
          Emelle, Alabama Toxic Waste Cadillac
          By Gunter, BoothBooth Gunter and Williams,  Mike Mike Williams
          Vol. 6, No. 4, 1984, pp. 1-7
          
          Down in the Heart of Dixie, in the gently rolling hills of the
Black Belt, lie gigantic pits--twice as wide as football fields are
long--filled to the brim with an alphabet soup mix of dangerous
chemicals.
          Silver and maroon tanker trucks wind down a narrow blacktop,
bringing the deadly leftovers from a chemical industry reluctant to
change its wasteful ways. Against a white, moonlike landscape hailed
as the Selma Chalk, the workers perform their duty. Into the
150-foot-deep pits go thousands of drums per day of foul-smelling
chemical wastes. The trucks come and go. Workers stationed in the
burial pits use tractors to make mud pies out of liquid chemicals and
cement dust--because federal regulations require chemical wastes to be
"solidified" before burial.
          This is Emelle, Alabama, located three miles from the 

Mississippi
border. This is home to what many call the largest hazardous waste
dump in the United States, some say the world. In 1983, the dump
accepted about 288,000 tons of hazardous wastes. It is the permanent
residence for hundreds of thousands--perhaps millions--of gallons of
toxic chemicals brought from around the country since the landfill
opened in 1977.
          This is Sumter County, a sparsely populated area, speckled with
cattle ranches, farm ponds, ramshackle houses. About seventy percent
of the seventeen thousand people living in the county are
black. Almost all of the white children go to private schools; all
black children go to the public schools, which are consistently ranked
among the state's worst. Unemployment for blacks is a way of life. Per
capita income was $6,362 in 1982, about $2,300 below the state
average.
          Owners of the dump, Chemical Waste Management Inc.--the largest
handler of hazardous wastes in the country--claim the "secure
landfill" is the safest anywhere, that five hundred to seven-hundred
feet of the highly impermeable Selma Chalk would prevent any leakage
of poisonous chemicals for at least ten thousand years. Underneath the
dump, some seven hundred feet down, lies the Eutaw Aquifer, a major
source of drinking water for people of west and central Alabama.
          Country neighbors of the dump--farmers, ranchers and poor
blacks--have noticed the foul stench emanating from the dump for
several years. But only recently have citizens across Alabama
encountered the questionable origins and politics that accompanied the
landfill's evolution. And only recently have Alabamians discovered the
lackadaisical manner in which state and federal regulators have
monitored the dump for safety.
          For years, operators of the dump maintained a close arrangement
with state officials. That arrangement included a country barbeque
thrown by the company for regulators. The state Health Department
officer who signed the dump's permit even bought stock in the company
that owns the dump, and sold it after a three-for-one stock split.
          It appears, though, that the close relationship has come to a
grinding halt--after a barrage of newspaper stories, fervent action by
environmental groups and interference by an Environmental Protection
Agency whistleblower.
          
            ******
          
          The origins of the dump are cloudy--state incorporation records do
not accurately reflect the original owners. In 1977, a group of men
from a Tennessee engineering firm enlisted the help of James Parsons,
who happened to be the son-in-law of Alabama Governor George
C. Wallace, then serving his third term in office. With little public
participation, the state Health Department, which had jurisdiction
over hazardous waste disposal at the time, granted a permit to the
group, called Resource Industries of Alabama. Shortly after the permit
was issued, the company--which had retained a prominent local
attorney, who was also a key Wallace campaign supporter--sold the
then-340 acre landfill to Chemical Waste Management, a subsidiary of
the billion-dollar, multi-national disposal giant, Waste Management,
Inc.
          The attorney, Drayton Pruitt, helped the company acquire about two
thousand more acres, giving the landfill an anticipated lifespan of
one-hundred years. Pruitt had been a local kingpin for years in
Livingston, the Sumter County seat. He was mayor for twelve years. He
was county attorney until recently when blacks finally won control of
county government. His father had been a state legislator for about
thirty years and a staunch Wallace supporter. Wendell Paris, chairman
of the Minority Peoples Council in the county, describes the
socio-economic setting in Sumter as little more than a modern feudal
system, with Pruitt as the liege lord.
          "The white people in Sumter County are as afraid of Dray on Pruitt
as I am of a rattlesnake," Paris says. "He's a kingpin in several
groups, where nothing comes in unless he says so."
          In 1982, Pruitt bought 229 acres from a state legislator who
sponsored a law that gave Chemical Waste Management a monopoly on
commercial hazardous waste disposal in Alabama. The law--called the
Minus Act, after former Representative Preston "Mann" Minus--said
the legislature had to approve of any new hazardous waste landfills in
the 

