Incinerators For Hazardous Waste Go Up In Smoke Disposal ‘Crisis’ Vanishes; Plans For Large Burners Also Disappear

The hazardous waste disposal “crisis” trumpeted five years ago by companies proposing large toxic waste incinerators in Eastern Washington has vanished.

Three regional incinerator projects have been canceled or deferred indefinitely - casualties of exaggerated waste projections and changing government policies.

“We are no longer emphasizing incineration. We are shifting resources to pollution prevention,” said Gerald Lenssen, hazardous waste permits chief for Washington’s Department of Ecology.

In the early 1990s, spurred by a Bush administration policy to encourage waste incinerators in every region of the country, three companies were proceeding with plans for large burners in Eastern Washington:

The ECOS Corp., a Burlington Resources Inc. spinoff, bought a site near Lind.

Rabanco Ltd. of Seattle, in partnership with the Swiss company Von Roll Inc., chose a site near Vantage.

Chemical Waste Management, a branch of garbage giant WMX Technologies Inc., was considering a Hanford-area incinerator.

The burners, with capacities of up to 50,000 tons a year, were supposed to dispose of a wide variety of hazardous materials, including solvents, paints, pesticides and contaminated soil from Superfund site cleanups.

But now, the ECOS project has been canceled, and the Rabanco-Von Roll permit application is on hold. Its lease with Grant County for an adjacent landfill has expired.

Chemical Waste Management never applied for a state permit.

This month, WMX announced it is writing off $91 million of Chemical Waste’s losses, attributing its problems to a glut of disposal facilities nationwide and lowerthan-expected waste volumes.

State and federal officials now admit the national incinerator building spree of the early ‘90s led to over-capacity because it was based on inflated projections.

“The methodology on the projection of need was flawed,” Lenssen said.

The Clinton administration axed the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency plan for more incinerators in 1993. Washington state followed suit, announcing it wouldn’t be processing any permits.

Environmental critics had warned all along that the hazardous waste capacity crunch was phony.

In a 1993 report, the Washington Toxics Coalition of Seattle challenged the projections of incinerator need that had been arrived at in 1989 by a regional task force.

The report concluded there weren’t enough burnable wastes in the region to warrant a large incinerator. In 1989, the Pacific Northwest Hazardous Waste Advisory Council concluded some incineration capacity might be needed. Four years later, industry journals were reporting as much as 70 percent over-capacity nationwide.

The glut may have been the unintended consequence of a 1989 federal law requiring states to assure they had a place to send their hazardous wastes or risk loss of federal Superfund money to clean up toxic messes.

In February 1993, 15 Western states that had agreed to cooperate to assure adequate facilities said they would have excess incineration capacity by 1995.

The reason: Two large incinerators in Utah came on line, and the Western regional compact added Nebraska and Kansas, where incinerators already had been built.