THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, May 23, 1996 TAG: 9605230359
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY SCOTT HARPER, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: RICHMOND LENGTH: 80 lines
After five years of debate, eight drafts, two federal protests and continuing complaints from environmentalists, Newport News Shipbuilding won a state water-pollution permit Wednesday.
The State Water Control Board voted unanimously for a permit that promises better protection of the James River and Chesapeake Bay while also restricting use of tributyltin, or TBT, a controversial boat paint known to harm humans and marine life exposed to its highly toxic chemistry.
While state officials and maritime experts lauded the permit as a model of compromise between economics and ecology, environmental groups declared the regulatory blueprint too weak for one of the biggest potential sources of water pollution in coastal Virginia.
Led by the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, the groups charged that permit authors at the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality ignored their concerns and those from citizens who opposed how the state plans to limit pollutants, including TBT, oily wastes and tainted rainwater washing off docks.
``This is a farce,'' declared Roy A. Hoagland, staff attorney for the Chesapeake Bay Foundation in Virginia.
Despite the grueling and painstakingdebate since 1991, the matter may not be closed.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency still must endorse the permit. As of late Tuesday, the last time state officials checked, EPA leaders had not indicated whether they would support it.
If the EPA objects to the permit's terms, the agency could force state officials and shipyard executives back to the negotiating table to work out problems.
Newport News Shipbuilding, one of the largest employers in the commonwealth, has been without a pollution permit since 1991. Since then, regulators have struggled to write a permit amid ever-changing federal and state environmental rules and shaky economic times for the huge Peninsula shipyard.
They have written eight drafts, only to amend them later, and the federal government has twice insisted the state go back to the drawing board.
In the end, state official settled on a compromise. The permit imposes a 50-parts-per-trillion limit on TBT discharges - a limit that no other state sets on shipyards - but averts expensive biological testing of some watery wastes thought to contain traces of heavy-metal toxins such as copper and zinc.
``The environment will be protected and the industry will be sustained,'' said Henry O. Hollimon Jr., vice chairman of the water control board. ``At some point, a reasonable, common-sense balance has to be attained.''
The likely trouble spot that could block EPA approval, officials and environmentalists said, is the proposal of skipping biological testing at some shipyard outfalls. The state's own director of toxic management has said live tests on shrimp and minnows should be conducted to determine the potential toxic effects of stormwater discharges on aquatic life.
But David A. Mashaw, a senior state environmental engineer, explained that the requirement was dropped for lack of evidence that the shipyard's stormwater wastes may be toxic. He noted how 55 of 56 toxicity samples showed compliance with state standards.
The state's regional environmental director, Frank Daniel, also took aim at criticisms that Virginia is going soft on TBT. Daniel blasted the EPA for not completing a review of TBT's risks and offering advice to states on how to best control the toxic paint, used to control barnacles from collecting on hulls.
The EPA was charged by Congress in 1988 to study the issue.
``So here we are with no national policy,'' Daniel said. ``And no one knows how to control TBT.''
Newport News Shipbuilding will deploy tarps to catch flakes of TBT when sandblasting ship hulls and will take other precautions when applying the bottom paint. But Daniel said it may be impossible for the shipyard to meet its TBT limit.
He noted the best result the shipyard has attained in laboratory experiments is three times the legal limit of 50 parts per trillion.
KEYWORDS: WATER POLLUTION TBT TRIBUTYLTIN
PAINT by CNB