CAMPUS AND AREA
University Daily Kansan, April 26, 1984
Page 7
Waste
continued from p.1
problems it inherited from the site's former owners, but the problems still exist.
McDaniel said, "There's still some low-level parts per billion going on due to the global crisis."
"You will not clean up groundwater overnight."
"Maybe never."
Operators were warned
When the state's only commercial hazardous waste site was granted a permit to operate in 1977, ideas about how to deal with hazardous waste ranged from sending it into space to burrowing it underground.
Scientists and professors had at times suggested to whoever would listen or read their reports that the best way to deal with hazardous waste was to launch it into orbit around the sun, shoot it into the sun where it would be incinerated, or project it completely out of the solar system.
According to a Bureau of Waste Management summary report for the years 1881 and 1892, those industries are using such methods as neutralization with chemicals, surface impoundment and deep well injection — which places liquid waste deeper in the ground than land burial — to contend with more than 96 percent of the hazardous waste generated in Kansas.
Kansas industries have used a variety of methods for dispensing of chemicals.
JOHN PAUL GOETZ, chief of the hazardous waste section of the state bureau of waste management, said that the best alternatives to underground burial were chemical treatment, incineration and recycling.
Goetz agreed that chemical treatment, incineration and recycling would leave residue that would have to be disposed of in some way and that would still create a potential for groundwater contamination.
Other methods for dealing with water waste, waste mounding or above ground storage.
"I's self-monitoring," he said. "If something comes out in the drainage, you just call."
IN ADDITION, WILSON said, mounding would leave a physical feature, a mound. Waste would be placed on top of the container with a liner and a thick layer of soil.
The advantage to that, he said, is that if a mound begins to leak, it would be easily detected and corrected because the drainage system visible above ground
"So years later someone won't decide to build a park on ton of it," he said.
Wilson, of the Kansas Geological Survey, was the best allergen that mounding
Warehousing, Goetz said, is a method that is another alternative to burial, though it has never been used. He said that waste could be stored for about 10 years in a warehouse-type building ways of recycling it could be found
Robert B. Waddill/Kansa
He said that warehousing might become a more feasible idea if the Kansas Legislature eventually approved a ban on land burial.
When the House version of a bill for banning hazardous waste was approved, State Rep. Keith Farrar, R-Hugeton, said the bill stated that the secretary could grant exemptions to those who could prove that land burial would pose no present or potential danger.
Legislators who oppose the two bills being considered this week say the bills are unnecessary.
THE SECRETARY NOW has the power to ban land burial on a case-by-case basis, but the exemption provision in the bill would shift the burden of proof from the secretary to hazardous waste producers and disposers to show that land burial of a waste would pose no danger.
Burial ban
And in addressing the list of 201 potential problem sites, Carlin told the Legislature that it was important to know that sites were not necessarily dangerous.
Before 1977, Kansas had no laws regulating the management of hazardous waste to deal with dumps such as the one near Furley. That year, the
state started a program to regulate the dumping of hazardous waste through permits.
FARRAR ALSO ARGUED that shifting the burden of proof from the secretary to the producer or disposer of hazardous waste could be dangerous.
In 1981, under Carlin's recommendations, the state instituted tougher fines for waste law violations and established a trust to provide the state with a way to deal with abandoned waste sites.
Federal and state regulations concerning hazardous waste date only to the following
This year, during his State of the State address in January, Carlin outlined his plans for toughening the state's hazardous waste guidelines. The Legislature has hagged over Carin's call to ban the burial of hazardous waste chasers during the current wrap-up session to reach an agreement this year.
But proving no potential danger is impossible. he said.
McDaniel, the manager of the dump near Furley, said suggestions to ban underground burial were unrealistic because even when hazardous wastes were handled in ways other than burial, residue would always remain.
The final destination for the hazardous wastes are the pits at the waste treatment facility near Furley.
"There are residues from all these treatment processes that can be ignored, or you can go one step better and out them underground," he said.
CARLIN'S RECOMMENDATIONS for the ban and the superfund were both backed by Barbara J. Sabol, secretary of Health and Environment of Health and Environment
The superfund had been recommended as a complementary measure to the ban, a preventative step, to address the possibility that existing waste disposal sites could be threatening the environment.
THAT MEASURE INCLUDED a provision that would allow some of the
Sabol presented to the Legislature a list of 201 identified potential problem sites in Kansas, for which the superfund would be used. The list included sites where there was a potential risk to human health or environment because of hazardous wastes or the manner in which they were managed.
the review and investigation process proceeds, there may be sites deleted*
fund to be used to recover money through litigation from persons responsible for any health or environmental waste site.
Carlin had recommended budgeting $500,000 in fiscal years 1985.
A list of 201 sites
"This is not a magic number and as
Some people might be put in the position in which they found it more appealing to just dump their wastes in an out-of-the-way spot, he said.
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842-6046
A RESPONSE TO CHAMBER OF COMMERCE VICE PRESIDENT GARY TOEBBEN
Chamber of Commerce Executive Vice President Gaye Toeben claims, via his column in the Journal World's April 22nd issue, that "Business and industry does (sic) not object to paying property taxes to support our schools and local government services. Business and industry does object, however, to the lack of foresight being expressed by some elected officials who each year look for additional ways to increase business and industry's share of the overall state tax burden."
Mr. Toebben might be interested to discover that many disgruntled citizens who do "not object to paying property taxes to support our schools and local government services" also oppose the shortsightedness of some elected officials . However, this segment of the citizenry's dissatisfaction stems from watching governing units everywhere give public funds to moneyed entrepreneurs for performing in the private sector while many abused children, heroic teachers, harried families, small farmers, nursing home residents, and victims of crime go without needed public assistance.
More important than, in Mr. Toebben's words, "our state's ability to generate and attract new jobs and economic development in the years ahead" is its willingness to recognize and correct gross inequities today. Without such a governmental commitment, the free enterprise organism increasingly will become just another misshapen agent of class oppression.
William Dann
2702 W. 24th St. Terr
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