Copyright The Washington Post Company Nov 13, 1998

Second of three articles

The inspectors arrived at the Fairfax County trash-to-energy plant unannounced one January day, ready for a routine walk-through at Virginia's largest and most modern incinerator. What they found disturbed them.

On the sprawling concrete floor where household trash is typically dumped, barrels filled with industrial waste were haphazardly stacked and resting in a pool of water. At least one was cracked and leaking.

"I felt very uncomfortable," state environmental enforcement officer Tammy R. Gumbita said. "When you have so many drums and you can't really tell what is in them, you have got to be concerned for the health and safety of the people there."

In the barrels was evidence of how the trash plant built by Fairfax County had moved into the industrial waste business, pulling in pesticides, drugs, oil-contaminated debris and other heavy-duty refuse from as far away as Iowa and Puerto Rico.

Federal, state and local governments limit what can be burned in the incinerators and prohibit the burning of cancer-causing chemicals, radioactive material or caustic substances.

Yet at the Alexandria plant on Eisenhower Avenue, which had a stated policy of not burning pesticides, a nonhazardous pesticide was incinerated in September 1997, but it wasn't detected until workers complained of burning eyes and throats, according to state inspection reports. The symptoms caused the staff to recheck recent loads, and only then did they realize the pesticide had come in a shipment from Chicago.

In Fairfax this spring, barrels labeled as hazardous went undetected, causing the state to drop the incinerator's safety rating to marginal for a period. Gumbita's inspection reports at Fairfax between October 1997 and this summer cite a pattern of weaknesses in the handling of the industrial waste.

Both plants have had occasional problems with air quality in the last four years as well, including discharges of sulfur dioxide at Fairfax's plant in Lorton and emissions from both incinerators that were not as clear or clean as the state requires.

When Fairfax, Arlington and Alexandria invested $300 million of government-backed funds during the late 1980s to build the plants, they did not intend to take industrial waste from far-flung places. Indeed, Fairfax stated in its original financing documents that by this year, 97 percent of the trash would come from inside the county and the rest from the District.

But the fickle economics of the trash business undid those plans.

Several years ago, massive landfills built by private companies in central Virginia began offering trash haulers cheaper disposal rates than the incinerators charged.

Large amounts of Northern Virginia trash started heading south, away from Fairfax and Alexandria. With the trash went the disposal fees that the incinerators had banked on, a loss that threatened to push the plants into default. To fight back, the incinerators cut fees. And to make up for lost revenues, New York-based Ogden Corp., the company that operates the plants for the local governments, began scouring the nation for industrial waste to burn in Northern Virginia.

The plants get as much as $250 a ton from haulers to incinerate industrial waste, eight times the rate for disposing of household trash. The price is high because the waste producer is guaranteed that the drugs or chemicals will be destroyed so there is no chance they will end up in a black market, a risk that comes with leaving them in landfills.

"It is fairly lucrative," said Jeffrey L. Harn, environmental planning coordinator in Arlington County, which shares the cost and management of the Alexandria plant. "It helps the economic viability of the plant, and in these days, with the competitive environment, that is something to consider."

In fact, Ogden is so enthusiastic about the trade, it started a special corporate unit charged with finding clients nationwide, offering to burn their industrial waste at its plants in Fairfax, Alexandria and 13 other cities. Ogden also uses industrial waste brokers -- middlemen who put companies with waste in touch with incinerators looking for loads -- to find clients.

Montgomery County, where Ogden also operates a plant, is not part of those efforts; a county ordinance prohibits the plant from burning anything other than Montgomery-generated trash.

Yet in several communities nationwide, the revelation that a local incinerator was burning industrial wastes stirred anger during the last year. In Tulsa, the outcry was over crates that had carried napalm. In Spokane, Wash., oily debris and pesticide containers provoked protest.

Some elected officials in Fairfax and Alexandria said they are surprised to learn that their trash plants were being marketed nationwide as a place to send industrial waste.

Alexandria City Council member David G. Speck (D) said residents have a right to expect the city not to take unnecessary risks.

