The report recommends retesting and a new trial burn in 2001 as a necessity for permit renewal by the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency. According to Martin, the permit to operate the incinerator was based on test burn results that were compromised and whose reliability is questionable. The test did not calculate lead in the emissions from the facility. Other test result samples were held for months before they were reviewed by a laboratory, compromising the results. Also, the risk assessment done in 1997 did not take into account a worst-case scenario involving air inversions in the river valley where WTI operates.
Inversions are weather conditions that trap industrial emissions in valley areas.
Vice President Al Gore, who became a figure in the incinerator controversy, said yesterday he supported the plant's closure for testing. Mich. Gore told incinerator opponents while campaigning in nearby Weirton, W.Va., in 1992 that he would be on their side. But after his election to the office of vice president, he told them the incinerator's permit couldn't be revoked unless its burning violated health and safety standards, and two reviews had detected no violations. Gore campaign officials said yesterday that the preliminary report was the culmination of Gore's work on this issue for eight years. Alonzo Spencer, president of an incinerator protest group called Save Our County, said the report's conclusions are sound and should be followed.