Below are the first 10 and last 10 pages of uncorrected machine-read text (when available) of this chapter, followed by the top 30 algorithmically extracted key phrases from the chapter as a whole.
Intended to provide our own search engines and external engines with highly rich, chapter-representative searchable text on the opening pages of each chapter.
Because it is UNCORRECTED material, please consider the following text as a useful but insufficient proxy for the authoritative book pages.
Do not use for reproduction, copying, pasting, or reading; exclusively for search engines.
OCR for page 110
6
How Clean is Clean?
An Environmentalist Perspective
LINDA E. GREER
The selection of cleanup levels for hazardous waste dump
sites has been a priority issue within the environmental commu-
nity since the original passage of the Superfund legislation. After
lobbying the issue during the debate over the 1980 bill, the En-
vironmental Defense Fund (EDF) oversaw the implementation of
the statutory language and participated in the rule making that
generated the National Contingency Plan (NCP), the set of regula-
tions governing cleanups nationwide. EDF subsequently filed suit
against EPA in 1982 over the agency's failure to resolve the cleanup
standards issue in the NCP, arguing both that the agency's ap-
proach was not what was contemplated by Congress when it passed
the law and that the approach was not adequate to protect human
health and the environment from the toxic hazards posed by dump
sites.
Since 1982, the "How clean is clean?" question has expanded
to include not only the question of the level of cleanup appropriate
at dump sites but also the technology to be selected in undertak-
ing a cleanup and the point of compliance at which the cleanup
goals will be attained. These three issues have been addressed by
environmental and citizens groups at particular sites as well as in
lobbying efforts on the 1986 reauthorized Superfund bill.
CLEANUP IEVEIS
EPA currently sets cleanup levels using the largely unmodified
methodology originally proposed in its 1982 NCP. This approach
allows cleanups to vary from site to site depending on a number of
110
OCR for page 111
AN ENVIRONMENTALIST PERSPECTWE
111
factors. Dubbed the "maximum flexibility/minimum accountabil-
ity" approach by community groups living around the dump sites,
this approach allows EPA to take into account numerous variables,
most notably cost, in addition to the need to protect human health
and the environment when cleaning up sites. The current EPA ap-
proach results in the establishment of different acceptable levels
of contamination in the ground water, surface water, and air from
site to site across the country after cleanup. Thus, for example,
some of our Superfund sites have been cleaned "down" to 50 ppm
PCB in the soil, whereas others have been cleaned to 10 ppm and
even 1 ppm. The major objection that environmental and commu-
nity groups have about the current EPA approach is that it does
not guarantee a minimum level of protection to citizens across the
country; rather, a number of factors, many of which are never
quantified or explicitly discussed, appear to determine the amount
of contamination that will remain at the site after cleanup.
EPA justifies its case-by-case approach to cleanup by citing
the many technological complexities inherent in cleaning up dump
sites as well as the scientific uncertainties involved in determining
safe levels of exposure to various toxic chemicals in the envi-
ronment. Although the environmental community does not dis-
pute the premise that these decisions are inherently difficult, we
strongly disagree with the idea that the solution is to make cleanup
decisions case by case. Rather, it would be more equitable and
efficient for the agency to establish a baseline of protection at toxic
dump sites that would be guaranteed to all citizens. This baseline
would comprise acceptable levels of contaminants in the ground
water, surface water, soil, and air that would be achieved at the
end of each and every cleanup (barring physical impossibility or
truly exorbitant costs). Such a baseline would minimize the role
that politics and short-term economics play in the selection of
cleanup goals.
