•VVIRONMENTAL PROTECT;QN AGENCY f~ ? C-' 3 Jr* /? 4 PUBLIC MEETING REGARDING GENEVA INDUSTRIES 5 WASTE SITE CLEANUP, 6 FILMED SOUTH HOUSTON, TEXAS 7 OCT -7 1986 SYSTEM 2OO Thursday, a M«y 22, 1986 9 South Houston Community Hall 1007 Stata 10 South Houston, Texas M The hearing began at 7sOO p.m. 12 FOR THE ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY; Mr. Carl tdJ und. Chief, Super fund Program Branch, Rec,i on 6 £F A 13 Mr. Den Wi11iams, Project Manager, Rsgion 6 EPA Ms. Patricia Curl, Hvdrologist and Project 14 Manager, Super fund Section, Texas Water i-——. sslon J5 SF'EAI ERS: 16 State- Txepresentati ve Al Edwards State Representative Ralph Wallace Councilman Franl Mancuso, Mayor pro tern, City of 1? Houston Mayor Al Thiel, City of South Houston 18 Congressman MiLe Andrews, 22nd District Mayor John Ray Harrison, City of Pasadena 19 CounciIman Johnny Tamayo, City of South Houston Joseph Stampfli, Indiana University Bruce Bundy, Indiana Public Interest Research 20 Group Dr. Jacl Matson, University of Houston 21 John F. Stevens, Episcopal Church of the Advent Christine Mayglothling, State House of 22 Representatives, Austin, Texas Anthony R. Collins, The Metropali tan Organization 23 ftnita R. Locher, Baha" i Faith of South Houston Prian Greeney 24 Thomas A. Dardas, Deto;: Industries Dt - Herbert C. Met ee, Department of Health and 26 Human Services. City of Houston

005143 Dr. G»org» Smith, Si»rr« Club G«argi* L. NAft^ai I 2 Sol it* Aon MAIL *r 6*r*Jd H. W*lfc,er 3 Joye» Tht*I»p*p», 61«nbroo* Civic SJ id* Hunt»r t 4 £d«*rd W. Utlliford, M«*clow Brook Clvtc Club J. A. s. Ad*m», Prof»*«ar, Ric* Univ»r«ity s Dr* M*rry H, WaUcr Nancy Funcierburk, H« on, Inc. Carman Oro*co 2C 6 Dcth Doug] 7 Hi I * F\ McQi nneac D. MarrdLl 8 Lynn W. Brasher F- , 9 10 Robert C*r^^, i_ULAC h SoGonralerc i ei y , he;:ican American Engineering Mi ch^f -; Cm n L err. *s. £ti «» 12 13 U 15 16 17 to 19 20 21 22 23 24 25

005144 i 2 ?i * B Efifie I i 3 OPENING REMARf £ B ': Mr. Carl Edlund Z B !i 1I A ('' PRESENTATION B B M». Patricia Curl 10 B 1 5 1 PRESENTATION B B8 Mr. Don Williams 20 B B 6 : •• 7 STATEMENTS B j Representative Al Edwards 33 B 1 Representative Ralph Wallace 34 B i 8 i Councilman Franfc Mancusa 52 " B1 Mavar Al Thiel 55 ' B 9 Congressman Mi I.e Andrews 57 H1^91BI Mayor John Ray Harrison 63 B i1 10 Councilman Johnny Tamayo 65 BBRS|i Joseph Stamplfi 66 B 1 Bruce &und / 71 B i 11 Dr. Jac* Matson 75 B i John f- . Stevens 7B B 12 i Christine Mayglothling 79 B •i !! Anthony R. Colling Q5 B 13 Am ta R. Locher 97 B i Brian Greenev 89 H l 14 Thomas A. Dardas 90 Kl i : Dr. Herbert C. Met ee 93 K ' : Dr. George Smith 103 B 15 Georgi a L. Haskel 1 105 B Solita Ann Waller 107 H 16 Gerald H. Walt er 1U B ! Joyce Thielepape 114 H 17 i SI Ida Hunter Read 116 ! H ; Edward W. killi^ord 117 H 18 J. A. S. Adams 118 Gf Dr. Harry M. Waller 121 §H Nancy F under bur k 125 Bi s» 1* 9*J Carmen Drosco 128 ml Beth Sellers 131 1 1 20 Douglas Wilson 133 §f 1 ! Mii;e P. McGinness 135 « j: 21 | D. Marrack 141 E i Lynn W. Brasher 146 K Ei 22 Joe P. Zepeda 156 ffi|1 Margaret Gon^ale^ 159 ml H 23 Robert Gar^a 161 H isHm Ralph Gan^aiez 163 mi i 24 Michael Chi Iders 165 S i i ii•SB 25 I itm | m1 1I ' ' 1 i |M^^^rfcaigwmBfcBmaBUJB|CM|i5B|iHgHaiBHBaM i9 005145 Mft. EDLUND: May I have your attention, please. Thank you. I would lile to begin the public meeting pretty much on time, and that was scheduled for 7 o'clock. I want 5 to thank you all for coming out to this meeting and sharing 6 with us your interests, comments, and questions regarding the 7 Geneva Super fund site. 8 Now, unfortunately, the last public meeting that we 9 ihad on this site, we had about 58 people and we figured this 10 hall would hold you all. I understand that there are ;; public addre*s= systems on the outside of the building and )!i ij those foll.s oat there can listen in to the program as well. fi!l 13 |, Fjr^t of all, I would lile to introduce myself. My ij I name is Carl Edlur.d. I am with the Environmental Protection 15 •J Agency in Dallas, that is ERA Region 6. And I am in charge 16 ,, of the Super fund program. Our jurisdiction includes the i 7 :states of Ne*. Mexico, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Louisiana, and 18 t! Texas. I 19 ; Now, with us tonight I have -- Up here at the podium, I have Ms. Patricia Curl. She is with the Texas Water Commission, and she was the project officer for the 22 state working on the studies that we are going to be talking 23 j! about tonight. Also at the podium, or at the table, is Mr. Donald Williams. Don is with the ERA in Dallas, also, and he 25 was our p j&ct of ficer on these studies.