state. After adverse press reports, Minus insisted that the
Alabama Ethics Commission investigate his land deal with Pruitt. He
was cleared by the subsequent investigation.
          Since Chemical Waste Management took over operation of the site,
the landfill has grown into a waste importer, drawing toxic shipments
from forty-five states, Puerto Rico and Canada. The site accepts
pesticides, industrial solvents, lubricants, industrial sludges, and
highly toxic, suspected carcinogens such as DDT and PCBs.
          But the company claims the 2,400-acre facility is the "Cadillac" of
hazardous waste landfills. The Selma Chalk, company spokesmen say, is
perhaps the most secure geological setting in the country for landfill
disposal of toxic waste, because the impermeable character of the
formation slows the movement of liquids to a snail's pace. Scientists
such as Dr. Kirk Brown of Texas A & M University, however, point
out that more studies are needed on the reaction of toxic wastes with
materials typically used to line hazardous waste disposal
trenches. Tests on materials other than the Selma Chalk have shown
rates of movement up to one-hundred times greater than initial
estimates when toxic substances are put into contact with liner
materials. A University of Alabama engineering professor is currently
conducting more research in the area, and plans to test the Selma
Chalk.
          The chalk is also marked by geologic faults, which can act as a
conduit to the flow of liquids into subsurface layers. A consulting
firm hired by Chemical Waste Management claims the faults at Emelle
have "healed," or closed themselves to the flow of liquids. The US
Geological Survey, however, has proposed more research on the faults,
but as yet has not obtained funding to carry out the work.
          
            ******
          
          Alabamians have only recently awakened to the fact that perhaps the
largest hazardous waste landfill in the nation is busily burying what
may be a time bomb in the rolling Sumter County countryside.
          Linda Munoz, a quiet-spoken, part-time nurse who lives about twenty
miles from the landfill in the town of Cuba, says most Sumter County
residents never knew what went on at the Emelle site until years after
the facility opened.
          "Until I left some information at her house, one woman thought the
place was a fertilizer factory," she laughed. "It's not that people
here are ignorant, it's just that there has been so little about it in
the local papers."
          Ms. Munoz and a band of half a dozen others have been busy since
this spring organizing a homegrown environmental group, which they
call ACE, for Alabamians for a Clean Environment. They say their
eventual goal is to close down the Emelle site, although at this early
stage, they admit the struggle is an uphill battle.
          "People are very fond of the money that comes from the landfill, so
they won't speak out," said Ms. Munoz, referring to the high-paying
jobs at the landfill and the $1.4 million in fees paid by the company
to the county last year. The money is divided among county agencies,
and helps fund everything from highway maintenance to the-historic
preservation society.
          "But the money is nothing compared to the risks," says
Ms. Munoz. "Groundwater is one of Alabama's most important resources,
and we're appalled at how we've jeopardized our groundwater by
allowing the landfill."
          The fact of the matter is that few of Sumter County's citizens had
any say at all in "allowing" the landfill to locate at Emelle--except,
of course, for a handful of powerful white men like Drayton
Pruitt. For years, Pruitt has run the county like an empire, and with
the appearance of Chemical Waste Management, has simply taken his
backwoods power-brokering several notches up the scale of intensity
and profitability.
          But Pruitt's story is a familiar one, and, because of the Selma
Chalk, it may be more familiar to those who live in the 250-mile long
swatch of the Black Belt, where the formation located is located, than
to people in any other part of the country.
          Ted Lingham, mayor of the tiny Lowndes County village of
Lowndesboro for "the past eight or ten years--I really can't remember
exactly how long"--was out in his pasture one day checking his cattle
when he saw a drilling crew hard at work in a neighboring pasture.
          "I asked them what they were doing and they wouldn't answer for
awhile, and then they told me they were drilling for oil," said
Lingham, who lives about fifteen miles southwest of Montgomery.
          "Now I know you don't drill for oil with a little bitty old
gasoline-powered rig," he said.
          Lingham soon learned that the crew was drilling core samples for
the nation's second-largest hazardous waste disposal firm,
Browning-Ferris Industries, Inc., which later purchased an option to
buy two-thousand acres of land for a hazardous waste landfill not two
miles from Lingham's ranch. The option was sold by Lowndes County
Probate Judge Harrell Hammonds, who, since the sale, "hasn't been the
most popular man in the county," as one observer puts it.
          When Lingham learned of the plan, he quickly mobilized his
neighbors and headed a crowd of five hundred citizens who attended a
meeting with company representatives.

