THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, February 29, 1996 TAG: 9602290344
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B6 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY SCOTT HARPER, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: NORFOLK LENGTH: Medium: 79 lines
The case of the mysterious brown trailer actually began before Thanksgiving.
Responding to an anonymous tip in November, the Norfolk fire marshal's office inspected a small marine repair company on the Elizabeth River and discovered hazardous wastes stacked in rusting barrels and cans. Some of the containers were leaking; none were registered to be there, officials said.
Also on the site, in a dusty industrial strip on Westminster Avenue, inspectors found the brown trailer. It had no license plate attached, and no one at the repair yard seemed to know how or when it got there.
Inside its battered shell, inspectors found more chemicals and toxic wastes - including four 55-gallon drums that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency collected last summer while cleaning up a toxic spill in Chesapeake.
The trailor was locked until Wednesday, when EPA officials finally arrived. They were none too pleased to recover wastes that were supposed to have been disposed of safely last summer yet now were stashed in an abandoned trailer.
``This obviously isn't supposed to happen,'' said Doug Fox, EPA's on-scene coordinator, who drove from Pennsylvania Wednesday morning to catalog and ship the wastes for proper disposal. ``Someone's going to get the bill for this one.''
The site is owned by Eastern Technical Enterprises Inc., based in New York. The company faces a city-imposed deadline of March 14 to remove hundreds of old waste drums, purge soils of contamination and obtain a city permit to store hazardous wastes, said Ed Palaszewski, chief of inspections at the city fire marshal's office.
Another company, Specialty Rentals Inc., leases a portion of the site for its marine repair business. Its general manager, Robert Taylor, had no comment Wednesday when asked about the trailer.
Specialty Rentals also was ordered to clean up its part of the site, which included the removal of 20 tons of petroleum-tainted soil, Palaszewski said. The company has complied, and now is permitted to keep chemical wastes, he added.
The actions illustrate a move by the city to get tough on hazardous-waste storage in Norfolk. Since a toxic fire last year at Fine Petroleum Inc., in which unlabeled drums of chemicals went up in flames, city officials have stepped up efforts to better control a trade inherently linked to Norfolk's industrial and maritime economies.
The crackdown includes a new and stricter fire code, enacted last year in conjunction with changes to the state code, and increased enforcement.
Some small businessmen say the city is going too far.
``I think they've gone overboard with all these new rules,'' said Taylor, of Specialty Rentals. ``It's a real burden for us. . . . But they're willing to work with us at least; it's not unreasonable enforcement.''
The EPA, meanwhile, is investigating the trailer incident, trying to determine who parked the chemical-filled hull in Norfolk, city and federal officials said.
The four 55-gallon drums were first recovered last summer, after the EPA was asked to help clean up a toxic soup of chemicals that had been dumped into a hole on leased land in the 2900 block of South Military Highway in Chesapeake, officials said.
The leasee was Macsons, a Norfolk company, said Greg Orfield, an inspector with the Chesapeake fire marshal's office who responded to the spill. The EPA took care of all hazardous wastes on the property, Orfield said, and Macsons was told to properly discard other, petroleum-based wastes that technically are not classified as hazardous.
When Norfolk inspectors opened the brown trailer, they immediately knew the drums originated from that Chesapeake incident: EPA stencils and case numbers were stamped on the metal containers, Palaszewski said. ILLUSTRATION: MOTOYA NAKAMURA
The Virginian-Pilot
Four 55-gallon drums containing chemicals and toxic wastes were
rediscovered by EPA officials in this dusty, brown abandoned trailor
on Westminister Avenue. The same drums were collected last summer
during a toxic spill in Chesapeake.
by CNB