005146 t ii Now, there are a few other folks that I think 1 •hould recognise right at this juncture. We also have with us, from the Centers for Disease Control, Mr. Carl Htckham. Carl, will you stand up, please. He is over on the side !| i there. Thank you. He will be available in case questions i;' i regarding health arise. 7 ji i Also to help us - out• •,• I• •" believ• ' e we have Ms. Barbara ! 8 ., Greenfield. Is she back here yet"* She will be coming over, 9 i• I suppose, in a few minutes. She is an attorney with our 'i 10 ij office and may help us out if legal questions should pop up. M Final 1y, we have — we were going to have, and we 12 •will have, I suppose, in a little bit here, Father Jose from f 11 [ the- nearby church. He is serving mass right now. And he was 14 i! going to help us to serve as a translator for any of those I! 15 foils who "tave difficulty with English. Until he comes, and 16 :j she volunteered just a few seconds ago, Ms. Carmen Orosco. 17 Would you stand up, please, just to let people know where you 1 18 ji j * are" Volunteered to help us out in that capaci ty. 19 As you came in through the entrance hall, there 20 were several others of our staff. I will mention them 21 briefly. Mr . Roger Mecham, Barbara Getz, and Ellen Greeney— 22 they are our community relations and public affairs staff, 23 and the/ are avail able to tall with you all, too, if you have 24 questions of an informal nature. 25 Al1 right. The purpose of this meeting is to

005147 jjreceive comments and questions on the possible remedies for j! !i the Geneva Super-fund site. We will receive them here or in I. ..writing in the comment period that follows. Under Superfund, li the ERA is directed by statute and regulation to select a 5 remedy that meets some criteria. The prime criteria is that 6 the remedy protects public health and the environment. 7 Now, after satisfying that basic criteria, we also 8 ; take a lool at factors such as cost, the permanency of the if 9 i ; solution, the availability of the technology to be applied at 10 tjj | that time, and a number of other factors, timing, logistics, *1 safety, et ceter«. .1 12 |j Now, several remedies that we have studied 13 isati&fy the first criteria and, to varying degrees, the lii 14 iji 1 secondary cr i ter j a, and those are the things that we ar e 15 ! going to discuss here tonight. Now, what I —- the way I 16 Isj ; would life to conduct this meeting and perhaps I should 17 jj clarify first the nature of this meeting. ji i} ; This i £ a public meeting. It is not a rule making ij! hearing. We do have a court reporter, basically because we 20 want to make sure that we do get everyone's questions and 21 comments down. But this is not a formal public hearing. 22 We will try to answer questions to the best of our 23 ability tonight. We may not be able to answer them $uliy> >n 24 which case we will fallow this meeting up with a written 25 ry c