          "We raised such a stink the company has slacked off its plans,"
said Lingham.
          Browning-Ferris was also shut out of Lowndes County by the Minus
Act, but not before enlisting the aid of state Rep. Nelson Starkey of
Florence, who tried unsuccessfully to convince lawmakers to repeal the
act.
          Chemical Waste Management has also attempted to expand its
exploitation of the Selma Chalk by purchasing an option to buy 564
acres of land in the rural east Mississippi County of Noxubee--a site
not twenty-five miles from Emelle, as the crow flies. The company
moved into the area with little fanfare, and proceeded to locate a
local powerbroker of sorts, purchasing an option from A.T. Evans, a
member of the Board of Aldermen in the tiny town of Shuqualak, located
about two miles from the proposed dump site. The Board of Aldermen in
1983 unanimously passed a resolution supporting the location of the
landfill in the largely black county.
          But other residents didn't give Chemical Waste Management the
chance to sneak into Noxubee County un-announced. Bill Thomas, a local
lumber company executive, organized a drive that netted 3,500
signatures on a petition opposing the landfill--in a county with a
total population that Thomas estimates at between eight thousand and
ten-thousand.
          "Every landfill eventually leaks," Thomas says. "We're sitting
right on top of the water we drink, and if we pollute that, then all
of us are going to have to leave--even Chemical Waste Management."
          Thomas doesn't trust the company, either, citing a list of problems
encountered at Chemical Waste Management sites in Colorado, Kansas,
Illinois and Ohio.
          "The past performance of the company has been terrible," he
said. "They have flagrantly violated EPA rules on PCB storage at
Emelle. We don't have confidence in them to operate a toxic waste
site."
          
            ******
          
          Thomas' reference to PCBs at Emelle strikes at the heart of what
has become a roiling controversy in Alabama in the past six months, a
controversy that stretches from Waste Management headquarters in Oak
Brook, Illinois, to the halls of EPA in Washington, to the offices of
state legislators and regulators in Montgomery and finally to the
homes of concerned residents in Sumter County and in Chickasaw, a
small industrial port city near Mobile. The story of Chemical Waste
Management and its "problem" with PCBs stored a Emelle has attracted
nation-wide attention.
          PCBs, an oil-based substance used to insulate electrical equipment
such as transformers, were banned by EPA in 1977 after studies
indicated they might cause cancer. So persistent are the constituent
elements of the substance that federal laws prohibit the landfill
disposal of PCBs in concentrations greater than five hundred parts per
million. Such waste must be incinerated, and on land, incinerators
must have expensive scrubbers to trap residues that might otherwise go
up the incinerator's stack and contaminate the air.
          In the early 1970's, several European companies pioneered the
technology of adapting hazardous waste incinerators to ocean-going
ships. The ships provided a clear advantage over land-based
incinerators for two reasons: far out at sea, the fumes and unburned
particles coming up the incinerator stack are deposited miles from
populated areas. Also, depending on the regulations in force,
incineration ships are not necessarily required to install scrubbers,
which provides a competitive edge over land-based incineration.
          Although several incineration ships operated out of European and
Asian ports throughout the 1970's, in the United States, EPA failed to
write rules for regulating ocean. incineration, despite the urging of
several congressional committees. Sailing in an unregulatd sea,
Chemical Waste Management in 1980 bought a Dutch incineration vessel
and in 1983 commissioned construction of a second toxic-waste burning
ship. The vessels were christened the Vulcanus I and II.
          EPA officials encouraged the company's plans by granting 

