Copyright The Washington Post Company Jul 26, 2003

Virginia officials cleared the way yesterday for trash barging to resume on the James River, approving lower standards and fees for waste companies than environmental groups had sought.

The Waste Management Board voted 5 to 1, with one member absent, to charge companies $1 per ton to bring trash up Virginia's rivers by barge. The board also approved a watertightness standard for the trash containers that was endorsed by the state's Department of Environmental Quality but derided by environmentalists.

"I don't think we're going to have any kind of real protection," said Patricia Jackson, executive director of the James River Association, a conservation group. "It will be a matter of reacting when an accident occurs, which is what happened before."

The last time waste companies barged trash along the James, in 1998, fluids from garbage leaked into the river. The General Assembly responded by banning all trash barging, but federal courts ruled that the law was an unconstitutional infringement on interstate commerce.

A recent settlement between the state and Waste Management Inc., the company that plans to barge trash along the James to its landfill in Charles City County, set guidelines for the resumption of barging. But the company agreed to hold back until the board finalized the regulations.

Lisa Kardell, a spokeswoman for Waste Management Inc., said the board "should be commended for passing regulations that protect both the environment and the citizens of the commonwealth."

The company has promoted barges as cheaper and better for the environment because they result in fewer waste trucks on the highways.

Kardell said the company does not know when barging along the James will begin again, though she said the company needs to build containers that conform to the new regulations. Waste Management has announced plans to barge trash only up the James, but barges would be legal on any Virginia river.

Jackson sharply criticized the board's handling of the matter, noting that its members apparently ignored thousands of calls and letters from the public advocating more rigorous standards. She also chided the board for meeting on the issue for 90 minutes behind closed doors and then voting without public discussion.

"The industry is apparently calling the shots on this one," she said, accusing the board of having been "intimidated" by the prospect of further litigation by Waste Management Inc.

Board member Tom Berezoski conceded that litigation loomed large in his decision. He said he went into yesterday's meeting planning to side with environmentalists by voting for a higher fee and a more stringent standard. But he said that in executive session, representatives of the office of Attorney General Jerry W. Kilgore (R) told the board that such action would result in the state's "spending millions of dollars in a lawsuit that we would probably not win."

"I could see their point," said Berezoski, who joined the majority.

Bill Hayden, a spokesman for the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality, acknowledged that the department's advice was constrained by law, but he said the regulations are sufficient.

"They're as reasonable and effective and safe as we believe we can make them," he said.

Jim Sharp, director of the anti-trash-imports group Campaign Virginia, said the board misjudged the law. Had the state gone with stricter regulations, he said, it "would have been well within its rights based on what the courts decided."

Noting that the state ranks second nationally in out-of-state trash imports, Jackson said that Virginia "is damned to be everybody's dumping ground. I don't see any reason that that's going to change, either at the federal or state level."

Virginia environmental groups received an additional blow this week when legislation sponsored by Rep. Jo Ann S. Davis (R-Va.) failed to win a hearing. The bill would have given states more authority to regulate trash imports.