005148 1 '!j every question that is asked fully. 2 , Now, we would like to start off with a few short 3 < presentations to give you an idea about what the Superfund : 4 f! legislation is about and what we have done so far at the 5 ! Geneva site. After that, we will open it up for public d 6 ,| comment. Now* i f you want to speak, that is fins, and what I 7 I ask you to do is to fill out, if you haven' t done so already, i 3 •! a 1 i ttle card at the front of the entranceway. i., 9 r, Those cards, by the way, are riot votes. We are not 10 i ji here voting tonight. Somebody wanted to know which slot, ye»s 11 jar no, to put it in. That is just to let us know that you if 12 I-! ; are here and whether or not you want to speak. You c^jn wri te r 13 , a comment on 11 and that will go into the record, but that !; 14 i, will help us at least line up how many speakers we have and J! 15 {r how many people want to talk. All right. Let me give you a little bit of a il 17 I! background about the Superfund program. In .i960, Congress 18 passed a statute c illed the Comprehensive Environmental 19 It Response Compensation and Liability Act. Now, most people 20 couldn' t wrap their mouth around that very wel1, and i t got 21 to be called Superfund. 22 What this was, and is, is a 1.6 billion dollar 23 trust fund to clean up abandoned or inactive hazardous waste 24 si tes. Eighty-six percent of that money came from a tax on 25 the chemical industry; 14 percent came from general revenues,

005149 means the income tax that you and little bit of a stake in it. ]i N°Wl the expired in Septembar of 4 |1985. Congress is now debating the reauthori < i 2atlon Q the

statute and franUy, now, five years after itfi original

passage, it is well understood that the problem* ftr<6 weinitially envisioned, and they are talking about g I j expanding the super fund by several fold. How much depends on , i 9 i[1' whether yoj <*" t ^ Republ i can or a Democrat. But we hope this ' 1C i] wi 1 1 be resoi in the next few months. 11 me ttll you a little bit about how Super fund 12 !! warl.s. I won t go i nto great detai 1 . Back in 1900, there . ii 13 • | was apprc:; ifT'atel / T-O,000 possible hazardous waste sites 14 !; i denti f i ed throughout the nation. Now ERA 's first job was to •i 15 sift through those? si tea, through a screening process, to i • ig /determine whi ch ones mi ght real 1 y be a real threat to the 1? ,, long-term public health. i 18 u!i During that screening process, and this involves I 19 1|1 site visits and inspections and sometimes taking samples, i f 20 i an imminent hazat d to human health was found, something was 21 ii!j done about it r i ght then. And so, if, for instance, barrel s 22 '!j of toxic waste w&re there, they were generally removed and 23 ][ tat -en to, we hope, a »ati sf actory lamdf 111. We tried* 24 AfterthiE screening process, there now i s about 25 I BOO — there #re now About SCO different £uperfund sites out ii

005150 8 these 30,000 on the list that are iar Superfund 2 I; funding. Once a site has be«n determined eligible for i i 3 j |ii funding under Superfund, we conduct two kinds of studies. 4 The lrst !I< ; * study, and you will hear this term a 5 jj Httle later, is called a remedial investigation. And basically what that ,., it is a study to determine th« nature of the contaminants that are onsite, how much there are, whether or not they are drifting through the groundwater, r 9 j, whether or not they are going offsite b, surface water, or 10 being blown off in the air. n After that study is completed, there is another 12 j| study that is done, and we will tall a little bit more about i| 13 jjthat, too, called the feasibility study. NOW, basically, i; 14 j, that study goes into determining the possible ways you CQuld 15 |.[Clean up this type of site. [• 16 ; Now' the feasibility study for Geneva was released 17 j j••j on May Z, and has been available in some repositories in the 18 and are listed in the bact- of the informaUon sheets , 19 jl that we have for you. Basically, we are open for written 20 {public comment from that date and right now, the due date for 21 any comments to be received is to June 3. 22 Now, the Superfund regulations only require the 23 opportunity for public comment. We generally go a little 24 step further and hold a public meeting like this, because 25 j sometimes Superfund sites get to be controversial. So we do

005151 ' «-nt to M|.,sur . that .vryon* -ho 1 ,w ,m no.r »t ^ t.

2 conc.rn.d about ,t - thank VOu, I «, Mlr.d. AM rlgn(, _.