It is important to note here that there are many in the in-
dustrial community who agree with environmentalists that a case-
by-case approach to establishing cleanup levels at dump sites is
not desirable public policy. They agree because uncertainty in
the appropriate cleanup levels for a site substantially complicates
both negotiations between private parties and the agency concern-
ing voluntary cleanups and settlements with responsible parties at
Superfund sites. The fact that no site serves as a precedent for
OCR for page 112
112
HAZARDOUS WASTE SITE MANAGEMENT
other sites, even those contaminated with identical chemicals, pre-
cludes easy decisions on the part of corporate management to end
cleanup negotiations as well as to initiate voluntary cleanup of sites
not yet in the public eye. It was the agreement between industry
and environmentalists concerning the desirability for predictable
outcomes at Superfund cleanups that inspired detailed and suc-
cessfu} consensus discussions on this topic at the Keystone Center
in 1985 and 1986.
The EDF has suggested since its lawsuits with EPA in 1982
that the baseline of protection for Superfund cleanups should com-
prise drinking water standards, ambient water quality criteria,
hazardous air pollutant standards, and other relevant and appro-
priate numbers that have been developed in various EPA programs
over the years. Such numbers exist for many relatively common
industrial pollutants, and they are numbers whose origin lies in
the desire to protect human health and the environment. They
thus provide objective, quantitative cleanup goals and can be used
without undue delay in the Superfund program.
It is important, however, to distinguish between the need to
establish a baseline of protection and the selection of appropriate
numbers to constitute such a baseline. That is, it is possible to
agree with environmentalists on the need for an objective baseline
for cleanup but disagree on the appropriate numbers to be used
to construct it. In this vein, some grass roots citizens groups have
taken the position that EPA standards and criteria should not
form the baseline for protection at Superfund sites. Rather, these
groups prefer that ambient background levels be used to establish
acceptable levels of contaminants in the environment. They are
interested simply in returning the site to the condition of the
surrounding area as it existed before the dump was sited and in
fact do not trust the EPA health-based numbers to protect them.
As a result of successful work by the environmental lobby the
1986 reauthorized Superfund requires the use of all relevant and
appropriate standards and criteria in establishing nationwide lev-
els of cleanup. The law explicitly directs EPA to use requirements
established by all federal environmental legislation including the
Toxic Substances Control Act; the Safe Drinking Water Act; the
Clean Air Act; the Clean Water Act; the Marine Protection,
Research, and Sanctuaries Act; and the Solid Waste Disposal
Act. The laws to be applied also include any state environmen-
tal requirement that is more stringent than a comparable federal
OCR for page 113
AN ENVIRONMENTALIST PERSPECTIVE
113
requirement, including state requirements where there is no com-
parable federal requirement.
As a result of this new statutory language the environmental
community expects that consistent levels of cleanup will be selected
across the country, levels that are adequately protective of human
health and the environment. Yet there are several ambiguous areas
of the law on cleanup levels that remain for EPA to clarify, the
successful implementation of which are critical to the success of
the Superfund program.
First, the standards and other guidance available to EPA and
the states have been developed largely for water and to a small
extent for air. There are no standards for contaminated soil, which
presents a hazard through both direct contact, as when children
play at the dump site, and through the soiT's ability to contaminate
other media (by leaching its hazardous constituents into ground
water and by volatilization and/or contaminated dust entrainment
in the air). EPA must therefore develop a decision methodology
for contaminated soil in order to provide a comprehensive baseline
for cleanup at Superfund sites.
Second, the legislation is vague as to the level of risk that
is allowed to remain at dump sites after cleanup. This silence
is unfortunate because nearly all of EPA's guidance numbers for
carcinogenic chemicals provide a range of risk figures, and the
selection of the acceptable level of risk could thus be left to the
decisionmaker on a case-by-case basis. Much has been made of the
inability to attain a zero-risk situation at a hazardous waste dump
site no matter what level of cleanup is selected, given the one-hit
mode! for the mode of action of carcinogens.
The zero-risk issue has been hotly debated for many years,
both inside and outside the Superfund program, and it is a good
example of decisionmakers allowing the perfect to become the en-
emy of the good. Because it is impossible to attain a zero level of
risk, the agency has moved slowly to regulate carcinogens at all.
