Judge rejects barge testing
Virginia must rewrite its trash barge container regulations, according to a
state judge.
BY DAVE SCHLECK
247-7430
February 9 2005
RICHMOND -- A judge has rejected
the state's testing requirements for trash containers on barges and ordered new
rules to ensure that the containers are watertight.
Richmond Circuit
Court Judge Randall Johnson's ruling, which will affect a proposed barging
operation on the James River, is in response to a lawsuit filed by an
environmental group called the James River Association.
The group argued
that state regulations passed in 2003 are insufficient, because they only
require filling the bottom 24 inches of containers with water to see if they
leak. The test didn't seem to live up to a state law that requires such
containers to be watertight to prevent garbage juice from spilling during an
accident.
Johnson stated in his ruling, which was made public Monday:
"The only thing the 24-inch standing water test demonstrates is that the bottom
24 inches of the container does not leak. It demonstrates nothing about the rest
of the container, including the door, seams and other joints."
Johnson
issued an order calling the 24-inch test invalid and instructing the state to
replace it with requirements that fulfill the law's requirements.
A
spokeswoman for Waste Management, which helped the state defend the case, said
that there still is no timeframe for when the company will start barging up to
6,000 tons of out-of-state trash a day up the James River to the Charles City
County landfill.
Environmental groups hailed the ruling.
"This
decision will protect the James River and all the rivers in the state," said
Sarah Francisco, an attorney for the Southern Environmental Law Center, which
helped represent the James River Association. "We're just very pleased that the
judge saw through their inadequate test."
It is too early to say whether
the case would be appealed, said Tim Murtaugh, spokesman for the Virginia
attorney general's office. The state has about a month to decide.
"All
parties agree that the most important thing is to protect Virginia's natural
resources, which is why the board believed it had adopted the toughest
regulations in the country," Murtaugh said.
Environmentalists didn't win
everything they campaigned for.
The association argued that the public
input process for developing the regulations was a sham, because state lawyers
had already signed a memorandum of agreement with Waste Management and kept it
secret. In the agreement, the state agreed to take steps to pass the 24-inch
water test and approve a per-ton fee not to exceed $1.
Johnson pointed
out that the agreement was signed by lawyers for the state secretary of natural
resources and the director of the state department of environmental quality. But
the Waste Management Board, the governing body that actually passed the
regulations, was neither party to the agreement nor bound by it, Johnson
ruled.
The board - not the court - is the best judge on whether the fee
will raise enough money to improve water quality and cover inspection and
monitoring of the barges, Johnson said.
Jim Sharp, director of an
anti-barge group called Campaign Virginia, said he was disappointed in that part
of Johnson's ruling.
"The spirit of open government and that of the
Freedom of Information Act is eroded by closed-door settlements that did not see
the full light of day until after the regs were adopted," he said.
In
addition to the Charles City County barging operation, environmentalists also
have their eye on a proposed landfill in Camden County in northeastern North
Carolina. A trash disposal company plans to transport out-of-state garbage to
the future landfill.
The trash could be barged into Hampton Roads and
unloaded onto trucks headed for North Carolina on Route 17. State environmental
officials in Hampton Roads discussed with Waste Industries USA the possibility
of a port on the Southern Branch of the Elizabeth River in Chesapeake about a
year ago, according to Bill Hayden, DEQ spokesman.
The state has not
received a permit application for such a port, Hayden said.
Copyright © 2005, Daily Press
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