3 ^h.. a Ch*,,c. to «ind out ..Hat „. ar. dotng and to voice th.lr

< cancan* or comment-. Thank you. Your bug. 5 minute. I m 1 1 ,t. How » get h*f Okay. 6 >.r, we WIU take or your wrltten try to answer them All in a r »n a r ve^**vJra« * summary that will

b. Wr

,0 .. «r,tt.n, «e „ t oowri , H male a decision Way th

21 ,s a ,ot D( peopje fchat 22 |! would i J „ Patrlcla Curl to give 23 fthe site history and to give 24 the remedial investigation found. And then, 35 i another short presentation by fir . Donal d Wj 1

005152 10 feasibility options. And then we will turn it back over to you. 01 ay"" Thant you. PRESENTATION BY MS. PATRICIA CURL Hydrologi st , Taxas Water Commission MS. CURL: Could we hava the lights dimmed a little 1 1 5 M;| in here" That is great. This picture of the site wast ttfken it in May 1902. This is before any removal action was done at the site. On the north is Candath Road, on the west is 9 Easthaven E>oul e^ard , and on the east is a flood control di tch

10 ; •i ; that separates Houston and South Houston. •I n The&iteisactuallyin Houston. South Houston i s 12 to the You can see a lot of sludge ponds. There is 13 | waste water lagoon and several other ponds on this site. •i ; 14 ; There is a lot of piping, processing tanks, possible landfill i 15 i! and 1 andf arm ^reas, bur i ed d.'ums, and a lot of asbestos. 16 i Before 1967, the site w »s used almost strictl y f or ,* j t i 17 i petrol CUT. &xp] orati on. In 1967, Geneva Industries bought 1 1 i 18 , !i( thi s site. They used it as a F'C& manufacturing plant. They 19 ii• went bankrupt in 197^. Af ter that „ Pi lot Industries acquired ' 20 |l the site and used it far more petrochemical operations. 21 Intercoastal Refining purchased1 the site in

22 December of 1976 to re*lne oil contaoiinatBd water into !' 23 | oil. In I960, Lone Star Fuel Oil Company purchased the site. 24 jj They did no operations. Fuhrmann Energy bought the site in i 25 tly for ^aivage n^ tne equlpment for resale. They

005153 11

i; j i were the last owners of the sit©. EPA initiated an emergency action at the site in 3 j 1987. This is about the same time that the site became a Superfund site by being listed on the national priorities list. That planned removal the ERA did at the site included treatment of over a million gallons of waste water, excavation of siudge from most of the ponds an the site Z7. 8 [;! drums we^e removed, 25 tons of asbestos was found on the site I1 1j g iand removed, 73 soi1 samples were taken. 10 When the sludge was removed from most of the ponds, j[ti they were replaced with liners and clay. The tanks were all — n j 12 I Many of th& tan( s were emptied. Several were removed. All the oil w&ll i that were on the site were checked to make sure ithey were proper]/ plugged #nd one that was not properly 15 I| plugged was rednlled out ana replugged to make sure that 16 there w^.s no chance of contamination getting deeper. 17 After this was over, ERA put a cl«y cap over the 18 site, over three and half acres of it, over the worst 19 contaminated areas, to serve as a temporary cover so that no 20 runoff would cause more PCBs to get off of the site. 21 This is a picture of the site back in 1933 before 22 any removal. What you are seeing is pipes wrapped with 23 asbestos. There were a lot of spills on the site. You are 24 seeing asbestos and van ous types of chemical spi11s. Here 25 is more of the same. This is the condition the site was

005154 12 1 , found in. 2 : The initial removal was 372 drums. As you can see, 3 j; these were in very poor condition, uncovered, corroc'^d and rusted. Now, this is the site after EPA did their cleanup. You can see all the sludge has been removed. A great deal o-f it, I mean, it was on the surface. This photo was taken in February of 1984. Here is the same phot^ a month later. The EPA 9 revegetated part of the clay cap to help prevent ercsion. 10 This table is showing sampling results. Real briefly, we • 11 I pulled eight surface soil samples from the site. EPA had 12 jj already removed 73 samples for analysis. '3 ! Of thu&E- samples, most of the heavy contamination 14 •; was in the center of the site: RGBs as high as 12,OOO parts 15 per million. Six shallow soil borings from eight to fourteen * 16 ] feet. The highest value there was 364 parts per million F'CB i;j 17 '; D^-epet soil borings, 33 to 137 feet, found no F'CBs. 18 Soil borings were taken in the lagoon and the 19 highest value there was 2700 parts per million of PCB. This 20 was only at ten feet down. And this was after the main 21 sludge had already been removed. This was the soil that was 22 remaining underneath. 23 | Trenching samples were taken with a backhoe in the 24 i southern part of the site where they had suspected that an 25 old pit had once been. Five out of ten of those samples had