"We have to be able to say to the community, `We are vigilant in protecting you from anything regarded as hazardous,' " he said.

Ogden officials dispute any suggestion the industrial waste business presents a hazard, saying they review each load carefully before burning it and have taken steps to address the concerns state inspectors raised.

"We provide environmentally sound, assured destruction," said George Ball-Llovera, Ogden's mid-Atlantic regional vice president for operations.

It is a message repeated in the glossy Ogden brochure, featuring color photographs of the Fairfax plant, next to shots of Ogden incinerators in New York, Florida, California and Oklahoma. "Ever consider your company's waste a liability or environmental problem?" the brochure states. "We have. And we make it our business."

The Financial Pressures

From the outside, the beige, smokestack-topped incinerators in Fairfax and Alexandria look much like routine electric power plants. What differs is their fuel.

Each day in Fairfax, an average of about 3,000 tons of waste arrives at the plant's concrete floor, known as the "tipping-room floor." Industrial waste makes up about 2 percent of the total. Waste from Fairfax accounts for 58 percent, and all of the rest comes from outside the county.

Overhead cranes lift the trash into chutes that feed four furnaces that burn round-the-clock at 1,800 degrees. The process generates enough electricity to power as many as 75,000 homes.

The problem at the Fairfax and Alexandria plants is that neither pulls in as much routine trash from Northern Virginia as predicted. Fairfax projected in 1989 that its residents and businesses would send 900,000 tons of trash to the plant in 1997, eating up almost all of the incinerator's capacity. Instead, the county provided about 568,000 tons, the least since the plant opened in 1991.

The county's successful recycling program pulled away some waste. But the primary shortfall came after a 1994 U.S. Supreme Court decision that invalidated so-called flow-control laws. Those laws allowed a community to designate a specific incinerator or landfill to which trash collected inside its borders had to be taken. Once those laws were lifted, many private trash haulers chose to go to the less expensive landfills opened since 1990 in central Virginia.

The shift to central Virginia harmed both Fairfax and Alexandria, which had pledged in contracts with Ogden to feed a baseline amount of trash to the plants or pay a penalty for each ton they came up short.

Desperate to avoid penalties, Fairfax, Alexandria and Arlington slashed the rates they charge big customers to try to prevent defections to landfills and to encourage repeat business. The discounts so far have helped maintain enough flow that Fairfax and Alexandria have not had to pay Ogden penalties. But the maneuver has a price: Instead of collecting as much as $45 a ton on waste collected in the county, Fairfax gets as little as $36 a ton after discounting.

The financial situation is so dire that Alexandria and Arlington this year considered shutting down their 10-year-old incinerator, an option officials rejected only after concluding they could not afford to pay off the plant's more than $50 million in outstanding debt.

"We would not build an incinerator again today," said Alexandria City Attorney Philip G. Sunderland. "It made sense back in the 1980s. Five years from now, it might make sense again. But right now it is difficult for us."

Worries about the incinerator's solvency have even prompted Fairfax County to float the idea of taking over trash collection from the private sector, a suggestion that prompted one hauler to send letters to 10,000 county residents last month protesting the idea.

Recent federal air pollution regulations will force a total of $40 million in renovations at the Fairfax and Alexandria plants, adding to their burdens.

Against that backdrop, the industrial waste becomes even more attractive, with Ogden and the host governments splitting the money from it. For Fairfax government, that brought in about $1.3 million last year.

The Special Waste Trade

From confidential documents to 20 tons of women's lingerie, many kinds of benign industrial waste have flowed to the two Northern Virginia plants.

But the industrial waste approved for burning at Fairfax also has included 20 tons or more each of silicone, leftover drugs, residue from sand blasting, pesticides, oily debris, dye, animal serums, paints, paint fillers and toner cartridges, Fairfax records show. The waste has come from 20 states, the District and Puerto Rico.

The state permits that control the Fairfax and Alexandria incinerators are nearly silent on how imported industrial wastes should be processed -- a holdover from the days when it was not foreseen that the incinerators would ever import large amounts of out-of-state materials.

