

“What he (based) his decision on is what we have been trying to say,” says Martha Steincamp, the chief counsel for Region VII of the EPA. In 1988, “the county didn’t even have a dioxin standard on the books,” Steincamp says.
The EPA’s own health standard is supposed to limit exposure risks to no more than one additional cancer case per million population. The agency and Syntex both complained to the court that the county ordinance set an unattainable goal that was six-times more stringent. Nangle concurred.

In his 16-page opinion, the judge failed to mention one cogent fact: the county based its emissions standard on data from the EPA’s own health risk assessment for Times Beach. Fred Striley, a member of the Dioxin Incinerator Response Group (DIRG), views that omission as untenable. “The judge is basing his decision on false information,” says Striley, a physicist who has been studying the technical data for years. “I can get up at the blackboard and write the equations out for you. The county ordinance is probably about twice as strict as the (EPA’s) — not six times.” Furthermore, Striley maintains “the number that the county used is directly taken from an EPA document about this site (Times Beach), which said … (it) would be the worst-case emission.”

Striley and other opponents argue that incineration itself creates dioxin as a part of the combustion process and then disperses it into the environment. Dioxin is a suspected human carcinogen and is known to cause human immunological and reproductive problems, according to the EPA itself. Local environmentalists favor storing the toxic waste indefinitely at its present locations or using newer alternative technologies to destroy it. In response to their latest legal setback, incinerator opponents are advocating the county appeal Nangle’s decision.

For his part, Nangle, has remained unswayed by mounting public opposition to the incinerator. In his ruling, the judge decreed “exclusive jurisdiction for direct or indirect challenges or attacks concerning the response action pursuant to the consent decree. …” President Richard M. Nixon appointed Nangle to the federal bench in 1973. The 75-year-old jurist, who retains an interest in Republican politics, currently holds senior status in the 8th Circuit here, and spends considerable time away from St. Louis. Evaluations by lawyers, appearing in the 1995 Almanac of the Federal Judiciary, praise Nangle, but also find him to be “patronizing and imperious.” “He’s a little prima donna. He’s arrogant and procedure oriented,” commented one attorney. ” He has federal-itis. He always did think he was important even before he got on the bench …,” said another lawyer.

As a part Nangle’s consent decree, Syntex has agreed to pay for the incineration and the clean up of Times Beach. The EPA is responsible for excavating and transporting the dioxin-contaminated soil from the other 26 locations. The insurance litigation involving Times Beach and the other Eastern Missouri sites is far from over, however. Steincamp, the EPA’s Region VII counsel, wouldn’t hazard a guess as to when it will be all resolved. The case has produced staggering amounts of paperwork, hundreds of thousands of pages of documents, she says. “This case has already been to the Supreme Court of the United States, I think, twice,” says Steincamp. The U.S. Justice Department has taken the unusual step of submitting court briefs in some of the insurance cases, she says. “The Superfund is not going to cost recover very much unless somebody wins the insurance litigation, or somebody decides just to give up and settle,” says Steincamp.
The clean-up sites were contaminated in the early 1970s, when Russell Bliss hauled dioxin residues from a chemical plant in Verona, Missouri and then combined them with waste oil before spraying the mixture as a dust suppressant on horse arenas, parking lots and roadways in this part of the state.

Eleven of the locations, including Times Beach, have already been excavated. According to the terms of the consent decree, the dioxin tainted dirt is supposed to be stored at those sites “pending final management.” In addition, two other sites were partially excavated in the past year, after water main leaks forced emergency responses.

At the six residential sites, the plan is to excavate all soil containing one part per billion (ppb) or more of dioxin, and transport it to Times Beach for incineration. There are less stringent plans, however, at some other locations. “For the non-residential sites … the agency’s generally preferred response action is to excavate those areas exceeding 20 parts per billion and to cap the areas where remaining dioxin levels exceed one part per billion with a maintained impermeable cap,” the EE/CA states. Those restricted areas would then be placed on the state Hazardous Waste Registry.

One exception to the commercial-site guidelines is the 1.9 acre Bonifield Brothers Trucking location near St. Louis University Hospitals, where the EPA plans a more thorough job. The location at 3529 Hickory St. contains dioxin levels of more than 800 ppb, according to the EE/CA . Nevertheless, the university wants to develop the property. There are residences nearby even though the EE/CA lists the site as a primarily commercial area. A nursing home that is associated with the university hospitals has also been built adjacent to the site within the last year. Another variance, according to the EE/CA, involves the planned clean-up of the Southern Cross Lumber Co. in Hazelwood. At that location, some of the dioxin contaminated-soil, which measured less than 20-parts per billion, would be merely covered with soil or gravel rather than capped with concrete.

In yet another instance, a site is listed as both a residential and non-residential location in the EE/CA. The plan calls for paving over some the contaminated sections of the access road to Old Highway 141 rather than removing the waste even though the southern portion of the location is within 50 feet of a residential area, according to the EE/CA.

A random tour of three of the Eastern Missouri dioxin sites last Saturday showed only one to be fenced. None of the locations were marked by warning signs.

The EE/CA also cites a litany of concerns over the proposed transportation routes, while it defends the safety of putting 80,000 ton dump trucks filled with dioxin-contaminated soil on area roads and highways. For example, the report favors the use Interstates as the safest routes for transporting the waste, but routinely warns that “the accident rate on the freeway(s) exceeded the statewide average in 1990.” EE/CA also raises caveats about planned road construction along some of the routes in near future, and, in some cases, advises that the transportation of the waste itself will demand infrastructure improvements.

Moving the dioxin-contaminated soil along the hilly roads of western St. Louis County and northern Jefferson County sounds particularly risky, according to the EE/CA. Here is a typical description of such a ride: “Traffic along this segment can be expected to be heavy during peak periods. Also, the roadway has some rolling grades and relatively sharp curves with virtually no shoulders in several places.”

Public comments regarding the EPA’s plan should be mailed to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 726 Minnesota Ave., Kansas City, Kan., 66101. The telephone number for the EPA’s site office at Times Beach in Eureka is 938-6869.