two
research permits that allowed the company to burn several hundred
thousand gallons of PCBs and other waste in a specially-designated
burn site located 190 miles off the coast of Brownsville, Texas. To
load the ships, the company leased a docking slip in Chickasaw,
Alabama.
          Even though federal ocean incineration regulations still had not
been adopted, EPA in 1983 appeared well on its way to issuing a permit
that would have allowed the company to burn almost eighty million
gallons of PCBs and other chlorinated wastes off
Brownsville. Anticipating a prompt receipt of the permits, the company
had been stockpiling PCBs from across the country at Emelle, which is
located just 150 miles north of Chickasaw.
          The company's plans, however--and EPA's cooperation--ran into a
storm of protest in late 1983 when thousands showed up at public
hearings in Brownsville and Mobile to protest the burns, as well as
EPA's handling of the permit.
          Collette King, a thirty-six-year-old homemaker and mother of three,
galvanized citizens in Chickasaw to oppose the company's plans. They
first drew battle with the company in March 1983 over its plans to
build two large hazardous-waste storage tanks at the port facility to
hold the waste until it could be loaded onto the ships. At that time,
the only public hearings on ocean incineration had been held in
Brownsville.
          "We had to organize a letter-writing campaign," says Ms. King. "EPA
was going to make a decision for Alabama based on public hearings in
Texas. And the loading facility for the thing is here in
Chickasaw."
          Stung by the public outcry, EPA scheduled a public hearing in
Mobile for November, 1983. Gulf Coast residents and environmentalists
turned out en masse to express their anger and opposition at the
company's plans.
          In February 1984, Ms. King's group convinced the Chickasaw City
Council to pass a tough ordinance restricting the hauling of hazardous
waste through the town. The ordinance said such trucks traveling to
the port could take only one route through town, a route which passed
over a narrow, winding railroad viaduct bridge with a weight limit of
fifteen tons. Company spokesmen said the waste trucks weighed nearly
that much empty, and the company in April went to court to fight the
ordinance. The case is still pending, but events in the meantime may
make the suit unnecessary.
          One significant event came in February when EPA whistleblower Hugh
Kaufman--whose revelations about inside dealings at Reagan's EPA led
to the scandal that rocked the agency last year and culminated in the
resignation of administrator Anne Burford--claimed in an interagency
memorandum that Chemical Waste Management was trying to "blackmail"
EPA into granting the Vulcanus permits by storing PCBs at Emelle
longer than federal rules allow. The rules call for the incineration
of high-concentration PCBs within one year of the date they are
accepted at disposal facilities.
          Kaufman's allegations were prompted by a proposed consent agreement
between EPA and Chemical Waste Management, which called for the
company to dispose of the PCBs at Emelle upon receipt of a permit to
operate the Vulcanus ships. The agreement set a $100,000 fine for the
storage upon the company's compliance. If the company did not receive
the ocean incineration permits within one year of the date of the
agreement, it would have to submit a schedule for disposal of the
PCBs--which would have to be burned at one of only three land-based
PCB incinerators licensed by EPA, all operated by Chemical Waste
Management competitors. So confident had the company been of EPA's
commitment to ocean incineration that it had put all its eggs in the
Vulcanus basket--and did not apply for permits to build its own
land-based incinerator.
          Chemical Waste Management's fortunes in Alabama took a turn for the
worse in March, when Montgomery County District Attorney Jimmy Evans
announced he would soon begin an investigation into waste-handling
practices at Emelle. Evans lacked direct jurisdiction over the Emelle
facility, but said he would examine reports the company was required
to file with state officials headquartered in Montgomery. In June,
Evans convened a grand jury, saying the panel might meet for months in
its effort to uncover the entire story at the landfill--a facility
that Evans claimed was turning Alabama into "the toilet bowl of the
nation." Evans has said the grand jury is investigating allegations
that Chemical Waste Management improperly accepted such deadly wastes
as dioxin at Emelle--without informing the state.
          During a five-month period beginning in March, when almost daily
press reports in the Mobile, Birmingham and Montgomery newspapers
chronicled the fastest chapters in the Vulcanus/Emelle saga, state
politicians began to take notice. Alabama's attorney general filed a
motion with EPA officials to intervene in the consent agreement
between EPA and the company, saying he would not rest until fines were
levied for the PCB violations at Emelle. Other politicians hopped on
what some were calling the hazardous waste bandwagon, and a spate of
bills dealing with financial 

