Copyright The Washington Post Company Nov 14, 1998

Gov. James S. Gilmore III ordered a moratorium yesterday on the construction or expansion of landfills in Virginia, saying the tidal wave of out-of-state trash hitting Virginia may threaten the environment and the health and safety of residents.

"I am becoming increasingly concerned about the management of solid waste in Virginia," Gilmore (R) said in a letter telling his director of the Department of Environmental Quality to put the moratorium in place. "I have a constitutional responsibility to all Virginians to protect our natural resources when faced with complex situations like this."

The order represents a shift for Gilmore, who was silent on the issue of a landfill moratorium when his opponent in last year's governor's race, then-Lt. Gov. Donald S. Beyer Jr., raised it as a campaign issue. Gilmore also has been a leading recipient of campaign donations from the waste industry.

After New York City recently signed a contract to send more waste to Virginia landfills, Gilmore began to say he did not want the state to become "a dumping ground."

Meanwhile yesterday, elected officials in Fairfax and Arlington counties and Alexandria called for inquiries into the burning of industrial waste in their incinerators. Their reaction came after a story yesterday in The Washington Post disclosed that the private company that operates the two Northern Virginia incinerators scours the country looking for industrial waste to burn there.

Gilmore's order for a landfill moratorium evoked a cautious response. The governor's action will have no immediate impact on the seven giant landfills that have opened in Virginia since 1990, each with decades' worth of capacity. Virginia takes in 3 million tons of trash a year, making it the second-largest importer of trash in the nation, behind Pennsylvania.

Industry critics -- who have called for a cap on the amount dumped at existing landfills, the banning of trash barges on state waters and tightening of trash-truck inspections -- rated the moratorium as a good first step. But they said it alone won't achieve much.

"The only way we will prevent Virginia from becoming the king of trash is if we put a cap on the amount of waste that can come in" to individual landfills, said Sen. William T. Bolling (R-Hanover).

A spokesman for Houston-based Waste Management Inc. said the nation's largest trash company would not object to Gilmore's order if it is temporary. But a lobbyist for Richmond-based Shoosmith Bros. said it would be unfair to hold up the 15 pending applications for new or expanded landfills, including one for Shoosmith's Chesterfield County landfill. The ban would freeze action on those applications until at least February, when next year's General Assembly session ends.

"It would be a huge detriment to Shoosmith Brothers to go this far and to this expense and then have the rug pulled out from under them," said lobbyist John W. Daniel, who also represents Waste Management in Richmond.

Gilmore spokeswoman Lila Young said yesterday that the moratorium is only a first step for the governor, who has his staff studying the waste industry. "By no means is this the end of it," she said.

Gilmore's administration had been criticized by trash industry opponents after he appointed a former trash industry lobbyist, Dennis H. Treacy, as director of the Department of Environmental Quality, which regulates the waste industry. The department later approved an expansion of the King and Queen County mega-fill that many residents had opposed, adding to the criticism.

Young said the more than $100,000 in waste-industry donations that Gilmore has received from 1995 to 1998 will not influence him, and she defended the appointment of Treacy, who she noted had served in the state attorney general's office before working for Houston-based trash giant Browning Ferris Industries Inc.

The governor also released a 103-page report yesterday, compiled by the Department of Environmental Quality, that includes a historical review of the management of municipal solid waste in the state but stops short of making specific recommendations about whether the industry should be regulated further.

Incinerators caused concern in Northern Virginia after the newspaper report showing that industrial trash had been burned there as a way to boost revenue at the financially struggling plants. Incinerators collect higher fees for industrial waste than for household waste.

Fairfax County Supervisor Gerald E. Connolly (D-Providence) said the Board of Supervisors would discuss the incinerator at Monday's meeting, noting that the county needs to "tighten up" procedures to make sure the facility is operating in an "environmentally sound manner. It's one thing to take people's solid waste," Connolly said. "It's another to take their environmental problems."

Alexandria Mayor Kerry J. Donley (D) said he found it disturbing that New York-based Ogden Corp., which operates the incinerators in Fairfax and in Alexandria, where Arlington shares the cost, has advertised those plants as places for firms to send industrial waste. "I certainly understand the need to attract sufficient amounts of trash to make the plant financially viable, but I don't think we should be doing that if it poses any type of health risk," he said.

Ogden spokesman Stephen Yianakopolos said his company was prepared to answer questions about the industrial waste trade. "The industrial waste these facilities are processing does not present a risk," he said.

Staff writer Donald P. Baker contributed to this report.

Credit: Washington Post Staff Writers