RALLYING CRY

Citizens join together to protest the Times Beach incinerator

BY C.D. STELZER

first published in the Riverfront Times (St. Louis), Aug. 2, 1995

For George and Ida Klein, last Thursday afternoon was no picnic. The temperature that day reached a high of 94 degrees, and it felt much hotter standing in the middle of Lewis Road in West St. Louis County. The Kleins – who lived in Times Beach for 43 years — joined about 100 other people outside the Environmental Protection Agency’s project office to protest the construction of the Times Beach dioxin incinerator.

The rally had been organized by the Times Beach Action Group (TBAG). Members of other environmental groups such as the Gateway Green Alliance, Student Environmental Action Coalition, Greenpeace and the Sierra Club also took part. Fifteen of the more militant protesters were arrested for trespassing, after they crossed behind a gate that blocks access to the old Meramec River bridge, leading to the incinerator site.

St. Louis County police officers escorted or carried those arrested to an awaiting police van, as the crowd continued to chant slogans, unfurl banners and wave placards. About half of those attending the rally were local residents from the nearby towns of Eureka and Crescent.

Kool-Aid provided by Syntex, the company liable for the Superfund clean up, did little to cool Ida Klein’s attitude toward the plan to burn 100,000 cubic yards of dioxin-contaminated waste at the site of her former hometown. “I think it’s terrible. I think they ought to not do it,” says the 71-year-old Klein. “There are going to be so many people sick from it. We’ve got three in our family who got cancer. My daughter had to have a hysterectomy at 30. Two years ago she had to have a breast removed with cancer and have six months of chemo(-therapy),” she says. In addition, Klein says her 81-year-old husband had to have 14-inches of his colon removed, when he was 62-years-old. At the time, the family still lived in Times Beach, she says. More recently, the couple’s youngest daughter discovered at age 33 that she had cancer of the cervix,” Klein says.

It is those kinds of concerns that prompted Mary Derrick of Crescent to attend the rally. “Those people who got arrested, in my mind, they’re heroes,” says Derrick. Derrick was holding one corner of a banner inscribed with a verse from the Bible: “Therefore to him that knoweth to do good, and doeth it not, to him it is sin.”
Before the rally, TBAG members and their allies rendezvoused at an old farmstead in West County. Their preparations included dividing up the placards, banners, moon suits, bio-hazardous waste bags and smoke bombs, which would soon become part of the media event. Outside the 19th-century caretaker’s house, with its massive stone foundation, a portable radio was propped up on the hood of an old Plymouth Horizon. At noon, the voice of KMOX radio reporter Margie Manning could be heard announcing details of the protest, including a sound bite from TBAG organizer Steve Taylor. Then someone shut the radio off, and 20 people quietly held hands in a circle. Some of the veteran activists gave encouragement and advise to the others. Many in the circle would soon be arrested, manacled and held in an unventilated police van.

After the arrests, Rick LaMonica, a member of the Gateway Greens offered his view of the situation. “There are a lot of people who lived in Times Beach for 10 or 15 years who were getting a perpetual run-around from the EPA, DNR (Missouri Department of Natural Resources) and the state department of health. They just know that they’re constantly lied to, and one of the biggest lies is that this is a solution to the problem,” says LaMonica. “Incineration doesn’t so much destroy the waste as disperse the waste,” LaMonica says.

Burning organo-chlorines such as dioxin actually reforms other dioxins, and allows heavy metals to escape through the incinerator’s stack, LaMonica says. “Anytime you have compounds that have chlorine, you are going to be forming dioxins from burning. … EPA knows that. Their own reassessment shows that it’s more hazardous than they have been admitting.

“In the mid-80s, they knew that incineration was not a good technology. Our problem is that they don’t really want to consider any alternatives. There are better ways to clean up Superfund sites, but the EPA doesn’t want to consider them unless they’re forced. … It has nothing to do with science. The science says they’re wrong. The science and medical data have been telling that for decades.They just seem more interested in pushing contract deals with engineering companies that design and build incinerators then really trying to clean up Superfund (sites).”

AIR PRESSURE

BY C.D. STELZER

first published in the Riverfront Times (St. Louis) , July 26, 1995

Last week the St. Louis County Counselor's office
continued efforts to hold the responsible parties in the
Times Beach dioxin cleanup to their word. Not an easy
task, considering they keep talking out of both sides of
their mouths. 
     At issue is the county's right to mandate its own
air-quality standards as spelled out in the 1990 consent
decree.
     As a part of that pact, Syntex, the company liable
for the $118 million-plus cleanup of Times Beach and 26
other dioxin-contaminated sites in Eastern Missouri,
agreed to "apply to the St. Louis County Health
Department ... for a construction and operating permit
governing air emissions from the TTU (thermal treatment
unit)." A thermal-treatment unit is an incinerator.
     In a motion filed on May 11, however, Syntex asked
the U.S. District Court here to turn aside the county's
air-quality ordinance enacted Feb. 8. Syntex contends
the local law exceeds federal standards set forth in the
consent decree signed with the U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency (EPA), and the Missouri Department of
Natural Resources (DNR). Syntex is supported in its move
by the EPA. 
     On July 18, the county responded by submitting its
own motion to the court, which challenges both Syntex
and the EPA's opposition to its air-quality standards.
The county ordinance requires the Times Beach
incinerator to emit no more dioxin than the level
specified in the EPA's own health-risk assessment
published in November 1994. That amount of allowable
emissions, which the EPA determined to be a worst-case
scenario, is still more than the EPA's original goal of
99.9999 percent destruction removal efficiency.
     For Martha Steincamp, the chief counsel for Region
VII of the EPA, the impasse is based on the subtle
differences between "administrative" and "substantive"
EPA guidelines. Administrative rules or "paperwork" as
Steincamp refers to them, carry little weight and are
simply a formality. Substantively, the EPA and
responsible parties in a Superfund cleanup are not bound
by any local, state or federal permit, Steincamp says.
In the case of Times Beach, the air-quality standards
that were in place in 1988 -- at the time of the federal
court's record of decision -- are the only laws relevant
to the argument, Steincamp contends. Of course, St.
Louis County didn't have any local air-quality standard
at that time. The fact that the subsequent 1990 consent
decree mandates a local emissions permit is of no
consequence, according to Steincamp. "In my opinion we
are abiding by the law," the EPA lawyer says.
     County Counselor John Ross sees a contradiction in
Syntex and the EPA" position. "At other times, they've
said that their incinerator would exceed our standards,"
says Ross.
     Edward L Noel, the attorney for Syntex, referred
all questions on the latest legal maneuvers to his
client Gary Pendergrass, the Times Beach project
coordinator. Pendergrass could not be reached for
comment at press time on Monday. At the Jan. 26 County
Council meeting, NOel was less reticent ( "Emission
Control," RFT, Feb. 1). The corporate lawyer then
threatened the county with litigation, which could
result in $500,000 in monthly penalties. He also
compared the potential health risks posed by the
incinerator to a traffic problem. "I don't know that
there is any difference in putting one extra truck on
the highway," said Noel, a member of the prestigious law
firm of Armstrong, Teasdale, Schlafly and Davis.
     Despite NOel's opinion, the EPA has seen fit to
award a $50,000 technical-assistance grant to the Times
Beach Environmental Task Force. The money will be used
by the community group over the next two years to hire a
technical advisor, who will review emissions data from
the incinerator to see whether it is operating safely.
     Meanwhile, there is a growing number of opponents
to the incinerator who are still intent upon stopping it
before it begins operating -- perhaps as soon as next
year. A coalition of anti-incinerator forces has
scheduled a rally for this Thursday at 1:00 p.m. at the
EPA's site office on Lewis Road of I-44.

