Copyright The Washington Post Company Nov 20, 1998

A D.C. Council member has introduced legislation that would keep open a much-protested trash transfer station operating a block from a working-class neighborhood in Northeast Washington.

The move by council member Jack Evans (D-Ward 2) has come under attack by council member-elect Vincent Orange (D-Ward 5) and residents in the Brentwood neighborhood where the disputed Browning-Ferris Industries Inc. trash transfer station operates.

"District residents want a new council, a good-government council, a council that cares about the people," said Orange, who is organizing a rally at 10 a.m. today outside the District building to protest the council action. "This is an outrageous step in the wrong direction."

The 1220 W St. NE trash depot creates odors, noise and excessive truck traffic and attracts rodents and sea gulls to the area, critics say.

"Jack Evans can take this to his own neighborhood if he likes the smell so much," said Ruth J. Wilson, 71, a retired District schoolteacher who is black and lives in a red-brick row house a block from the trash depot, which is operated by the nation's second-largest trash firm. "He thinks we are poor, not knowledgeable and so he can push this on us. It is a clear case of environmental racism."

The District today has six commercial transfer stations -- five in Northeast and one in Southeast -- where garbage trucks from Washington and suburban Maryland carry their loads each day, transferring them to long-haul tractor-trailers that then transport the trash and other debris mostly to landfills in Virginia.

Because the city was slow to introduce or enforce laws governing those facilities, the transfer stations at times opened on lots adjacent to residential neighborhoods.

Under a proposed new law, slated for final approval Dec. 1, most of the existing transfer stations would be forced to close within three years, city officials said. The new stations replacing them would have to be at least 500 feet from any home, restaurant or other nonindustrial use. A site-selection advisory panel nominated by the mayor would recommend possible locations in the city for trash depots.

Evans's amendment, approved by the council Nov. 10, would grant an exception to the 1,200-ton-a-day Browning-Ferris transfer station, because he said the proposed law would otherwise unfairly harm a city business, forcing it to close. Evans, who is white, disputed any suggestion that the action was motivated by race, but he agreed that he would not want a trash depot near his home.

The law "would be overturned by the courts anyway," Evans said. "The government can't just go in and take people's property without compensation."

Evans said he introduced the amendment at the suggestion of outgoing council member Harry Thomas Sr. (D-Ward 5), who acknowledged in October that he lost his reelection bid in part because he did not do enough to prevent Ward 5 from becoming a hub for trash transfer stations. Thomas did not respond to a request for comment.

The Browning-Ferris transfer station already has been a subject of enforcement action by the city, which fined the company a year ago for emitting excessive odors. The city also has said that the transfer station is not operating with a proper certificate of occupancy, because the original certificate granted to a different company in 1993 specified that the depot would "sort and separate recyclable materials" and does not authorize the handling of trash.

A separate Browning-Ferris waste facility in the District, on Fairview Street NE, closed two years ago after an FBI investigation that found it was illegally dumping bloody water into the city's sewer system. The company pleaded guilty in June to violating the federal Clean Water Act and agreed to pay a $1.5 million fine.

Calvin L. Smith, a Browning-Ferris spokesman, disputed suggestions that the W Street trash depot harms the neighborhood, noting that the company has taken steps to reduce odors, kill rodents and improve the flow of the trash trucks.

"We have done everything we can to work with the community," he said. "We are being a good corporate citizen."

Council member Sharon Ambrose (D-Ward 6) plans to move Dec. 1 to repeal Evans's amendment. She also plans to move to amend the bill so that future transfer stations would have to be at least 500 feet from any other building, instead of just any nonindustrial building.

Without that change, she said, she fears the new trash depots may open on New York Avenue, a major gateway to the city that local officials are trying to revitalize.

"This is classic special-interest legislation," Ambrose said. "We must stop it."

Credit: Washington Post Staff Writer