disclosure by owners of hazardous waste
disposal firms and other issues was introduced. By the time the
session ended in May, the Legislature had passed one bill calling for
a permanent three-person technical monitoring team stationed at
Emelle, and had created a joint interim committee to investigate the
hazardous waste industry in Alabama.
          Meanwhile, on the national scene, in April EPA hearing officer
Steven Schatzow, who conducted the public hearings at Mobile and
Brownsville on the proposed Vulcanus permits, recommended to EPA
assistant administrator for water Jack Ravan that Chemical Waste
Management be allowed to conduct "test" burns to destroy 3.3 millions
gallons of PCBs aboard the ships. The company had publicly estimated
the total amount of high concentration PCBs at Emelle at 2.8 million
gallons, and critics immediately cried foul over the close coincidence
of Schatzow's recommendation and the company's pressing needs. They
also noted that the company had applied only for the eighty million
gallon operating permit--and not for the test burn permits Schatzow
was recommending. Shortly after announcing his recommendations,
Schatzow was transferred to the office of pesticides as part of what
EPA Administrator William Ruckelshaus said was an innovative
agency-wide program designed to infuse new blood at EPA's top levels
by giving career executives the chance to face new challenges by
moving to new areas of the agency. No other transfers have since been
announced under the program.
          In May, however, Ravan assuaged critics and environmentalists by
denying Chemical Waste Management any permits--research or
operating--for the ships. Ravan said the EPA must first adopt
ocean-incineration regulations before issuing more permits, and he
called for additional scientific studies by the agency on the need for
and efficiency of the technology. He did not, however, close the door
on future permits.
          Chemical Waste Management, though, was stuck without an incinerator
for disposal of the Emelle PCBs. The EPA seemed content to allow the
company to continue holding the waste in Alabama under the terms of
the consent agreement, but, strangely, the agreement had never been
formally adopted--perhaps because the agency was waiting for the
Vulcanus permit decision. The lack of final approval left the door
cracked for Alabama authorities, and in May an EPA administrative law
judge ruled that the Alabama attorney general be made a party to the
agreement. Graddick repeated his vows to push for heavy fines and
rapid disposal of the PCBs.
          In the meantime, though, the Alabama Department of Environmental
Management entered the fray by issuing an April 16 directive ordering
the company to stop taking PCBs at Emelle until the illegally-stored
waste was removed from the site. ADEM gave the company a month to
submit a disposal plan, but the company retaliated by filing suit in
federal district court in Birmingham, claiming the state had no
authority to issue the order because federal PCB laws preempted such
an order.
          U.S. District Judge J. Foy Guin granted the company a preliminary
injunction on May 24, and issued a blistering opinion that scored
state officials for impeding "the national goal of safe, uniform and
effective PCB storage and disposal."
          Relieved but perhaps sated on PCBs, the company ceased accepting
all but the low-concentration PCBs, which regulations allow it to bury
at Emelle. ADEM, however, went back to its legal drawing board and on
July 22 returned with a, new, proposed order that would impose a
strict disposal schedule on the company, backed by a fine that would
total $6.9 million if the company missed a series of deadlines called
for in the order. Responding to the company's claim that the April 16
order deprived it of due process, ADEM said the order would become
final only after a July 24 meeting with the company to discuss the
proposed schedule and fine.
          The company claimed the order conflicted with Guin's May ruling,
but otherwise made no initial response. Observers expected the company
to file suit again in federal court.
          