Such issues as the role of the ever-decreasing analytical detection
limit and the distinction between individual and population risk
have rendered the EPA essentially incapable of responding to car-
cinogenic hazards, be they in dump sites, industrial discharges, or
ambient air. An expeditious solution to the complexities of reg-
ulating carcinogens is, at a minimum, to regulate them to levels
below current detection limits. In this way, society is doing the
best it is capable of doing to minimize the hazards of exposure to
OCR for page 114
114
HAZARDOUS WASTE SITE MANAGEMENT
carcinogens. Over the years, as our abilities to detect chemicals
improve, the debate can continue over the appropriate levels for
regulation. For now, however, a large number of carcinogens, reg-
ulated at their current detection level, would pose no less than a
1 x 10-6 risk. Some carcinogens, such as dioxin, in fact pose risks
much higher than 10-6 at their detection level.
POST OF COMPI"NCE
In contrast to the detail the 1986 Superfund statute provides
on the issue of the level of cleanup to be obtained at dump sites,
the statute is thin on the issue of point of compliance. That
is, the statute speaks to "How clean is clean?" but is silent as
to "where." On this issue the agency has three major points
at which to achieve protective levels: (1) at the dump itself (at
the edge of the waste or at the center of the dump), (2) at the
property boundary, or (3) at the point of actual exposure (e.g., the
welThead). Although it is theoretically possible to achieve equal
levels of protection for human health and the environment under
each of these alternatives, the choices differ substantially in the
extent to which they require sophisticated hydrogeologic transport
and fate models and institutional controls on future development,
as well as the extent to which they require remedial technologies
that are not yet within our grasp. It is only in considering our
capabilities to implement each of these alternative strategies that
the distinguish themselves.
Achieving protective levels of contaminants beyond the prop-
erty boundary has two major drawbacks from an environmental
perspective. First, it requires extensive sampling and sophisti-
cated mathematical modeling. Competent professionals who are
skilled in these tasks are still quite rare in our society, and of the
handful of persons capable of doing these jobs, few if any are em-
ployed by federal or state governments. Because the strategy of
allowing contaminants to attenuate out to the property boundary
requires technical expertise that is difficult to obtain, it will often
be carried out incompetently. Thus, it is undesirable as a public
policy option. Furthermore, some well-qualified scientists believe
that many Superfund dump sites are too complex, both geologi-
cally and chemically, for accurate modeling or sampling to occur.
Therefore, prudent policy suggests that an alternative means of
OCR for page 115
AN ENVIRONMENTALIST PERSPECTIVE
115
assuring protection at dump sites be considered even in situations
in which experts can be retained for cleanup work.
A second drawback to the selection of the property boundary
as the point of compliance is that it encourages polluters to buy up
property rather than clean up ground water. In fact, we have seen
this occur in the RCRA program. Clearly, this policy can lead to
undesirable results if we are not careful to prohibit the purchase
of property under these circumstances.
Third, the use of the property boundary requires extensive
control of future land uses surrounding the dump. As our experi-
ence at Love Canal and countless other dumps has shown, we do
not have the ability to predict accurately or control where future
populations will live. Consequently, it is shortsighted to allow
contamination to occur in currently undeveloped areas.
Selecting the welThead as the-point of compliance has devel-
oped support in several circles that advocate this alternative on
the grounds that it is the most cost-effective. This option would
address contamination only at the point at which it begins to
contaminate a water supply well. Yet the alternative is flawed on
several counts. It overlooks the technical uncertainties associated
with the accurate prediction of ground water movement into the
well drawdown zone and the cost of contaminating future water
supplies. Furthermore, it is an option that is only applicable to
sites with contaminated community well fields; individual homes
could not be expected to install treatment units. As a general
rule, it would not be cost-effective to treat contamination at the
welThead because the contamination would be most dilute in this
location. WelIhead cleanups may have Tow annual costs, but they
have to be operated for many more years than a cleanup that
addresses the concentrated source in an expeditious manner.
