From: New Liberation News Service <nlns@igc.apc.org>
Subject: NLNS: Burning Dioxin in Clinton's Backyard
Followup-To: alt.activism.d
Originator: daemon@pencil.cs.missouri.edu
Organization: ?
Date: Mon, 21 Dec 1992 15:32:58 GMT

Burning Dioxin in Jacksonville, Arkansas
Rachel's Hazardous Waste News

(NLNS)--On Tuesday, October 27, one week before his election as 
President of the United States, Governor Bill Clinton of Arkansas gave the 
final order to start burning dioxin in an incinerator in a residential area of 
Jacksonville, Arkansas, a community of 29,000 people 15 miles northeast of 
Little Rock. The incinerator was built in the residential neighborhood with 
state funds for the purpose of burning 30,000 barrels of mixed hazardous 
wastes abandoned in Jacksonville by a company called Vertac Chemical, 
which manufactured pesticides and herbicides there from 1948 to 1986.
	The New York Times (Nov. 2, 1992 pg. B11) reported that the 
Governor made the decision himself to start the burn: "Mr. Clinton, who 
has overseen the investigation and cleanup at Vertac most of the last 13 
years, gave final approvaI on Tuesday to a plan to burn the chemical wastes 
in a incinerator...." The Times said (0ct. 28, 1992, pg. A14), "No other 
environmental issue in Arkansas has so dominated the public debate during 
Gov. Bill Clinton's 12 years in the Governor's Mansion as the chemical 
contamination in Jacksonville and what to do about it."
	Over the years the Vertac site was used for manufacture of DDT, 
aldrin, dieldrin, toxaphene and the chemical warfare defoliants 2,4-D, 
Silvex, 2,4,5-T, and Agent Orange. In 1979 state and federal investigators 
discovered dioxin on the Vertac property and in the soil and water several 
hundred yards from the site. Official surveys subsequently found dioxin 
from the plant in Jacksonville's central city park, making its once-popular 
swimming and fishing lake off limits to the public.
	Almost immediately, citizens began pressing for a thorough, safe 
cleanup of the Vertac site. In what has now become a familiar story, state 
and federal authorities delayed cleanup. According to the New York Times, 
"Since 1979... Vertac's toxic wastes and what to do about them have been 
the source of considerable strife in the community and have dominated the 
attention of Gov. Bill Clinton and his environmental advisers." (0ct. 30, 
1992, pg A16)
	In 1986, Vertac declared bankruptcy and willed its 93-acre site to the 
people of Arkansas. Vertac's executives abruptly left town and have never 
been successfully traced. The New York Times said, "Vertac abandoned the 
plant leaving behind roughly 30,000 barrels of chemical wastes, along with 
acres of contaminated soil, tanks filled with toxic materials,and miles of 
poisonous piping. The EPA [U.S. Environmental Protection Agency] 
considers the site one of the country's worst hazardous waste sites, not only 
because of [the] extent of the contamination but also because the plant is 
only a few blocks from a day care center, a hospital, and hundreds of 
houses." (0ct. 30, 1992, pg. A14.)
	By 1989 state and federal officials had made firm plans to build an 
incinerator in a residential neighborhood of Jacksonville to burn some 22 
million pounds of Vertac's dioxin-laced wastes.
	On at least two occasions a majority of the citizens of Jacksonville 
expressed, through referendums and public meetings, that they did not want 
the incinerator built. Many local people considered it a dirty, dangerous way 
to "get rid of" the wastes. They pointed out that cleanup teams had already 
packed the 30,000 barrels in special drums, which were not an immediate 
threat. The real threat was the wastes already released into the community, 
the ground and the groundwater. Incinerating the 30,000 barrels would be a 
cosmetic gesture that did not address the residual problems. State and 
federal officials ignored these expressions of sentiment and forged ahead 
with their plan to burn the visible evidence, to make Jacksonville look clean 
again. The real cleanup of soil and water would have to wait for a later time.
	In 1990, Marco Kaltofen, a chemical engineer with the National 
Toxics Campaign, presented Governor Clinton with a White Paper outlining 
alternatives to incineration, including chemical destruction (dechlorination), 
and above-ground storage in steel-reinforced concrete buildings.(1) 
Subsequently in 1991 the U.S. Office of Technology Assessment (an arm 
of Congress) released a report called Dioxin Treatment Technologies, in 
which they reported the successful destruction of dioxin-containing wastes 
of chemical dechlorination processes. Chemical dechlorination occurs inside 
a closed container, releasing nothing to the surrounding environment. 
Jacksonville has two other Superfund dumps besides the Vertac site, and 
OTA reported that a chemical dechlorination technology called BCD had 
been shown to successfully detoxify soils from these other sites. "Test 
results confirmed that BCD is a candidate technology for the cleanup of 
halo-carbon-contaminated liquids and soils in an environmentally acceptable 
manner (closed system)," OTA said.(2) The term "halo-carbon" in this case 
referred specifically to 2,4,-D, Silvex, 2,4,5-T, and dioxins, which were 
successfully destroyed by the BCD process. The U.S. Navy has selected 
BCD technology to clean up its contaminated sites, and has built a BCD 
decontamination machine which is in use now to clean up PCB 
contaminated soils in Stockton, California. State and federal official in 
Arkansas turned a blind eye to these alternative technologies.
	At public meetings throughout 1989 and 1990--some of which we 
