NCD980602163_19821019_Warren County PCB Landfill_SERB C_Editorial submission-OCR

' . ' .
October 19, 1982
Dea,r Editor:
/' I read with interest your September 30 editorial entitled "PCB Removal'
I
Unnecessary," and would like to take this opportunity to explain to your z!'eaders
\ why the state feels it is important to remove the PCB contaminated soil from more l
\
than 200 miles of North Carolina roadsides.
While it is true that we have not yet seen any adverse health e:ffects resulting
from the PCB spill, very little is known about the long term effects of the chemical
on the human body. The effects have on the body
often take years, and sometimes decades, to surfac , is almost
indestructable, and that it accumulates in the skin,
and through the food we eat and the air we caused cancer,
\
liver damage and other ailments when it has been injected in large doses in laboratory
rats.
PCB, because it has been unregulated and mishandled in the past, is ubiquitous
in our environment. All of us have small amounts of PCB in our bodies already, and we
will accumulate more as our exposure to the chemic~l increases. Once PCB
enters the body it remains there. It does not break down easily.
The federal Environmental Protection Agency, in an effort to limit the amount
of PCB that was building up in the environment, banned the production of the chemical
in 1979. Still, hundreds of thousands of gallons of PCB sti 11 are in the use in this
country as insulting materials in electrical transformers. Their treatment and disposal
is.closely regulated.
When the illegal dumping of PCB-laced transformer oil occurred in 1978, the state
was faced with two choices. We could leave the chemical along the roadside, as you
suggested in your editorial, or we could pick it up and store it in a specially designed
and permanently monitored landfill as the EPA strongly recommended. To leave the PCB
• Page '2.
along the roadside would mean that the state would be allowing a toxic chemical
that is strictly controlled by the federal government to ~emain in an uncontrolled
se~ting where thousands of North Carolinians could be exposed to it on a daily basis.
What the long term health effects of this exposure would be we have no way of knowing.
But the state is not in the business of gambling with the health of its people. The
only way we could guarantee that the health of all the citizens in the 14 counties
where the spill occurred would be protected was to pick up the contaminated dirt and
put it into a landfill where it could be safely stored.
In addressing the second issue you discussed in your editorial, let me assure you
that the PCB landfill in Warren County is safe. It is designed specifically to contain
40,000 cubic feet of dirt mixed with relatively low concentrations of PCB. The
landfill's bottom and sides are comprised of a five-foot thick compacted clay liner
that is as hard as brick, two leachate collection and detection systems, and a thick
plastic liner. The top of the landfill (the landfill cap) will be made up of a two-foot
compacted clay liner, a plastic liner, top soil and grass. The construction of the
landfill is specially designed to keep water out, and the contaminated dirt in where
it will no longer pose and environmental or health hazard.
It is misleading and inaccurate to compare tr.~ Warren County landfill with
landfills in other states that were constructed before the passage in 1980 of
new and extremely strict hazardous waste regulations, and without the safeguards
that are built into this landfill.
Co:-•l',N, 'I,
11 No one in North Carolina wants a landfill of any kind in his neighborhood.
In recent years it has been difficult to site even sanitary landfills in many counties.
The state does not encourage the location of hazardous waste landfills in North Carolina.
State law, in the form of the waste Management Act of 1981, advocates the use of
landfills only when a waste material cannot be further recycled, detoxified or reduced
Page 3
in volume. In the case of the PCB spill in North Carolina, landfilling of the
contaminated soil was the only safe and reasonable method available to handle an
environmental problem that has plaqued the state and thousands of its people for
almost four years.