The remaining option is to attain the required cleanup level at
the edge of the waste. This alternative is clearly the most stringent
and the one least subject to problems with scientific uncertainty
or institutional control of land use. For this reason, under most
circumstances, it is the preferred option of environmentalists. Yet
EDF and many other national environmental groups agree that
there are some circumstances in which cleanup at the edge of the
waste would not be necessary to provide adequate assurances of
protection for the public. For example, in those cases in which the
hydrogeology around a site is simple (and ground water models
therefore can be applied more accurately) and effective methods
OCR for page 116
116
HAZARDOUS WASTE SITE MANAGEMENT
are available to preclude exposure to soil or air at dangerous levels
at the site itself, it would be reasonable to use some of the property
around the waste to attenuate the contaminants. We suggest that
in these cases we use reasonable worst-case assumptions about
such phenomena as adsorption, biological degradation, and ground
water velocity to ensure a conservative result to the modeling
exercises. In situations in which the geology is complex, however,
or it is difficult to control access to the soil or air directly onsite,
the only acceptable alternative is cleanup at the source itself.
CLEANUP TECHNOlOGY
Since the inception of Superfund in 1980, EPA has demon-
strated a distinct preference in the technologies it selects to clean
up dump sites. For the most part the agency has chosen to re-
move some of the most highly contaminated materials at a given
site, opting for redisposal at an operating hazardous waste landfi~!
followed by containment (with clay caps and slurry walIs) of the
remaining materials. Often, ground water pumping is also used to
isolate the waste and complete the "containment strategy.
For good reason the 1986 Congress severely criticized EPA
for its nearly exclusive choice of containment. This criticism
was founded on evidence that the containment structures were
extremely short-term solutions. It was found that caps eroded
within months of installation, and slurry wails often failed al-
most as soon as construction was completed. Furthermore, an
investigation of the operating landfi~Is used for disposal of highly
contaminated wastes from Superfund sites revealed that the large
majority of these sites were already leaking their toxic contents
into the ground water. Thus, we had the ironic situation of the
government paying large sums of money to private industry to
move and dispose of toxic waste from existing Superfund sites for
disposal in licensed dumps that were themselves well on the way
to becoming future targets of Superfund action.
Much of the justification EPA gave for selecting these re-
moval and containment strategies was its peculiar definition of
cost-effectiveness; EPA was considering only the up-front cost of
constructing containment facilities and did not factor in long-term
operation and maintenance costs or the cost of technological un-
certainty in the performance of these structures. As a result, the
agency's policy was extremely shortsighted.
OCR for page 117
AN ENVIRONMENTALIST PERSPECTIVE
117
The environmental community lobbied hard in Congress to in-
sert a presumption for permanent treatment technologies at dump
sites, and it was successful in obtaining strong and specific per-
manent treatment language in the 1986 bill, which requires that
EPA use such treatment at Superfund sites to the maximum ex-
tent practicable. Permanent treatment is defined as treatment
that permanently and significantly reduces the volume, toxicity,
or mobility of the hazardous substances, pollutants, or contami-
nants at the site. The statutory bias toward the implementation of
permanent technologies is designed to encourage such methods as
biological degradation, incineration, and other destruction tech-
nologies as well as chemical fixation and stabilization processes for
metals. It is hoped that, in the Tong term, these types of treat-
ments will be more elective in addressing the contaminant sources
at the dump sites.
Furthermore, the environmental lobby obtained new statutory
language on the role of cost in making both cleanup and technology
decisions. As of the end of 1986, an analysis of cost-effectiveness
can begin only after a remedial action has been selected in com-
pliance with health and environmental protection requirements as
well as permanent treatment requirements. Thus, cost will not
play a role in the selection of the correct course of cleanup action;
rather, it will come into play only after the cleanup strategy has
been selected. It is hoped that this secondary role for cost consider-
ations will allow the agency to select permanent technologies with
high up-front costs but Tow long-term operation and maintenance
costs.
