Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, February 29, 1992 TAG: 9202290306
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By MARY BISHOP STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
DOCTOR: PROCESS IS HEALTH HAZARD
After months of study, a public health doctor is concerned about potential\ risks of burning hazardous waste at Tarmac, the Botetourt County cement\ company.Dr. Molly Hagan decided it was her duty, as much as anybody's, to find out if the burning proposed by Tarmac's Roanoke Cement Co. would be safe - for plant workers, for neighbors, for everybody around.
She's the state's public health doctor for Botetourt, Roanoke, Alleghany and Craig counties - the Alleghany Health District.
"Obviously, the incineration of hazardous waste in the health district poses some significant health issues," she said.
After weeks of plowing through a half-foot stack of studies and talking with people on all sides, Hagan has decided that the burning is a health risk because too little is known about it.
"It is a potential health hazard," she said. "I'm firm on that."
She has concluded that the pollution monitoring and the government regulations are not nearly sophisticated enough to assure that the burning would be done safely.
Hagan said that scientists still do not know if even minute amounts of material from a hazardous-waste smokestack endanger the people who breathe it or get it in their water. Nor, she said, is it known to what extent those pollutants damage the environment.
"The knowledge we have is inadequate; the testing we have is inadequate. Our laws and accountability are not at all responsive to the changing body of knowledge," she said.
Hagan is most concerned about the plant's location less than a mile from Carvins Cove Reservoir - the water supply for Roanoke, much of Roanoke County and some parts of Botetourt and Bedford counties.
So is Dr. Don Stern, public health director for Roanoke. "They durn well better know what they're burning and [better] monitor what's coming out the stack," he said.
Hagan worries not just about the cumulative effects from stack emissions that settle in the water "but also any sort of disaster that might happen" - any spills of hazardous waste at the plant or in transport that could work their way into the reservoir.
"That's not to say that Tarmac wouldn't do a good job," Hagan said, but even careful people have accidents.
She learned that proper supervision of the waste as it arrives at the plant and as it's blended for incineration is essential for safety. Bad mixing can endanger workers and cause fires and explosions, she said.
Tarmac might do a better job of it, she said, "but that's another area where things could go awry."
The ethics of waste-burning concern Hagan, too. Very little of the hazardous waste that would be burned by Tarmac would be from Botetourt County. "Why does the community want to take the risk of bringing it in?" she asked.
Hagan lives with her children in Botetourt County. The spouses of two of her employees work at Tarmac, the county's largest private employer. "They've been told how this will turn a profit so they won't have to close the plant," she said.
Tarmac would earn money by taking the waste off the hands of companies and other institutions. And Tarmac would spend less money on coal, its regular fuel.
During her research, Hagan read company literature and talked with company officials and a public health scientist from out of state who supports its plans.
Hagan read environmentalists' tracts and talked with opponents of Tarmac's plans. She consulted with state experts and with those at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. She found other studies in a computer search.
Hagan said she generally is impressed with the potential of waste incineration, calling it "a great ecological alternative" for much garbage. Most organic waste would be consumed entirely in the 3,000-degree cement kiln.
Too little is known about the effects of burning heavy metals, she said. They are not destroyed in the burning, and the fallout from those is Hagan's biggest worry.
Opponents of the waste-burning object to Tarmac's touting it as "recycling," but Hagan agrees that the burning would be a form of recycling.
"These industries should get credit for thinking this way," she said. "But what is the appropriate way to recycle hazardous waste and heavy metals? It's not like we're recycling newspaper."
John DeLong, Tarmac's engineer on the project until he left Friday for a job in Hawaii, said that the company would limit metal content in the waste. He said metal emissions from hazardous waste are not significantly different from those from coal.
DeLong contends that the reason so little is known about the health effects from burning hazardous waste is that there have been no real problems.
Hagan and Stern's worries about Carvins Cove are unfounded, DeLong said.
Tarmac and its waste-burning partners, Riedel Industrial Waste Management and a joint company, Resource Recovery of Virginia, say they will monitor the burning.
But, said Hagan, "There's no monitoring by any kind of objective authority." Government agencies will "take the word" of the companies that things are being done right. "I'm concerned that the perspective is not going to be the health of the community, but the profit."
A solution, she said, might be for Botetourt County to develop its own monitoring program, with funding by Tarmac. DeLong said such a plan is under discussion with the county.
As the Tarmac project develops, Hagan is keeping an open mind, she said. "I'm still asking questions." And she's still reading.