005155 : over 500 parts per million F'CBs. The highest of that was 177O, approx-mately three foot down. ; Tank samples were taken at six locations, whether i : ''froi _ m the tank itself or from discharge pipes or any kind of •| =t an outlet from the tank. Now, the highest — These two numbers are misplaced, the one here and the one next after it. It is actually 20,OOO parts per million of FCBs were . found in the tanl . This tank was removed from the site. 9 Ten ^h^llow monitor well barings were drilled. Now 10 I thfe? mom tor borings, samples were taken before a finished 11 mom tor w^s install&d. And the highest FCBs found here were 12 -only 7 parts per million. Afraid we ha-/e a typo. 13 Two deeper wells were drilled and b&' ^re the wells 14 1 were installed, the soi 1 was sampled wi th no detected FCBs. 15 |i:Out of those twelve finished wells, once they were done, 35 16 ! '! l•! water sampl es were taken from those at various times. i: In the shallow samples, which were ten welIs, the 18 highest found was 714 parts per bill ion. Now, that is parts 19 per bi11 ion, i nstead of parts per million, a much smal1er 20 number. And in the deep wells, there were no detected PCBs. 21 Bat in one of those welIs we did find trichloroethylene, 22 wriici is another type of contaminant. 23 Now, there are two types of zones for ground water 24 out her that wu,- investigated. The shallow zone i a at 25 app. axi mat el y -'' foot down, underlain by 13 to 27 feet of

005156 14 clay. And under that is another zone, approximately 10O foot. They are referred to as the 3O foot sand and the 100 foot. The contamination we found, All the PCBs in the water, were all contained in that upper 30 foot zone. The clay layer underneath is considered impermeable and thick onough to where no PCBs seem to have penetrated ar ~i gotten any deeper. g If Air samp] es were taken at the si te. No PCBs or g ij asbestos were found. Six f i sh and benthic samples, those 10 benthi c samples being shel1fish, crawfish, that kind of n [] thi ncj. Upstream of the si te t not hi ng was found. But 12 downstream, some parts per million of PCBs were found. 13 The FDA says that you can only have two parts 14 per mi 11i on in fish. Nothing was found in the crawfi sh. A 15 i wildlife survey was performed by the Parks and Wildlife 16 i j Service. The/ collected rats and mice from the site and 17 iii; found no FC&s. I!!I 18 Vegetation surveys said that nothing was 19 I significantly stressed. There were some areas where there 20 were direct spills that nothing was growing under, but in 21 general the site seemed to have no problem. And if you drive 22 by it right now, it seems like it is very vegetated.

23 Si:: storm water runof f samples were taken, with 24 very 1 i tt Iv F'CE's 4ound. Sediment samples were taken from the 25 fload control ditch and from other runoff di tches around the

005157 t I .ite, with very Htu. found. The removal action that EPA 2 '|did orig.nally removed most of the highly contaminated soil 3 i from outside of the property, so we found nothing in the 4 i ditch remaining during our remedial investigation 5 ji ThlS :tu || P" '-* i« showing where the soU samples were

6 jj taken. Now, I am sure you can't read the numbers, but the 7 ! idea here is to see how ,t covers the whole site. Eighty-one i 8 ,total soil samples were taken, and we tried to cover the site

9 jjas uell as poss.ble. Most of the heavy contamination is in ,0 jthe center. All of it is contained within the borders of the it .. site. : 12 i! Th£5e are '; brings showing where the 34 total

13 ,; borings werfe dniled. 0opSi , missec] | i 14 sorr T f V- ho&e are the sedlfnent samples.

,5 ;they are mostly around the drainage. Now, on the botto. of

15 the Plcture, that ls the Uood control ditch that is actually J? ji on the east side of the site. ;i '8 ]: And aU °< the s*»Ple5 were taken primarily around .9 jj that, because that is an area where ,f somebody was going to 20 come into contact with the site, they could along that ditch. 21 And we found no detectable PCBs. 22 These are wh*re the borings were located. Now,

23 thls table 5howlng some watBr WBUa that were tested off

24 site. These are all Wlthin a mi,e radzus of the site. The

25 f,rst one 1S at the Bamer Mobile Home Par*, on Redford. I

005158 16 i ft don't know the depth of this well, out no RGBs or other organic contaminants were found. The next one is at the Fields Trailer Park on Hanson. It is about 90 feet deep, and nothing was found in that. The third one listed is a South Houston well, 951 -feet deep. It is at 9th Street and Spencer, and nothing was found in that wel1. And the last one is on Tallyho. It is 100 feet 9 deep, and no PC&s were found there. We? have found no reason 10 to believe that any ground water deeper than the 30 foot zone 11 ]! under the site is contaminated. 12 These are the types of contaminants that we have 13 | found at the site. Polychlorinated biphenyls. Those are 14 PCPs. Trace amounts of chlorinated dibenzofurans and chlor- 15 | inated diQKins. Now, the dibenzofurans have been in very

