Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, August 10, 1995 TAG: 9508100080
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-11 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: CATHRYN McCUE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
The waste is now mixed with too much soil to be burned in the high-temperature metal recovery kiln in Chicago, its destination, county spokeswoman Anne Marie Green said.
On Monday, a tractor-trailer hauling fly ash from the Dixie Caverns Superfund site wrecked on Interstate 64 in West Virginia, spilling one to two tons of the truck's 21-ton load into a ditch, said Tom Fisher, supervisor with the West Virginia Division of Environmental Protection.
In cleaning the muck up, crews scraped dirt, leaves and grass into the waste, making it unacceptable at the high-tech burning facility.
"They were going to send it back down there [to Roanoke County] to let them down there worry about how to handle it," Fisher said.
The cleanup took about six hours, ending around 9:30 p.m. None of the fly ash escaped into the environment, Fisher said, and there were no houses or businesses nearby.
The fly ash, a byproduct of Roanoke Electric Steel, contains high levels of lead, cadmium and zinc, rendering it hazardous under the federal Superfund law. Roanoke Electric and Roanoke County are paying millions to clean up the landfill, which operated from 1965 to 1976.
Roanoke County is asking the federal Environmental Protection Agency for permission to stabilize the 21 tons of waste at Roanoke Electric, and burying it back at the Dixie Caverns dump - which is what the county had wanted to do with the entire landfill all along.
The county clashed with EPA for several years over what to do with the 9,000 cubic yards of fly ash. Not only would the county's plan have cost less, but an accident like the one on Monday was the kind of thing the county wanted to avoid.
by CNB