
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, March 15, 1991                   TAG: 9103150801
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A/11   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: STEPHANY G. HALL
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

WESTVACO

THE STATE of Virginia is using taxpayers money to legally defend a 1.2 parts-per-quadrillion (ppq.) dioxin standard for Westvaco Corp. at a time when finances are tenuous enough for drastic education cuts and furlough of state employees. General Assembly representatives have voted that the state's Water Control Board has more power than the state's Health Department. The water board and Westvaco would have us believe that the whole dioxin issue is an argument over trivialities.

Wake up Virginia and smell more than the leachate. Leachate is dishwater compared to dioxin. Dioxin is not a trivial chemical. The Environmental Protection Agency recommends a 0.13 ppq. to be the safest level. The state Health Department has said a level of 0.6 ppq. is necessary to protect citizens living along the Jackson and James rivers between Covington and Amherst County from a much higher-than-average cancer risk. We can only imagine how toxic a substance must be to be considered a health threat at parts-per-quadrillion!

We are being manipulated by public-relations doublespeak. Westvaco boasts that its dioxin output has been lowered 98 percent; that its dioxin output is at less than detectable levels. What they don't say is that the detectable limit is 10.0 ppq. So, if it can dump between 9.0 ppq. and 1.0 ppq. of dioxin in the river now, then it used to dump more than 450 ppq. of dioxin in the Jackson.

Don't these numbers scare anybody? Dioxin doesn't go away. It doesn't just wash downstream from us. It's absorbed into living things in the water. It sinks to the bottom like a stone, and stays there.

The numbers scare me plenty. They scare the Health Department. They scare the Environmental Defense Fund, and three brave landowners who are taking the Water Control Board to court on our behalf. The General Assembly has decided that the Health Department has no power to protect the public health. The governor has decided to spend our money to defend the total power of the water board, and the water board has ignored the wishes of Virginia citizens to say, "Yes, Westvaco; of course, Westvaco; anything you say, Westvaco."

Citizens should contact their representatives in the General Assembly. They should contact Governor Douglas Wilder. Let's let them know we don't appreciate our money being spent to guarantee absolute power to a board of non-elected individuals who have disregarded the health and opinions of the citizens of this state.

by CNB