16 ljlj small numbers. The highest found was 55 parts per billion, ;l 17 | and we have found very few samples that even had that. 18 As far as the dioxins, 24 samples were taken at the 19 site and dioxin was found in one tank sample, and that was 20 nine parts per billion. That is parts per billion, which is 21 very small. Nothing above one part per billion was found in 22 any of the other samples that were taken on the site. These 23 were water samples, soil samples, sludge samples, various 24 types. 25 The ne.:t one is aromatic solvents, like benzene,

005159 inonaromatic chlorinated solvents, which is chemicals like '' trichloroeth/lene, base neutral compounds, mi seellaneous i!' t other orgamcs, and asbestos. i Whatthispictureis showing is the soi 1 itj l contamination at the site. Now, the dark gray is showing : where the soil has PCBs greater than 500 parts per million down to a foot. We are just 1 coking at the top foot. And if that is the very dark gray. f' 9 !• i The 1 i ghter gray i £ showi ng where the PCB i 10 !]I ; contamination is greater than 50 parts per mi 11 ion, *jhich you 11 |: can see is a gcod portion of the site. And the outer dark 12 Miine, if you can see that, is where there is more than one 13 i'part per million PCE*s on the site, which encompasses moat of Ii!I !1' the 1 - acres. 14 j1i 15 t What this map i s showing is the extent of PCBs and 16 i!' .i other con t ami nat i on in the 30 foot sand. In — Thi s is the 17 ;first water zone 1ayer that is 30 foot deep. You can see 18 I! f the PCBs are a«l most completely on the site. There is a 19 little bit that extends past the site. And the extent of the 20 j non-PCB contamination, which is trichloroethylene and benzene 21 and those types of things, is 1arger. 22 Now this is almost strictly contained in the upper 23 30 foot, except for one well onsite had a little trichloro- 24 et.hyI ene down at 100 foot. Everything else has been 25 contai ned in that upper zone.

005160 18 When we f ini shed the remedial i n vest ig«jt ion, we felt that there was some evidence of faulting possible at the site. What you are seeing here is a picture showing the I South Houston oil -field. Now, I don't know ii you can see i)i 5 II that in the back of the room, but it is showing a fault, 6 ! labeled as "fault of concern" that looks like it is trending right towards the site. There is a lot of faulting in this area and we had I! 9 '. some concern that we might be having a fault that went across I i 10 j;i the site. Dr. Carl Norman of the University of Houston H ,!, assisted us in this, as hp is an expert in the field in this 12 i-j area, 13 n The ci rcl ed numbers are di f f erent areas where they 14 1 {1! actually went out and found evidence on pavement, on the side (I 15 V of the highway, of faulting. And you can s^e that the | 16 1 circled numbers seem to come in a line on either side of the 17 I The Slte ls fi - ««»•„«, right there in the middle of the 18 screen 19 Th.s evidence warned us that maybe there would be 20 faulting on the site. Rlght next to the Slte and on the slte

21 itself, because there is so utt,B concretei He CQuld n(>t 22 tell .f we had faulting by just looking at the surface. It 23 1= not lika on a road Where the pavement ia actually broken. 24 We didn't have that right next to the site. 25 This ,3 a conceptual draw.ng, JU5t to give you an

005161 11 1 jj idea of how a f aul t woul d affect the ground. Now, you are '• 2 ", I ool- ing at different types of I ayers o-f sand and clay. And 3 I if you had a fault going .jown, it could cause a problem with contamination getting down into deeper layers, and contam- inating deeper zones. So what we d d was dr i 1 1 four boreholes around the f aul t where we thought the f aul t would be heading to the j si te, to tale a loal anrl ser if then? was a displ acement of 9 these differed' -ones, to find out if there was actually a 10 fault. i, jr Along EaEthaven Road, which is the diagonal road in 12 ii the corner , there .is a 1 i ne that came through where wri 13 extrapolated where we- thought the fault would hit the site. 14 We went in 2OO feet on either side of that line and drilled 15 our first two , which are listed as very small little 16 dots, if you can see them there, on the road, right alongside 17 E^sthaven 18 We drilled down to 400 feet to make sure that if 19 there was any lind of displ acement or any kind of f aul t , we 20 would catch it. We found no evidence of any faulting, so we 21 went further out and dri 1 led two more holes on the farther 22 ends of that. After we finished these holes, they were 23 grouted in. 24 And WL found no evi dente of any f aul ting in any of 25 these holes, BO WP felt -- Our conclusion was that there was