CONCLUSION
There has been considerable dissatisfaction on the part of
community and environmental groups concerning the "How clean
is clean?" decisions made to date by EPA. The decisions made
so far in the program have been inconsistent, and they have not
always been adequate to protect human health and the environ-
ment. In light of this problem the national environmental groups
expended a great deal of time and money to improve the language
of the Superfund legislation and redirect EPA. We were largely
successful in our attempts to improve the law and are looking over
the next 5 years for these legislative improvements to show up in
OCR for page 118
118
HAZARDOUS WASTE SITE MANAGEMENT
regulations, in guidance documents, and, most importantly, at the
Superfund sites themselves.
PROVOCATEUR'S COMMENTS
Leo M. E:me]
In both her written and spoken remarks, Linda Greer followed
very closely these major areas: How clean is clean?; what are the
cleanup levels?; what are the standards?; where is the point of
compliance: is it out at the edge of the dump, or is it someplace
off property?; and what kind of technology should be used? In all
these areas ~ think she comes across very strongly for no-nonsense
standards, little flexibility, and the use of minimum engineering,
essentially using the same techniques and the same standards at
all sites. She suggests the use of existing standards such as the Safe
Drinking Water and ambient stream standards, and calls for no off-
property containment and, again, the minimizing of dependence
on ground water models, engineering calculations, and so on. She
appears to have little trust of major corporations, EPA, and the
consulting industry in general.
~ have been on both sides of this. ~ have a lot of sympathy for
the simple, straightforward, no-nonsense approach. ~ was director
of the state of Illinois' EPA at one time. Outside of my office
was a big couch, and this is where major industry heads in the
state would sit with their state representative before entering my
office and saying, "Oh, please be reasonable, please allow some
flexibility, please let me pollute just a little bit more." So, ~ can
understand the problem with a lot of flexibility. However, ~ wonder
if this apparent distrust and emphasis on very straightforward and
simple solutions is really politically and econorrflcally feasible.
~ heard Tom HelIman talk about balancing and about going
out and putting the spade in. By this ~ took him to mean, let's get
some data, let us proceed on the basis of the data, and let us tailor
our solutions to the individual conditions. ~ just wonder whether
Tom Heliman and his consulting engineer- and ~ presume that
Tom has a good consulting engineer- are really going to allow
Linda to push this concept of a uniform solution and inflexible
standards at every site. ~ also wonder whether they will continue
OCR for page 119
AN ENVIRONMENTALIST PERSPECTIVE
119
to put up the money for what can be a quite costly and expensive
uniform solution at every site, or whether they are only going to
do this after a very Tong litigation process.
From experience at a few sites where ~ have put on my lit-
tle plastic suit and respirator and actually gone out and walked
around, there is enormous variability, ranging from mining sites
in western Colorado to the Rocky Mountain arsenal. There is
enormous variability, and ~ just cannot help but wonder whether
we have to allow some flexibility in the conditions, the standards,
and the solutions that we apply to each of these sites and whether
the type of program that Linda has proposed is economically and
politically viable. Her suggestion essentially to use Safe Drink-
ing Water standards, ambient water quality standards, and other
existing standards as the appropriate guidelines or cleanup cri-
teria tends to ignore that even within these standards a great
deal of variability exists. For example, the ambient water quality
standards within the state of Colorado for a trout stream are far
stricter than those for the drinking water that we can consume.
Where do we come down in that? How much flexibility do we
allow? In conclusion, ~ would just ask Linda to take into account
longer-term political and economic viability. If we go with limited
flexibility, where are we going to be in 10 years? Are things going
to be cleaner? Are they going to be stalled because of continued
litigation by Tom HelIman and his very skilled attorneys and en-
gineers who are going to say we must have some flexibility? Or
are we going to have to have a cleaner site and solve some of the
neighborhood problems that Linda Greer brought out?
Representative terms from entire chapter:
ground water