WEAK IN MATH

BY C. D. STELZER

first published in the Riverfront Times (St. Louis), July 12

Relying on false information leaked by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported on June 10 that all dioxin levels in the blood of residents living near the Vertac dioxin incinerator in Jacksonville, Ark. had decreased.

Wrong.

Morris F. Cranmer Jr., the researcher responsible for the study, now says that levels of the most toxic form of dioxin actually increased among those tested. On May 2, Cranmer told the St. Louis County Dioxin Monitoring Committee the opposite. Since the Post-Dispatch did not cover Cranmer’s presentation, the EPA eagerly provided a transcript of that meeting later to the daily newspaper.

“I’m sorry that we appear inconsistent, but I don’t see it that way,” said Cranmer in a telephone interview last week. “I see it as trying to come up with the best analysis of the data. It’s painful, but that’s the way it is.”

Cranmer’s reversal is important because the blood testing at the Superfund site in Arkansas is one of the few attempts to measure inhalation exposure on general populations residing within the vicinity of an incinerator. Its significance is further enhanced by the imminent completion of the Times Beach dioxin incinerator near Eureka, Mo., which may begin operating as soon as early next year. The EPA, Missouri Department of Natural Resources (DNR) and Syntex Agribusiness Inc., the company liable for the $118 million-plus cleanup, are proceeding with the terms of their 1990 consent decree, and contend that the project will be safe (the RFT, April 26). Once completed the incinerator is scheduled to begin burning 100,000 cubic yards of dioxin-contaminated soil from Times Beach and 26 other sites in Eastern Missouri. The project has moved forward despite the uncertain consequences of incineration and in the wake of an EPA study released last year that reaffirms the dangers that dioxin poses to human health (the RFT, May 19, 1994). Opposition by residents, elected officials and environmentalists has so far been unsuccessful in persuading the responsible parties to use any alternative means of disposing of the toxin.

The flip-flop on the Arkansas study is one of many controversies that have cast doubt upon the EPA’s plans for Times Beach. This latest flap began after the environmental group Greenpeace began analyzing the raw data on the Vertac blood tests. Up until that time, Cranmer, a consultant for the Arkansas Department of Health (ADOH), maintained that all dioxin levels had decreased among people living near the Vertac incinerator. Pat Costner, a Greenpeace chemist, says she submitted a state Freedom of Information Act request on May 18 and received copies of the data soon thereafter. Sometime between that date and the public release of the report in late June, Cranmer changed the method of his analysis. By using a more appropriate arithmetic means rather than a geometric one, Cranmer says he found the data showed that TCDD — the most toxic form of dioxin — has increased, not decreased, among those tested. The third and final round of blood tests at Vertac will not be completed, because the EPA shut down the incinerator late last year, after recurring safety problems and environmental opposition to the project continued. The remaining waste at the site is being trucked to a hazardous waste incinerator at Coffeyville, Kan.

So the conclusions of the Arkansas study now have more relevance to the public policy decisions that will effect that residents who live near Times Beach. By providing an inaccurate interpretation of his own blood study data prematurely to the St. Louis County Dioxin Monitoring Committee on May 2, Cranmer bent, if not broke, federal law. Arkansas environmentalists and a Little Rock reporter say they repeatedly attempted to gain the same information and were told by state and federal health officials that it would be illegal to release the data pending peer review.The subsequently altered findings in Cranmer’s report were not officially made public for almost two months after he spoke in St. Louis.

An official for the Missouri Department of Health (MDOH) says Cranmer appeared here at the request of the Monitoring Committee, an ad hoc group of locally appointed citizens and elected officials who are charged with overseeing the safety of the Times Beach incinerator. Cranmer’s travel expenses were paid for out of a grant he received from the federal Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR).

The ATSDR’s generosity towards Cranmer has continued despite the fact that the scientist is a convicted federal felon. In 1988, the U.S. District Court for Eastern Arkansas found Cranmer guilty on two counts of providing false information to a lender. The case involved bilking the Farmers Home Administration out of nearly $10 million. The scientist secured a loan from the federal agency ostensibly to build a laboratory. He instead used some of the funds for other personal real estate ventures. Judge Henry Wood sentenced Cranmer to serve six months of community service at the ADOH under former surgeon general Jocelyn Elder, who then headed the state agency. After serving his sentence, Cranmer began working as a private consultant for the state, and in that capacity was given the contract to do the blood study at the Vertac incinerator site. Earlier in his career, Cranmer came under federal investigation before leaving his job at the National Center for Toxicological Research, a source in the U.S. Attorney’s office in Little Rock told the Riverfront Times last week. Nevertheless, since his conviction on the fraudulent loan charges, Cranmer has been paid more than $139,000 by the ATSDR to conduct the Vertac dioxin exposure study, according to a report in the July 8 edition of Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.