            ******
          
          Although no one has said that the Emelle landfill leaks toxic
chemicals, the attention focused on the dump in recent months has
caused state officials to scrutinize the operation as never before. In
July, ADEM officials announced they had determined that the
groundwater monitoring system used since 1981 at the landfill was
inadequate for several reasons, even though it complies with federal
regulations.
          "In that site, and in these formations, the idea of using a
deep-aquifer monitoring well is not a prudent thing to do," said Buddy
Cox, chief of ADEM's hazardous waste section. "By the time the
material traversed that distance, if it were to happen, you would have
a significant problem on your hands--so significant that it would be
difficult, it not impossible to correct."
          Monitoring wells drilled at the site reach all the way into the
Eutaw aquifer. The well will not detect leaks from the landfill's
disposal trenches until too late, Cox says--only 

after the aquifer has
been contaminated.
          Cox stated publicly in July that he would soon require the company
to drill shallow wells around each disposal trench on the site, wells
that would angle under the trenches and detect leaks before pollutants
reach the aquifer.
          
            ******
          
          Presently, state and federal laws provide that materials contained
in hazardous waste landfills become the property of the state
following what is known as a "post-closure period"--usually a period
of 30 years. Having learned that when companies like Chemical Waste
Management finish their years of making profits from a site like
Emelle, they can eventually wipe their hands and walk away clean from
any liability for future problems, Alabamians are becoming more aware,
and more outspoken, on the potential time bomb that may be ticking
away in the Sumter County hills.
          The feelings of many are summed up by Collette King, who says she
has become active fighting the company for four very specific reasons:
"my three children and this community."
          "They haven't got enough money in the Superfund to buy this house,"
she says.
          
            Booth Gunter and Mike Williams are staff writers for the
Montgomery Advertiser. Gunter worked as a political and general
assignments reporter for the daily Huntsville (Texas) Item until 1983,
writing, among other issues, about the Texas prison system and capital
punishment. Williams, a native of Tuscaloosa, has written about the
history of industrial workers in Birmingham as part of a project
supported by a National Endowment for the Humanities Youth grant.
            Environmental policy in the Reagan Administration has encouraged
industrial producers of hazardous waste to resume, or continue,
long-practiced, devil-may-care ways. Anxious to dispose of toxic waste
as cheaply as possible, many commercial waste companies have headed
South. These companies say they have c~ me to take advantage of the
region's geology and to handle Southern-generated waste. They rarely
mention that other attractions include the low level of environmental
awareness among many Southerners, the laxity of state environmental
laws, inadequate funding for regulatory agencies in most Southern
states, and the willingness of many state and local politicians to
assist the companies in their efforts to purchase land discreetly and
to speedily obtain the necessary permits.
            Ecological awareness among Southerners has grown in recent years as
local groups have sprung up in opposition to particular sites and as
reports of leaky landfills and questionable disposal practices have
spilled into the press. Among the community activists stirs a growing
conviction that toxic waste dumping in the South must be stopped
before it becomes another chapter in an old story--the story of
outsiders, aided by the greed and dishonesty of some of the region's
own politicians, taking advantage of the South's resources for
profit.
          
        