For a while, Ogden sought advance state approval to burn each load of industrial waste before accepting the shipments at either the Fairfax or Alexandria incinerator. The company later asked the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality to simplify the process by giving "categorical preapproval" for the burning of "discarded chemicals," a request granted in December 1994.

The local governments take very different approaches to supervising the industrial waste.

Alexandria and Arlington officials, for example, concerned about possible public outcry and the potential impact on air quality, prohibit burning pesticides and have tighter overall restrictions than Fairfax does on what it will accept at their incinerator.

With pesticides, "the environmental experts felt it was something that would be acceptable," said Harn, the Arlington County environmental planning coordinator. "But {in Alexandria and Arlington}, we just weren't comfortable. The plant is close to a residential area, and we want to be cautious." Because of the policy, Alexandria rejected a request by Ogden to burn 20 tons of a pesticide known as Bug-B-Gone in May 1997.

While Alexandria has stricter guidelines on what it will accept at its plant, Fairfax has a procedure in place to verify what kind of industrial waste is burned.

Alexandria and Arlington officials have no independent record of the sorts of industrial waste incinerated during the last four years and rely on Ogden to ensure nothing improper goes into the furnaces.

Harn, the county environmental officer, said he believes the risk "is fairly minimal that they would do something like that," referring to the possibility an unapproved waste might be burned.

Fairfax requires county engineers to review each request to dispose of industrial waste in advance to try to guarantee that processing it will not contaminate the air, leftover ash or threaten workers. In January, for example, the county rejected a request to burn 20 tons of waste sludge because it had a high level of lead and other heavy metals.

"There is nothing that goes in there that does not have our approval," said Jeffrey M. Smithberger, deputy director of Fairfax County's solid waste division.

Despite the safeguards, both plants in the last 13 months have had trouble with their handling of special wastes.

In September 1997, truck drivers and plant workers at the Alexandria plant reported burning eyes, noses and throats, according to state records. Plant staff members reviewed recent waste deliveries and began to question an 11,000-pound shipment from Chicago that had just been burned. The load had been sent by the hazardous-waste firm Clean Harbors Environmental Services Inc., the records show.

After plant staff members pressed the company, the firm notified Ogden that mixed within its load of "special waste" had been 1,600 pounds of a pesticide known as Hyamine 1622.

Ogden says it had no way of knowing the pesticide, which is regulated by the federal government and which the plant would have needed state permission to burn, was part of the load. But it agreed that its Alexandria staff needed to be retrained in how to inspect loads.

"We deeply regret having processed materials without state approval and are working to ensure that this does not happen again," the company said in a letter explaining the incident to state regulators.

"We should not have burned it that day," Ogden spokesman Steve Yianakopolos said.

In May, state inspectors visiting the Fairfax incinerator found seven 55-gallon drums shipped by National Starch and Chemical Co. of Bridgewater, N.J. The barrel labels indicated that they contained a chemical rated by the U.S. Department of Transportation as hazardous.

"We saw no evidence indicating that {Ogden} had obtained a certificate from the generator that the waste was not hazardous before accepting the material," Gumbita wrote to Ogden in June. "Nor was there evidence that the facility was even aware that the material was being stored at their facility."

Ogden officials responded that they still had not completed their final check on the barrels, which would have been done before they were burned. But they acknowledged that the waste had slipped by them when it was unloaded. As they'd done in Alexandria, they promised state officials staff would get "refresher training."

"There was no intent to circumvent state regulations or approvals," the letter from Ogden said.

Fairfax County Supervisor Penelope A. Gross (D-Mason) said she intends to ask county officials for more information on the industrial waste trade.

"I want to know if there are guarantees on what can and cannot be taken, how it is going to be hauled to the plant and what the potential costs and benefits are to everyone," she said. "We need to give this a little scrutiny."

Worries about Air and Ash

Once trash is burned in the incinerators and electrical power is generated, the leftovers are ash and exhaust.

Virginia requires routine monitoring of air emissions from the Northern Virginia incinerators. Those tests have turned up occasional problems.