In a telephone interview last week, Cranmer admitted making a mistake. “I don’t remember what I said to the St. Louis group, but I
certainly told them that the levels went down,” he said. “That was not correct. … “I’m not trying to make excuses, but when I gave the talk in St. Louis, I was relying on summary information that had been provided me. I did the best to respond to questions of people, and, if I was in error, then I was in error. The facts speak for themselves,” said Cranmer. ”

Steve Taylor, an opponent of the incinerator and the leader of the Times Beach Action Group (TBAG), isn’t accepting the apology, nor does he believe Cranmer’s explanation. “Dr. Cranmer has been convicted of fraud and was hired by corrupt agencies to perpetuate their lies and deception.

“This recent episode is a continuation of over two decades of deception, flawed science and political manipulation surrounding the dioxin controversy,” said Taylor. TBAG’s rallying cry has long been uncover the dioxin coverup, stop EPA lies. We demand real and effectual action by our local elected officials, in particular (Gov.) Mel Carnahan, to protect Missouri citizens from renegade agencies. If they do not, the citizens themselves have the right and the responsibility to shut the project down.”

The response of locally elected officials has been more reserved. “This technology is untested, certainly it’s untested on this scale,” said County Councilman Greg Quinn (R-7th Dist.). Quinn’s district includes the Times Beach site. “When we were considering a bill to implement standards for how much dioxin could be emitted from the stack at the incinerator, the EPA wasn’t sure they could meet that. What concerned me about that was they had been making some claims about what they could do all the way along, and, when push came to shove, they indicated to us that they weren’t sure that they could achieve what we had mandated (the RFT, Dec. 6, 1994 and Feb. 1).

The EPA and DNR referred all questions on Cranmer’s study to the ATSDR or MDOH. Spokespersons at those two agencies say that the slight changes in the Vertac findings are insignificant. They contend that TCDD and a few other related dioxins, which have also shown increases in the latest round of tests, are not as important as the average for all 16 dioxin-like substance measured. That figure has still decreased, and is indicative of a national trend, the officials say. In addition, rises in the TCDD levels of the Mabelvale, Ark. control group suggest that there may be some reason for the increase other than incineration emissions, health officials say. “If Cranmer did something he wasn’t supposed to have done that’s too bad, and it’s wrong,” said Gale Carlson of the MDOH. “(But) based on the information I have right now, which is from the Arkansas Department of Health, the Missouri Department of Health is not unhappy with the numbers.”

Costner of Greenpeace isn’t so giddy. “They’re either not looking rationally at their study and their results or, as it seems apparent, they designed the study to see no effects, and then they initially mathematically manipulated the data in order to hide the effects,” said Costner. “But, nonetheless, despite this absolutely horrendous bias, … there was clearly a substantial increase in exposure to some of the dioxin.”

TBAG is organizing a protest at the EPA’s Times Beach site office on Lewis Road for 1:00 p.m. July 27. For further information call 391-5715.

TERRIFIED IN TIMES BEACH

Government agencies are ignoring the fears of residents — and the warnings of scientists — by firing up the dioxin incinerator

BY C.D. STELZER

first published in the Riverfront Times (St. Louis), April 26, 1995

It’s only a couple of miles from here to Interstate 44, but it seems like a couple hundred. No traffic, no noise, no fast-food fanfare. Only scrawny oaks clutching thin-skinned ridges, and the bone-white bluffs rising in the distance on the opposite bank of the Meramec River.

A Sunday morning drive down Lewis Road can be like taking a pill, a tranquilizer. But the transient tranquility belies the angst that now resides in this part of southwest St. Louis County. Down this same road, Ann Chase, a pregnant high school teacher worries about the health of her unborn child. In another household, Mary Derrick, a registered nurse listens to her teenage daughter ask whether she will become infertile from the potential chemical exposure they both now face. Meanwhile, on a nearby farm, Ann Dollarhide and her husband decide not to replenish their cattle herd because of the threat of future contamination.

For these people, the possible health hazards posed by the planned Times Beach dioxin incinerator are an imminent concern. All three families live in the vicinity of Crescent, Mo. — the town at highest risk — since the Missouri Department of Natural Resources (DNR) issued the permit for the incinerator to operate on April 14. Crescent’s more populous neighbor, Eureka, is also located within the projected impact zone. All together more than 11,000 residents dwell inside the three-mile radius designated in the risk assessment prepared for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

The EPA, DNR and Syntex, the company liable for the more than $118 million cleanup, are doggedly sticking to the terms of their 1990 court-negotiated consent decree, which calls for burning 100,000 cubic yards of dioxin contaminated soil and debris from Times Beach and 26 other sites in Eastern Missouri. The widespread contamination is the result of a waste-oil hauler spreading the highly-toxic materials in the early 1970s. To reassure residents of the safety of their cleanup plan, all three responsible parties draw from the conclusions of the risk assessment published last fall. According to those findings, stack emissions will cause less than one excess cancer incident per million population, which is considered well within the bounds of protecting public health.

But the Times Beach risk assessment conflicts with the EPA’s own safety standards regarding dioxin exposure. Furthermore, scientists consulted by the Riverfront Times have raised serious objections about the content of the risk assessment, the methodology employed in carrying it out and the actual purpose it serves.
Before the DNR issued its permit earlier this month, federal and state officials hesitated to be interviewed for this story, and the project coordinator for Syntex failed to return calls placed to him.

Here are a few things the EPA, DNR and Syntex have been in no hurry to talk about:

* The Times Beach risk assessment fails to factor in the pre-existing (background) dioxin levels of the exposed population. By not considering this, it significantly downplays the potential dangers of further dioxin exposure from additional incinerator emissions.

* The EPA’s projections on incinerator emissions are based on scientific assumptions. Although the agency maintains the incinerator will not cause any measurable increase in background levels, the risk assessment admits that “uncertainties in the sampling and analysis of dioxins … may lead to invalid conclusions … .”

