Texas Campaign for the Environment: News

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TCE, June 4, 2008 By TCE

Texas Environmental Agency to Pursue Weakening of Landfill Rules on Toxic Waste

Texas Campaign for the Environment is very disappointed that the state environmental agency is going in the absolute wrong direction and making moves to weaken our environmental standards and allow landfills to use toxic waste as daily cover.  This doesn’t even pass the common sense test.  The rules were modestly tightened two years ago and now the agency is considering back-sliding and endangering the health and property of landfill neighbors.

 

Landfills are not benign facilities but daily cover is supposed to make their operations safer for the public health.  Every day landfills that take household trash must apply daily cover - six inches of soil is the standard.  Daily cover is supposed to protect the public health from:

 

  • Fires
  • Windblown trash
  • Disease-carrying scavengers such as buzzards, coyotes, rats and other “vectors”
  • Trap toxic gases that can often result in noxious odors
  • Prevent trash for contaminating stormwater run-off

 

The three Commissioners of the Texas Commission on Environmental (TCEQ) agency voted unanimously to propose rules and gather public comment on changes to the daily cover rules, in spite of the objections raised by TCE, other public interest advocates and the agency’s own Public Interest Counsel.  The proposed rules would:

 

 

  •  
  • Remove a provision that stated from the 2006 rules that trash landfills cannot use a material as a daily cover if the material is too toxic to be taken into the landfill as waste.
  • Landfills could use this toxic waste under a “Temporary Authorization” which requires no public notice or comment.

Using toxic waste as daily cover could increase hazards at landfills, rather than reduce hazards.  Typically landfills stockpile their daily cover soils.  Piles of contaminated waste could release volatile pollutants into the air and pollutants into the water as rains leach out toxics.  The City of Beaumont previously used petroleum contaminated soils and was cited because the stormwater run-off from the stockpiles measured more than 50,000 mg/kg – more than 30 times the current cut-off of 1500mg/kg.

 

Once applied to a landfill, these materials can continue to pollute the air and leach toxins into the landfill.  Currently, the water that runs off the daily cover does not have to be treated as contaminated.  People who live or work near landfills have great cause to be concerned that landfills will become more hazardous to their health, surroundings and property.

 

These rules don’t benefit the public health and instead seemed designed to benefit oil and gas companies such as Newpark Resources.  Newpark Resource in the past was marketing a mixture of coal plant fly ash and oil drilling waste as an alternative daily cover for landfills in Port Arthur and Beaumont.  With extensive drilling in the Barnett Shale formation in North Texas and the drilling in other parts of the state and the Gulf, Texas landfills could become the dumping ground for these operations. 

 

The state environmental agency’s main argument in favor of this change is that landfill operators could both use this “special waste” as cover and also charge drilling companies for taking the waste.  In turn, the state would get its tipping fee, a small charge on all trash deposited in the state’s landfills.  The TCEQ estimates that it would receive $308,000 from these tipping fees. 

 

After new rules were approved in March 2006 to limit the use of toxic daily cover, this issue re-surfaced in late November 2007 when the Executive Director of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) gave the City of Port Arthur permission to restart using “Newpark Material” on its landfill.  Texas Campaign for the Environment and the Pt. Arthur environmental justice group Community Im-Power and Development Association (CIDA) filed an appeal in late December 2007.  (The appeal is known as a Motion to Overturn.)  In early January, the TCEQ's internal Public Interest Counsel (OPIC) sided with TCE and CIDA’s appeal. 

 

The TCEQ Commissioners then agreed to hear the appeal.  The TCEQ Executive Director had to respond as part of the process.  In a rare, perhaps unprecedented move, the TCEQ Executive Director Glenn Shankle changed his position and agreed that the new rules did not allow him to grant permission to Port Arthur to use this toxic waste as cover.

 

On February 13, 2008, the TCEQ Commissioners voted 3 to 0 in favor of the Motion to Overturn but also voted to take another look at the rules of what materials can be used as Alternative Daily Cover.  The rules proposal presented to the Commissioners on June 4, 2008 was in response to the February 13th motion. 

 

The public will now have an opportunity to comment on these rules that will potentially allow landfills across the state to provide a cheap disposal valve for oil and gas drilling operations.  In addition to the Cities of Port Arthur and Beaumont, IESI and Waste Management have both sought to use petroleum-contaminated wastes on their landfills.  IESI’s request to use it on its Weatherford landfill was denied. Waste Management’s request is still pending.

 

TCE believes that the proposed changes are not based on sound science.  TCE has concerns about what is currently being used as an alternative to the standard 6 inches of dirt.  Some landfills only use tarps, which are often not effective at controlling odors and scavengers.  Other facilities use the refuse from car shredding (fluff) which raises concerns about toxic impacts. 

 

TCE will work with landfill neighbor groups and others to oppose the proposed rules and instead work to strengthen the standards on landfill cover so that the values of sound science and protection of the public health, environment and quality of life in surrounding communities are paramount.

 

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The TCEQ calendar for the rules process is:

Anticipated Texas Register publication date: June 20, 2008

Public Hearing date: July 15, 2008

Public Comment Period: June 20 – July 21, 2008
Anticipated Adoption Date: November 19, 2008

The rules proposal can be viewed at: http://www.tceq.state.tx.us/rules/pendprop.html#08013
Click on: 2008-013-330-PR Contaminant Standards for Alternate Daily Cover

 

Once archived, the June 4, 2008 debate on the proposed new rules and the January 30, 2008 and February 13, 2008 discussions on the Port Arthur case can be viewed at: http://www.texasadmin.com/cgi-bin/tnrcc.cgi

 

The Port Arthur News story on the February 13, 2008 vote on the Port Arthur case can be viewed at: http://www.texasenvironment.org/news_story.cfm?IID=469

 

  • Allow trash landfills to use contaminated soils as daily cover, even if they have more than 1500 milligrams per kilogram (mg/kg) total petroleum hydrocarbons if the “contaminant levels are below protective concentration levels.