In Alexandria during the last four years, there have been sporadic instances of emissions exceeding a state standard for "opacity," which means the air is not as clear or as clean as it should be when it leaves the plant.

In Fairfax, the plant exceeded limits on opacity and discharges of sulfur dioxide, an air pollutant.

At both plants, Ogden officials said the occasional emissions violations were related to brief equipment breakdowns and did not suggest inherent risks in the industrial waste trade. The state makes allowances for mechanical failures and Jack Schubert, air program compliance coordinator for Virginia, said they are generally satisfied with the plants' performances.

A more pressing concern for the Department of Environmental Quality has been the 330,000 tons a year total of ash the two Northern Virginia incinerators produce and the possibility that industrial waste might leave hazardous residues in the ash that could then seep into groundwater. To dispose of the ash, the plants bury it at a landfill off Interstate 95 in Fairfax.

Neither facility has tested its ash for about four years -- the period when they built up their industrial waste business -- to determine whether it contains chemical residues or heavy metals that would render it hazardous. If the ash was found to be hazardous, the city would be required to dispose of it at a special, and more expensive, hazardous-waste landfill.

For two years, the regional office of the Department of Environmental Quality has requested that the Fairfax and Alexandria plants test their ash regularly, a request that Ogden and the local governments argue is unnecessary and will drive up costs.

The state could compel better ash testing, but it would require action from Richmond, which environmental officials in the regional office say may be slow in coming.

"It is a very long process," Gumbita said. "I hope every day we can get it done. But it is going to take a while."

Profile of Local Incinerators

FAIRFAX COUNTY

Opened: 1990

Capacity: 3,000 tons a day

Price tag: $195 million ($250 million in bonds issued)

Outstanding debt: $196 million

Price per ton: $36-$45

Ash produced per year: 242,000 tons

ALEXANDRIA and ARLINGTON

Opened: 1988

Capacity: 975 tons a day

Price tag: About $105 million ($76 million in bonds issued)

Outstanding debt: $103 million+

Price per ton: $35-$45

Ash produced per year: 90,000 tons

+ Includes cost of $50 million worth of air-pollution control improvements

MONTGOMERY COUNTY

Opened: 1995

Capacity: 1,800 tons a day

Price tag: $270 million ($360 million in bonds issued)

Outstanding debt: About $350 million

Price per ton: $44

Ash produced per year: 120,000 tons

Taking in the Trash

Industrial waste being burned in Virginia's incinerators comes from all over the country. Below are the top industrial waste exporters.

Fairfax incinerator

   Jurisdiction    Tons incinerated

   Ohio            758

   Kentucky        675

   Virginia        536

   North Carolina  214

   New Jersey      211

   Illinois        182

   Maryland        146

   Georgia         119

   Puerto Rico     114

   Connecticut     109

   Quarter total   3,653

 Alexandria incinerator

   New Jersey      1,237

   Virginia          526

   Georgia            19

   Massachusetts      11

   Indiana             8

   Maryland            6

   Quarter total   1,807

NOTE: For the period October 1997 to December 1997 SOURCE: Virginia Department of Environmental Quality

Virginia's Trash Business

Virginia has become the nation's second-biggest importer of trash, taking in out-of-state trash at seven giant landfills in rural counties and at incinerators in Fairfax County and Alexandria. This series looks at how that standing evolved and the problems that have come with the booming growth.

YESTERDAY: Nearly 200 trucks line up in the Bronx each morning to transfer trash picked up in the borough to tractor-trailers that will carry it to Virginia landfills. The practice is a sign of how big a business trash has become in Virginia. With the growth, however, come worries about truck safety and the environment.

TODAY: Incinerators in Fairfax and Alexandria face a revenue crunch as giant landfills draw away trash -- and disposal fees -- that the incinerators had been planning on to cover their bills. As a result, the incinerators are taking in more industrial waste, materials they were not intended for and that have proven risky.

TOMORROW: The trash industry has built a network of politicians and consultants in Virginia to help win sites for landfills and monitor legislation in Richmond to safeguard its business.

Credit: Washington Post Staff Writer