* No health study has been done in advance to determine the existing (background) level of dioxin exposure of residents who live near the incinerator site. Many of those who do live nearby are former Times Beach residents who have likely been overexposed to dioxin in the past. Blood level testing by the Missouri Department of Health will begin in ernest only now that the incinerator has been given permission to operate. If the health department finds health problems developing, it has no regulatory authority to shut down the incinerator.

* The risk assessment only calculates potential carcinogenic and reproductive risks even though dioxin is now known to cause immunological and developmental problems at low levels of exposure.

* The risk assessment estimates the operation of the incinerator will result in one emergency release a week that would bypass anti-pollution devices and spew 350-pounds of particulate matter into the air. In the last two years, problems at an EPA dioxin incinerator in Arkansas have included numerous breaches in safety, resulting in excess releases of dioxin into the environment. Environmentalists now suspect dioxin exposure may have risen in the vicinity of the faulty incinerator.
Chemist Pat Costner, a dioxin expert for the environmental group Greenpeace, has a long memory of the Arkansas debacle and advises against repeating similar mistakes in Missouri. “EPA admits and everybody knows that we already have a population and an environment that are grossly overburdened (by dioxins),” says Costner. “It is absolutely unconscionable to proceed with avoidable activities that will add to that already excessive burden. It should be criminal.”

The reliability of the Times Beach risk assessment is questionable, because it omits a very basic variable from the equation — the average American is already overexposed to dioxin — according to the EPA’s own standards.

A decade ago, the EPA established that a daily intake of 0.006 picograms of dioxin toxic equivalents (TEq) per kilograms (pg/kg) of body weight results in one excess cancer per million, during a 70-year life span. It has been the agency’s conservative goal to protect public health to this limit. That goal has not been reached, however. As it now stands, the EPA estimates the average American adult ingests between three to six picograms of dioxin-like substances per day, mainly through food. If the existing background levels of dioxin were included in the Times Beach risk assessment, the EPA limits on allowable dioxin exposure would have already been exceeded before the incinerator belched one picogram from its stack.

This 0.006 benchmark has long been the subject of debate. The current dioxin reassessment now under review may ultimately raise the acceptable limits to 0.01 pg/ng of body weight per day. The World Health Organization, Canada and Germany use a different model and have set the acceptable daily dose of dioxin at 10 pg/kg.

Despite the varying standards, it is easy to deduce that dioxin is lethal in very small doses — a picogram is one trillionth of a gram.
In a worst-case scenario, the EPA has estimated the incinerator would emit 150 picograms (or 0.15 nanograms) of dioxin per cubic meter of air. That amount equates to one additional cancer incident per five million population, according to EPA calculations. In January, the St. Louis County Council used the figure as the standard for its air quality ordinance. The EPA and Syntex took immediate exception to the local law, claiming they were bound to protect human health to only the one-in-a-million standard (Emission Control, RFT, Feb. 1). But it’s clear that measure of safety is not going to be adhered to either.

Another way to look at it is by average body burden. The typical American already carries about nine nanograms of dioxin-like substances per kilogram (ng/kg) of body weight. A nanogram is a thousand times more than a picogram, or one billionth of a gram. At 13 ng/kg, sex hormones decrease in males; at 47 ng/kg, developmental problems have been observed in children, according to the EPA’ s recent draft reassessment of dioxin. The results of that study are still under review, and shouldn’t be confused with the “site specific” Times Beach risk assessment, which has underwent far less scientific scrutiny. Although still deliberating over the dangers of dioxin itself, the EPA has refused to place a moratorium on the Times Beach project even though it is known that incineration is a primary means by which dioxin enters the environment. The EPA also refuses to further consider any alternative technologies that are now capable of disposing of dioxin.

Despite evidence the entire population is already overexposed, Bob Feild, the EPA’s project manager at Times Beach sees little to be alarmed about in regard to Times Beach.

Feild argues dioxin levels in the environment are already decreasing and that hazardous waste incinerators are far less responsible for dioxin emissions than medical or municipal waste incinerators or cement kilns. This point is hammered home in the risk assessment as well: the “emissions burn at Times Beach would not result in any discernable increase in the background dioxin concentrations in the various media.” But the document also includes this warning: “uncertainties in the sampling and analysis of dioxins in these background media (air, soil, water, food) and the estimation of the levels in the media at Times Beach may lead to invalid conclusions when comparisons are made in background levels.”

This built-in uncertainty hasn’t dissuaded Feild one bit.”We are aware that there is a significant background risk there,” says Feild. The EPA official, nonetheless, remains confident that additional incinerator emissions at Times Beach will be insignificant and have no additional adverse effect on human health.
“If you consider the background concentration of dioxin exposure that we’re already all exposed to, you wouldn’t be able to see the incremental risks due to the incinerator,” says Feild. “So that’s why from a policy standpoint EPA doesn’t look at the entire risk. We look at … comparing the incremental risks to the total risk.” says Feild.
Feild’s own awareness of dioxin exposure is open to question, however. When asked about the EPA’s longstanding acceptable daily intake level of 0.006 pg/kg, the Times Beach project manager denied any such standard ever existed. “I don’t know where that number came from, I would have to check the source on that. I’ve been talking to the people that are involved in the reassessment of dioxin. They are telling me that there is no such number. So I don’t where that number came from or what it represents.”

The number is referred to as recently as last year in scientific articles by experts such as Barry Commoner of Queens College, Tom Webster of Boston University and Arnold Schecter of the State University of New York. The published caveats of these scientists on the dangers of dioxin stand in stark contrast to the assurances of the man responsible for the Times Beach risk assessment, Kishor Gala, who works for CH2M Hill in Denver, a consulting firm hired by the EPA.

“You have a one in three chance of getting cancer, anyway,” says Gala. ” So a one-in-a-million chance, how much more of a risk is it than one in three?” When asked to factor in the already existing background levels for dioxin, Gala quickly recalculated the odds, however. “From dioxin, I would think that you have a one in 10,000 chance (of cancer death) from the background(exposure), which is still much less than one in three or one in four from car smoke and cigarette smoke,” says Gala. “So … the exposure is still insignificant compared to the other exposures.”

