THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, September 12, 1996 TAG: 9609120388
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY SCOTT HARPER, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: RICHMOND LENGTH: 79 lines
Despite objections from environmentalists, Virginia today will propose the repeal of an eight-year program aimed at curbing toxic water pollution originating at sewage plants, shipyards and industries.
In its place, the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality wants to implement a leaner, less bureaucratic system that state officials say will bring faster ecological gains with less headaches for business.
The change would have significant impact on Hampton Roads, where much of Virginia's heavy industry and shipyards are located. Many rely on chemicals and toxic solvents in their daily regimens, and a small portion winds up in local waters as toxic waste.
Environmental groups, including the James River Association, the Chesapeake Bay Foundation and the Southern Environmental Law Center, are nervous about and suspicious of the proposed policy change.
At a briefing Wednesday in Richmond, group leaders quizzed state officials for more than an hour about whether they are creating a vague system ripe for backdoor negotiations with big business that will produce weaker rules on what can legally be dumped in public waterways.
``To go from having a step-by-step process for toxics to nothing seems to be very drastic to me,'' said Patti Jackson, executive director of the James River Association.
The State Water Control Board will vote today on the proposal, first raised in 1991 under the administration of then-Gov. L. Douglas Wilder and now backed by Gov. George F. Allen. The board passed on the issue in May, asking state officials to further evaluate the idea.
Virginia Power and the Virginia Manufacturers Association are among the business groups that support the suggested reform. Environmentalists, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and an organization representing sewage plant operators are opposed.
The toxics management program was adopted in 1988 at the zenith of government action toward restoring the Chesapeake Bay. As many as 3,000 toxic chemicals and compounds taint the Bay's ecosystem, according to the Chesapeake Bay Foundation.
But, as state staffers who have run the program testified Wednesday, it quickly became clear after 1988 that gaps and loopholes existed, allowing companies and plants to easily delay anti-toxics strategies for years.
Bob Burnley, state director of environmental programs and evaluations, offered one example of a large, unnamed sewage plant that since 1989 has studied, monitored and argued its way into a stalemate with state regulators. No toxic reductions are scheduled there until 1999, he said.
Under the revised program, Burnley said, any industry that discharges more than 50,000 gallons of wastewater a day or any sewage plant releasing more than 1 million gallons of effluent a day that tests positive for toxicity must immediately start devising a toxics-elimination strategy.
That strategy will then be written into that problem company's state water-discharge permit, and must be met within five years.
``What we're saying is, we don't care what you decide to do with your toxicity; we just want you to stop it and stop it quickly,'' Burnley said.
While urging a new system, officials said the old one is nonetheless working.
Richard Ayers, a state environmental engineer, said the program has forced between 30 and 40 facilities to stop releasing toxic pollution into the environment. Another 40 to 50 are designing reduction plans, Ayers said.
But he quickly noted that, if the new system were enacted, the state could force troublesome plants to skip expensive studies and monitoring and start designing improvements.
Virginia is the only state in the mid-Atlantic with a separate regulatory program for toxics and another controlling other harmful but nontoxic discharges through state-issued permits, said Martin Ferguson, director of Virginia's office of water permit support.
In the Southeast, only Mississippi has two distinct programs like Virginia, Ferguson added.
Roy A. Hoagland, staff attorney for the Chesapeake Bay Foundation in Virginia, said that if toxics management is folded into the regular state discharge permit, as proposed, the result will be decisions and negotiations between state regulators and business executives.
Citizens will have little say or knowledge of what exactly the two parties are discussing - until after a deal has been sealed, Hoagland warned.
KEYWORDS: WATER POLLUTION VIRGINIA by CNB