005162 20 1 ' no faulting at this time at the site to cause any problems. i 2 • With the end of the fault study was the end of the remedial i; 3 i' investigation. 4 jt MR- EDLUND: Lights. Thank you Patricia. As you I1 t 5 |j can sae, there is a tremendous amount of information, and we i, 6 jI are trying to keep this fairly streamlined. So bear with us. I! 7 j Next, I would like to have Mr. Don Williams talk about what 8 j followed next, the feasibility study, into — looking into i 9 jj the ways that w& might remedy the problem at Geneva. Don, 10 PRESENTATION &Y MR. DON WILLIAMS 11 !; Project Manager, Regies 6 EF'A 11 12 !j MR' WILLIAMS: Thank you. Carl. As Csrl said, the 13 j! feasibility study is looking at different possible remedies 14 ![ I for the site. And if I could have the lights again, please, 15 S there are a few slides I would like to discuss. 16 ay . The first step in the feasibility is to try 17 Ij-| and set the objectives for the site. These basically tell 18 what we want to accompli sh there. Briefly, the remedial 19 |i objecti ves that were set for Geneva, for the offsite soil, we 20 are looking at preventing -further contamination. For the 21 onsite contaminated soil there now, we are looking at 22 reducing exposure 1evels and possibility of direct contact 23 wi th contaminated soi1s. 24 The surface water -~ we want to minimize direct 25 contact with any contaminated surface water. The best way to

005163 1 , do that is to minimize any runoff from the site itself. We ! 2 < i'want to minimize or eliminate the possibility of airborn 3 i |ij releases such as voi«tiles or contaminates dust from being 4 ji blown offsite. lNi 5 And finally, in the groundwater, in the 30 foot 5 sand, we want to prevent further offsite degradation of the i ': 1. r*-. 7 ji water ir» the 3O foot sand and we also want to reduce the risk f, 8 '•• of contaminants presentl y in the 30 foot sand from migrating 9 !' de&per into lower aquifers. 10 The 10O foot sand, as Trish said, we did find some 11 • trichloroethyleno, and what we want to do is reduce the on- i. 12 ijsite concentration of that TCE down to an acceptable level, 13 (| The second step in the feasibility study is to 14 tM' identi f y v«ar i OLIS technol DQI es that may be appl i cable for the I:. 15 hi types of contamination at the site. In the feasibi 1 ity' 16 hi study, wt- developed about ^-0 di f f erent technologies, and most 17 i of those were screened out very early, primari1y because they 18 iwould not — it was obvious that they wouldn't meet the 19 | i: objectives for this site or they weren't proven technologies 20 I for similar situations. 21 Prior to getting into the alternacives that 22 survi ved the initial scr eening, I would 1i ke to very briefly 23 go through some actions that are common to &l\ the ?•! al tprnat i VE-;,, that we will conr-ider for the si te. 25 The -first of those i s the r emoval of surface

005164 . :i facilities. We need to do this - there are sever*! tank5,

1 .process equipment, there are .till a few buildings out there.

3 |; And we need to remove thbse building, Sn order to excavate

4 |; the contaminated so, 1 underneath them or to put a surface cap

5 !| over the top of the site tnat WDljld be reliable ^ ^

would prevent - or ninimize precipitation iron getting 7 ! into the contaminated soils. 8 |j Second, We Wou] a ] , ke to piug the Qnslte mpnitQring

9 ,[ wells that are there that .e wouldn't be u.xng for any 10 ,j monitor,ng , n the future. Several o 11 - installed daring the remedial invest ' I Dn

12 ;•| plugged uo pr&v/ent anyY Turtne-further possibilitnnc-c^ K< - , y4 o* migration down I 13 ;; into the lower groundwater sones li 14 j! The thlrd actlon ««•"«>" to all alternatives is the

,5 |; construction of a siurry ttal , around the perimeter Qf thg

16 | site. A slurry wa, , ^ basically a wall o^ a m. .;ur e Qf

.7 | bentonxte and the day soU ln the area. It is about two and

18 a half feet thick. It ls designed to minimi,e or prevent the 19 j amount of horizontal Mow in the 30 foot sand. 20 Th.s waii WDUid extend around the entire perimeter

21 the Bite. It would be a 22 | would be anchored into the clay layer underneath the 30 foot 23 This clay layer separates sand. 25 ! The fourth activity that I want to talk about