Pat Costner, the Greenpeace chemist, doesn’t agree. “What they’re saying is, `Well, everybody is already so exposed that a little bit more doesn’t make a difference.’ That’s insane,” says Costner. “That’s totally irrational. It’s like standing in a swimming pool with weights on your feet and the water is up to your nose and somebody is saying a little more is not going to hurt you.”
Costner is not alone in her opinion.

David Kriebel, an epidemiologist at the University of Massachusetts at Lowell, participated in a National Academy of Science (NAS) review of Agent Orange, a defoliant used in Vietnam that contained dioxin. The NAS panel studied all the available literature on the subject at the behest of the Department of Veterans Affairs . In 1993, Kriebel and other scientists belatedly concluded dioxin causes three forms of cancer and other health problems in Vietnam War vets.

Although the dioxin issue is still mired in controversy, Kriebel has come to another reasonable conclusion, this one pertaining to Times Beach incinerator. ” If you want to know what the risks that someone faces are, you ought to add together the risks of so-called background (exposure) and the risk of some new technology that you are planning to add,” says Kriebel.

After ten years of battling incinerator projects, Paul Connett, a chemist at St. Lawrence University in upstate New York, has formed his own assessment of the strange socialized alchemy that has come to be called risk assessment.
“I think the whole risk assessment exercise is a political one. I see little indication that it’s ever used to do anything but promote a project. I think it puts a technical smoke screen between decision makers and the concerns of the public,” says Connett. “They would like to make you believe that risk assessment is a scientific exercise. I believe strongly that it’s a pseudo-scientific exercise. It’s not really science. It’s not based upon data, it’s based upon theoretical assumptions.”

Quite simply, nobody knows what the dioxin levels currently are of people who live near the planned incinerator. And there has been no rush to find out. Many former Times Beach residents still live in the area and have likely been overexposed in the past, but nobody’s knocking on their doors. A new Missouri Department of Health study on dioxin exposure will correspond with operation of the incinerator. But if the state agency detects increased dioxin in blood levels, after the incinerator is fired up, it has no power to shut down the project other than to pass on its concerns to the DNR.

Ellen K. Silbergeld, who works in the department of epidemiology and preventive medicine at the University of Maryland at Baltimore, has conducted many risk assessments herself. She is also associated with the Environmental Defense Fund, as is Peter L. deFur. The two authors collaborated on a chapter about risk assessment for a text book, Dioxins and Health published by Plenum Press late last year. Here is their conclusion on the subject:

“… It is critical to estimate where on the dose curve an individual or a population already falls. If the population or individual is already exposed to doses that exceed the level of acceptable risk … then different assumptions … no longer matter for purposes of making public policy.

“Much of the population of industrialized societies, where dioxins and related compounds have been released through industrial discharges, incinerator emissions, and dispersive uses of contaminated chemicals and herbicides, is already above the low dose range of exposures. … Under such conditions, the only prudent public policy is to take all feasible actions to reduce ongoing exposures and environmental inputs.”

Feild argues that the reducing ongoing exposures is what the EPA’s current plan is all about. In his opinion, the continued danger posed by the 27 dioxin sites in Eastern Missouri is reason enough to go ahead with incineration. The water main leak on North Second Street last summer, which flooded one of the dioxin sites is an example of what can happen, if the cleanup is delayed further, the EPA official says. “We have kids trespassing at some of these sites, … playing in contaminated areas,” says Feild. “I was at a site a couple of weeks ago, where I saw a couple of cattle grazing on the contaminated area. We know we have problems at these other sites. We need to clean them up. Excavating them and storing (the dioxin-contaminated soils) is not a permanent solution, because these storage facilities that we constructed are failing.”

When the 1994 EPA draft reassessment is read directly, however, it becomes evident that any further dioxin releases into the environment are not what the doctors have ordered (see sidebar).
ESTER stands for “Environmentally Safe Temporary Emergency Relief.” It’s the EPA’s euphemism for what is commonly called a dump stack in the incineration trade. If there is a glitch at the Times Beach dioxin incinerator, say an electrical outage, ESTER will be activated.

The executive summary of the risk assessment claims ESTER “assures that moderately high destruction of organic contamination occurs.” According to the summary, “the ESTER system includes automated provisions for feed and main burner shut-off, igniting the ESTER propane burners, routing of kiln gases to the ESTER stack and controlled venting of the gases in the secondary combustion chamber and gas cleaning system.”

What the ESTER system doesn’t include is any of the anti-pollution devices that are part of the primary burner. Under emergency situations, the ESTER stack will vent emissions directly.

According to the EPA: “During a full-scale operation, a typical ESTER event may occur at a frequency of once per week and last for several minutes. However, for the purpose of this risk assessment … it is conservatively assumed that … ESTER events may occur on a daily basis … Because of the absence of a gas cleaning system, approximately 350 pounds of treated particulate matter may be emitted during a typical ESTER event.”

“When I first saw that number, it seemed like a lot,” says Feild of the EPA. “But if you look at the major sources throughout St. Louis that are operating on a continual basis, that is not the tremendously high number that it appears to be on the surface.”

Chemist Connett is not so optimistic. He says the EPA’s history in dioxin incineration is anything but exemplary. “If they had a good track record on this it would be one thing, but they keep fucking up. I mean they really did make a huge mistake in Jacksonville (Ark.). They made a complete bloody mess of it,” says Connett. “It has become clear that the people who had their dioxin levels measured in their blood before this thing went online have now got higher levels in their blood. So it’s a failure.”

Connett is referring to the Vertac dioxin incinerator in Jacksonville, Ark., which has repeatedly been cited for unsafe emissions. In spite of its dubious safety record, the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis has rebuffed attempts to shut down the Vertac incinerator, ruling that the federal courts have no jurisdiction over Superfund sites until after the EPA completes a cleanup. The Agency for Toxic Substance and Disease Registry (ATSDR) in Atlanta referred questions on last year’s blood tests to the Arkansas Health Department. An epidemiologist for the state agency told the Riverfront Times that the test results were still unavailable. The long delay in releasing the test data has led some environmentalists to speculate that dioxin blood levels have risen in the vicinity of the incinerator.