attended--state and federal environmental officials insisted repeatedly that 
the Vertac site incinerator would emit zero dioxin into the surrounding 
community.
	A trial burn was conducted during October, 1991. State and federal 
officials examined the data and declared the incinerator a resounding 
success. But Greenpeace chemist Pat Costner analyzed the trial burn data 
and published her own analysis, showing that 
the incinerator had not achieved the required 99.9999% destruction of the 
wastes, but had in fact achieved only 99.96% destruction. This meant that 
the incinerator was releasing 400 times as much dioxin as the regulations 
intended.
	State and federal officials studied Costner's analysis and 
subsequently admitted that she was right. Costner then calculated that the 
incinerator would release somewhere between 150 and 800 grams of dioxin 
into the community during the two-year burn. Is this a lot of dioxin? EPA 
has established a "safe" level of dioxin as 0.000001 micrograms of dioxin 
per kilogram of body weight per day. If you ate this much dioxin every day 
for a lifetime and retained it all in your body, you would accumulate a body 
burden of 1.79 micrograms, an "EPA safe" dose.
	If we say, somewhat arbitrarily, that 10 times this amount 
repsesents an "EPA unsafe" dose, we can calculate that the Vertac 
incinerator will emit somewhere between 8 million and 45 million "EPA 
unsafe" doses of dioxin into the community of Jacksonville during the two-
year burn. State and federal officials say the proposed burn does not violate 
any state or federal laws and thus should be allowed to proceed. One 
Arkansas health department official excused the dumping of 150 to 800 
grams of dioxin into the community saying, "You have to appreciate how 
much dioxin there is in this community already." Pat Costner points out that 
this will be the largest intentional release of dioxin that has ever been 
executed.
	Officials of the Arkansas Health Department say they had nothing to 
do with choosing incineration to get rid of the Vertac wastes. However, 
they have made careful plans to take advantage of the experiment by 
gathering data about dioxin levels in human 
tissues in Jacksonville residents before and after the burn. The pre-burn 
study of dioxin in blood and urine of Jacksonville residents will be released 
some time during the next month or so. After the experimental burn is over, 
new samples will be taken and comparisons will be made to see what levels 
of toxins (if any) have lodged in the tissues of the human subjects of the 
Jacksonville dioxin experiment. "I can say without fear of contradiction, we 
will have the best database on [dioxin in tissues of] the general population 
of the U.S. that has ever been developed," Dr. Morris Kranmer, principal 
investigator of the study, told us. No long-term follow-up of health effects 
in the community has been planned.
	Despite massive pressure from national environmental groups and 
local community organizations, one week before the election, Bill Clinton 
gave the final order to begin the Jacksonville dioxin burn experiment. The 
New York Times noted, "Unfavorable publicity about the Vertac project 
contributed to Mr. Clinton's reputation as a leader with a less than sterling 
environmental record, his aides said. 'He's been beaten up pretty badly over 
this,' said Kenneth L. Smith, Mr. Clinton's top environmental advisor." 
(Nov. 2, 1992, pg. B11.)
	The Times went on: "The Vertac project has become typical of toxic 
waste cleanups around the country in which costs escalate amid interminable 
delays caused by Federal rules aimed at gaining public trust. Mr. Smith said 
the Governor believed that unless changes were made in the rules and the 
public began to accept some degree of risk, fewer toxic-waste cleanup 
projects could proceed or ever larger sums of money would be siphoned 
from the Government's budget for all environmental program."
	No sooner had the Governor given the go-ahead than a coalition of 
five organizations--including the Washington-based Government 
Accountability Project--sued in court to stop the experiment. Judge Stephen 
M. Reasoner ruled October 29 that the experimental burn could go ahead for 
three days, during which the state must test the incinerator's ability to 
destroy dioxin with 99.9999% efficiency. If anything less than 99.9999% 
is achieved, "the Court orders that the burning be stopped immediately," 
said 
Judge Stephen M. Reasoner.
	The experimental burn occurred over the weekend, but by that time 
Governor Clinton's attention had been swept up by other matters, namely a 
nation to which he has solemnly promised that things will now be different.

(l) Marco Kaltofen and Sanford J. Lewis, *A White Paper on the Feasibility 
of Alternatives of Incineration of Wastes at the Vertac Site in Jacksonville, 
Arkansas" (Boston: National Toxics Campaign Fund, October 27, 1990).

(2) U.S. Congress, Office of Technology Assessment, Dioxin Treatment 
Techologies--Background Paper [OTA-BP-O-93] (Washington, D.C.: U.S. 
Government Printing Office, November, 1991).
Editor's note: this article is reprinted from Rachel's Hazardous Waste 
News, no. 311, Nov. 12, 1992. 
RHWN provides news and resources to 
the movement for environmental justice. The publication is not copyrighted, 
and the publisher, Environmental research Foundation, encourages 
reprinting "so long as you send us a copy." ERF's address is P.O. Box 
73700, Washington, DC 20056-3700 (phone 202-328-1119, fax 202-483-
5110). Subscriptions to RHWN cost $40 per year for individuals and 
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