Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, May 3, 1994 TAG: 9405030158
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
The court, ruling 7-2, rejected Chicago officials' argument that federal law exempts plants burning municipal trash from the costly requirements for handling hazardous materials.
The federal government has said it costs about 10 times as much to treat ashes as hazardous waste as to deposit them in a landfill.
``The opinion is certainly going to discourage resource recovery efforts,'' said Richard Ruda, an attorney for the National League of Cities.
The Environmental Defense Fund, which won its lawsuit against Chicago, contends plant operators can find ways to minimize the amount of ashes that must be treated as hazardous waste.
Federal law ``does not explicitly exempt ... ash generated by a resource recovery facility from regulation as a hazardous waste,'' Justice Antonin Scalia wrote for the court. Justices John Paul Stevens and Sandra Day O'Connor dissented.
More than 130 facilities across the country create energy by burning solid waste that otherwise would wind up in landfills. Such waste often contains material that ordinarily would be classified as hazardous.
A 1984 federal law gave municipal garbage-burning plants an exemption from hazardous-waste rules for treating and disposing of their waste, but did not say whether the exemption applied to the ashes.
The Environmental Protection Agency said it considered the ashes exempt from hazardous-waste rules. The 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said federal law granted no such exemption, and the Supreme Court agreed.
Chicago officials had said such a ruling would harm the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act's goal of promoting garbage-to-energy plants.
The law's ``twin goals of encouraging resource recovery and protecting against contamination sometimes conflict,'' Scalia wrote, adding the law ``simply cannot be read to contain the cost-saving waste stream exemption [Chicago officials] seek.''
Environmental Defense Fund scientist Richard Denison said plant operators can remove batteries and metal from trash before burning it, thus reducing the hazardous material in ashes to acceptable levels. Cities also can boost recycling, he said.
In other action Monday, the court:
Rejected mob leader John Gotti's appeal of his 1992 murder and racketeering convictions. He is serving a life prison term.
Turned down Raymond ``Junior'' Patriarca's appeal of his eight-year, one-month sentence for racketeering. The reputed mob chief from Providence, R.I., pleaded guilty in 1991, but said his sentence wrongly was based on acts committed by underlings.
Refused to let the University of Colorado resume random drug tests for student athletes, trainers, managers and cheerleaders.
Rejected an appeal by Cecil Jacobson, a Virginia infertility doctor convicted of using his own sperm to inseminate women and tricking others into believing they were pregnant.
by CNB