“We know from all the other technological experiences in our lives that things don’t always go the way they’re supposed to,” says Kriebel, the epidemiologist from the University of Massachusetts. “If the thing breaks down, the logical consequence of that is contaminating the air with dioxins.” says Kriebel. “It probably can under ideal operating conditions be made to do what the engineers think it should do.” (But) I’m just not convinced that we know how to monitor those things well enough over the long run that we really ought to trust what they’re ideal specifications say that they are doing.”

After being left untended for more than two decades, the EPA remains possessed with a burning desire to dispose of Eastern Missouri’s dioxin contaminated soils by fire. An alternative technology, base-catalyzed decomposition (BCD), which the agency approved for another Superfund cleanup, has been rejected by the agency for use at Times Beach.

“BCD is a very promising technology, but our agency got together and evaluated it and determined that you could not use the Koppers demonstration in North Carolina as an indication one way or another whether or not the process would be effective for dioxin,” Feild says.

The EPA’s current position on BCD technology has been altered, however.
In an internal memo from last summer, Timothy Oppelt, the director of the EPA’s Risk Reduction Engineering Laboratory in Cincinnati, wrote that “we believe given the characteristics of the soils at Times Beach, the BCD process will be able to remediate site soils … the only exception are plastics and rubber materials that have a tendency to clog (the) thermal desorption chamber and will require incineration.” According to the risk assessment, less than five percent of the contaminated materials at the 27 dioxin sites in Eastern Missouri are comprised of anything other than soil. Inexplicably, Oppelt later reversed his decision and recommended against the use of BCD at Times Beach.

The Meramec River forms an oxbow from which the town of Crescent most likely takes its name. On the opposite bank, towering limestone palisades have been sculpted over eons by the spring-fed waters that push this Ozark landscape to within 20 miles of St. Louis.

There are few signs of change here — nothing to suggest that the biochemistry of the area may soon be altered — no indication the surrounding land has been sectored into 625 quadrants by the EPA as a part of its Times Beach risk assessment.

Inside one of those invisible boxes Ann Chase recalls the past as she struggles to come to terms with her future.

“I have lived here in this house for four years, but my family has lived in this community since 1939,” says Chase, a history teacher at Lindbergh High School. Chase would like to raise her own family here, but shadows of doubt are forming just outside her window. The Times Beach risk assessment asserts that the public faces no danger of reproductive health problems from the potential emissions from the planned incinerator, but Chase is not so sure.

“We’re probably the closest house to where the incinerator will be, says Chase. “I have two young children and I’m expecting a third in early summer.” The 32-year-old pregnant mother estimates that her home is between a quarter to half-a-mile from the Times Beach incinerator site.

Fetuses, infants and small children are the most susceptible to the health problems caused by dioxin. A dioxin-exposed mother passes the toxin to the child through the placenta during pregnancy and afterwards from breast feeding.
“It is a big concern to me, because I did nurse my other two children and I intend to nurse this one,” says Chase. Her concerns are heightened because she grew up near the contaminated Times Beach site and may already have more than an average amount of the chemical in her own body.

“It seems to me real foolish for the government to burn something toxic in a populated area,” she says.

The school teacher’s trepidations are echoed by others in the community, including Ann Benning Dollarhide, who owns a 300-acre farm nearby. Dollarhide and her husband have halted plans to purchase cattle because of the threat of incinerator emissions. Consumption of beef and dairy products is one of the primary ways dioxin is ingested by humans. “We are very apprehensive about starting our operation up again, if this incinerator goes in, because of the food chain,” says Dollarhide. “How could we feel good about selling cattle to other people that graze on land that could be tainted with dioxin?”

Compared to Chase, Mary Derrick, is a newcomer to the Crescent area. The registered nurse at St. Luke’s Hospital has lived here for a little over a year. Her family’s home is located about a mile-and-a-half away from the incinerator site.
Prior to relocating, Derrick says her husband had a chance encounter with an EPA official at a restaurant. According to Derrick, the official gave assurances the community was in no danger, she says.

The Derricks liked that idea. They had read articles in the press that parroted the same line. It made them feel more secure about moving to the Eureka area. But since learning more about the subject, Derrick has changed her mind.
Lately, the nurse has been doing some homework on dioxin with her youngest daughter, who is in eighth grade. The history that the two have uncovered has alarmed them both.

After waste-oil hauler Russell Bliss sprayed a stable in Moscow Mills, Mo. in 1971, birds, cats, dogs and horses started dying in rapid succession. The stable owner’s children developed headaches and rashes. One of them began hemorrhaging severely and required hospitalization.

“They say that (our) arguments are all based on emotion,” says Derrick. Well, we wouldn’t be emotional if the facts didn’t lead us to be emotional. When you see those facts, there’s no way that you can deny that there is definitely some danger there. They’ll admit to you that it is one of most carcinogenic and toxic chemicals known to man, but we’re supposed to trust them that they’re going operate an incinerator in a safe manner.”

C.D. Stelzer (stlreporter@gmail.com)

EMISSION CONTROL

BY C.D. STELZER

first published in the Riverfront Times (St. Louis), Feb. 1, 1995

When the silk-stocking lawyer addressed the St. Louis County Council meeting last Thursday afternoon, his delivery came across with all of the decorum of a chained pit bull.

The Council members listened, dutifully, as the fast-talking attorney unleashed his legal arguments. Two of the seven council members are lawyers themselves. A couple other are crusty union men familiar with the art of hard bargaining.
In the end, though, the threats of litigation and financial loss, failed to sway the Council’s decision to enact tough air quality requirements for the planned Times Beach incinerator. If the final version of the controversial ordinance is passed as expected this week, the County will have the power to force a multi-national corporation, the federal government and the state of Missouri to abide by local law.
That’s what all the barking was about at last week’s Council meeting and here’s why:

Syntex , the corporation liable for the cleanup of Times Beach and 26 other dioxin sites in eastern Missouri, signed a consent decree with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Missouri Department of Natural Resources (DNR) in 1990. Although St. Louis County sought to be a party to that settlement, a federal judge nixed the idea. The terms of the consent decree, however, allow St. Louis County to issue an air quality permit before the planned incinerator can operate.

The new County ordinance would require the Times Beach incinerator to emit no more dioxin than the level specified in the EPA’s own health risk assessment published in November. The EPA said then that a worst case scenario would be the release of 0.15 nanograms of dioxin per cubic meter of air. This was based on previous tests results at another incinerator site. According to EPA calculations, the destruction removal efficiency (DRE) at that emissions level would be 99.9997 percent. This is below the 99.9999 percent DRE, or six-nines, that the EPA previously set as its standard. The EPA now maintains that achieving six-nines is only required during its test burn, which is conducted not on dioxin, but a surrogate more difficult to destroy.

Environmentalists, however, theorize that high concentrations of a surrogate could be more easily destroyed than the low-levels of dioxin found in the contaminated soils here. They point out that a safer alternative technology, Base-catalyzed Decomposition (BCD), has been tested by the EPA and found effective in destroying dioxin at a Superfund site in North Carolina. Last year, the EPA released a study that showed humans have already been overexposed to dioxin, a probable carcinogen that is also known to cause reproductive and immunological problems.

To address these public health concerns, the County ordinance would require future emissions burns meet the 0.15 nanogram standard. If the incinerator did go online, it would be periodically tested, and the burner would be shut down if it failed to meet standards.

In the wake of the County’s moves, Bob Field, the EPA project manager for the Times Beach site, expressed doubts at the Council meeting last week on whether the incinerator’s emissions levels could even be measured. He, nonetheless, reasoned that the incinerator should be fired up. “We say, let’s go ahead and test the incinerator! See what the actual emissions are, or, if we can’t actually measure the emissions, let’s find out what the detection level is. Then let’s make a determination of what the actual risk will be associated with the full scale operation of the unit,” Field told the Council.

The EPA and Syntex are now asserting that meeting the 0.15 nanograms goal would reduce potential cancer deaths to one in five million, which is, according to the EPA, excessively safe. The agency is only committed to reducing the risk to one in a million, and any higher standard imposed by the County goes beyond the federal mandate to protect human health.

In addition, Syntex and the EPA are claiming that Superfund law is exempt from local ordinances, and the consent decree precludes responsible parties from being bound by any statutes passed after the fact.
Councilman Greg Quinn, who represents the 7th district, which includes Times Beach, isn’t buying the EPA’s line.

” The CERCLA law (Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act) provides that you have to operate in accordance with federal, state and local law,” says Quinn. “What we’re trying to do is design an ordinance that would guarantee, to the greatest extent possible, the health of the population of St. Louis County. There has been the suggestion that EPA can override local law, but that’s not the way I see it,” says the councilman, who is an attorney. “The consent decree provides for the County to issue the air quality permit. It doesn’t make any sense to provide that and then say (that) federal law and the EPA’s wishes override what it says in the consent decree.”

County Counselor John Ross concurs. “Syntex was a party to the consent decree, and in the consent decree it requires that they get a clean-air permit from St. Louis County. But for that, they might have a very good argument. The standard that they (the County Council) have established is a standard that EPA used in their risk assessment,” says Ross. “An EPA official at last week’s meeting … thought it was a number that would and could likely be achieved. I think what the Council is saying is, if it was achieved at other sites then it ought to be achieved in St. Louis County.”

Edwin L. “Ted” Noel, the attorney for Syntex, couldn’t agree less. He compares the potential health risks posed by the incinerator to a traffic problem. “I don’t know that there is any difference in putting one extra truck on the highway,” says Noel, a member of the prestigious law firm of Armstrong and Teasdale. His opinion of the County ordinance is even more candid. “The federal law says we’ll never get anything cleaned up in this country, if every county, every municipality, every citizen dictates what the standards are” Local standards on dioxin emissions were “frozen” at the time that the consent decree was signed in 1988, according to Noel. Of course, there was no standard back then. If the proposed ordinance does take effect, any delays could raise the cost of the project and Syntex is prepared to sue the County for losses, according to Noel. “I think it puts the County taxpayers at a severe risk, very, very substantial dollars in terms of $500,000 a month,” Noel warned the County Council at last week’s meeting.

County Counselor Ross responded to Noel’s caveat by saying: “Let me say this to you — the threat of money damages is not a good threat to be making at this point, when you’re talking about the safety of St. Louis County residents.” Councilman James E. O’Mara then seconded Ross’s opinion. O’Mara opined that the pipefitters union, which he heads, might benefit in jobs, if the incinerator is built. “But I’d rather spend $500,000 a month of the county’s money than to know that I could have saved a life and not saved it.”

The Council concerns haven’t softened the EPA’s position, however. “The federal law requires that the agency determine what is necessary to protect human health and the environment and (after) that determination is made anything above or beyond that is sort of on the ticket of whoever required it,” says Martha Steincamp, the legal counsel for Region VII of the EPA. “In this case, if the County has things that are over and above what we think are necessary, … they’re going to have to pay for those,” says Steincamp. The EPA counsel says the allowable emissions level that the EPA intends to set is still undetermined. “We won’t know what the number is until the risk assessment is final. Right now we’re still in the public comment phase.”

Meanwhile, the deadline for public comments on the DNR’s draft permit for the incinerator expires in the first week of February. This month, the DNR, EPA and Syntex have been making public pitches to gain support for the incinerator.
Others, including a coalition of environmental groups, are working diligently to stop the incinerator from operating.

U.S. Rep. Jim Talent, the Republican congressman from the district that includes Times Beach, asked the General Accounting Office (GAO) last week to investigate the incinerator project. Talent’s written request was co-signed by chairman of the House Appropriations subcommittee that controls EPA funding.

Steve Boriss the Missouri congressman’s press secretary had this to say about St. Louis County’s efforts. “Talent supports any action that slows this thing up long enough for him to complete what he attempted to do in Congress last session, which is put a rider on the Superfund reauthorization that would require that the Times Beach incinerator could not proceed until alternative technologies have been explored.”

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