005165 —- I! briefly is sampling of offsite soils. Since the completion 'I of the sampling effort of the remedial investigation, it has been almost two years. And what we want to do is insure that

|jji nans of the — that no contamination has been blown offaite • : or has somehow migrated offsite inadvertently from runoff \\ the* e. ii . .,.•:•• - I So what we would do is sample and then any i II contamination that we find we would assess the hazar d or how i!t' rI bad that contain nation is, and perhaps address it as part of 10 ijthe remedial action. i' i• 11 !! The final action that is common to all the alter- 12 !! natives is ground water mom tor ing. This is a long-term 13 Mii program that is designed prtmar i ly to insure that the objec- 14 i tives o-f the site have been met and that the remedial action 15 i!i is actually accomplishing what we are setting out to do, Ii 16 Now, the alternatives that we developed -for the 17 groundwater at the si te, there are pr i (T.ar i 1 y — There are 18 three options that we considered- The first option was to 19 recover the offsite contamination in the 3O foot sand. 20 This would be done in conjunction with the slurry 21 wal 1 t.iat I mentioned, and what we woal d be doing is pumping 22 the groundwater on the outside of the slurry wall, treating 23 of it — treating it, and disposing of it. Cost of thii 24 op 1: i on Wras einpru.; i m« t&l y 7,7 mi 1 1 ion dol 1 ar s and woul d take 25 about f i ve year s to complete1.

005166 1 ;: The second option would be to recover the onsite 2 |' trichioroethylene in the 30 foot and 100 foot sands. That 3 ,i! would involve pumping groundwater out from both of those d i zones onsite, treati ng the smal1 amount of trichioroethylene | e '! contaminated water there, and disposing of that water also.

i! ! 6 !iti! The cost of that option is approximately 3.8 million dollars, 7 and i t would take about seven years to complete. I g "' The third option is to recover all of the ft 9 f,t contaminateri groundwater that was contaminated from the 10 i; material at the site, both in the 3O foot sand offsite and 11 II on si te, arid in the I OO foot sand on si te. Again the water 12 ii would be pumped, it would be treated, and disposed of. 13 ' Thi s Dp11on would take about, for the lower zone, i: H ji the 100 -foot zone, would only take a couple of years to 15 tj complete. However, in order to get all of the groundwater in i; 16 i the ^0 foot sand that is contaminated, would take 17 !, appro:: i mate! y TO years. And we are 1 ooki ng at a total cost 13 !iij of about 17,3 million dollars. His 19 We a 1 so develaped several alternatives that would 20 jj• address the soils — the contaminated soils onsite. ihe ! 21 first of these options is called the no-action option. We 22 t look at this alternative no matter what site we are looking 23 at- 24 !I ! &asi cal 1 y, under the no-action alternative, we have j; 25 ! studied the site, we determine it is not a problem, and we

005167 —_ walk away -from it as it is. The only actions that Mould real 1y be involved here wauld still be long-term groundwater monitoring and an occasional inspection at the site. However, no corrective activities would be involved. The second alternati ve, alterneiti ve B, i S a cap and slurry wall alternative. This alternative would involve basically constructing a slurry wall around the si te, down to the clay under the 30 foot sand, and then constructing a seven-foot mul t1 1 * /er&d cap across the site sur-face without 10 II any excavat i or, of mater i al s that are currently onsi te. H Wt. 1 oot ed at this opti on and we considered that it 12 would not total ' y meet the objectives -for the lower ground- 13 water . The primary reason for that is that there are approx- t 14 [imately 700 dru.-ns buried at the site, and we don't know what 15 ' the condition or the contents o-f all of those drums are. it 16 The pos=ibi1ity is there that one of those or 17 several of those drums over time could leak the contaminants 18 or the contents of those drums could be found in the 30 foot 19 sand and potentially migrate deeper into some other zones and 20 then offsite underneath the slurry wall. So we eliminated 21 the cap and slurry wall option for that reason. 22 Alternatives C, D, and E. involve excavation of 23 different levels of soil, different volumes of soil onaite, 24 disposing of that excavated soi1, and then backf i11 ing the 25 excavated areas, and then constructing the s«ame cap and

005168 slurry wall over the site and slurry wall around the site. 2 We looted at three levels of excavation. The 100 3 parts per million RGBs, 50 parts per million PCBs, and 25 4 parts per million FC&&. These levels were selected so that 5 we cculd look at alternatives that exceed, meet, and do not 6 meet the 50 part per million disposal standards set in the 7 Toxic Substances Control Act. 8 For these three alternati ves, we looked at three 9 I di -f-f erent di spos,*! opt i ons. The * i rst option is the offsite 10 land-fill. As you c^n see, this is the lowest cost option, 11 i, 15.9 to 27-. -- fio, I am sorr^. 30 -- I can't — Yes. 23.7, i! 12 i! 25.7 million dollars. The offsite landfill offers, aside t| 13 r from being the 1owest cost alternative, offers the other 14 advantage in that the contaminated material is removed from 15 ' the area. 16 However, there are some disadvantages to of f51te 17 landfill. First off, there are very few landfi11s in the II 18 j| country that are permitted to specifically — There are very ' 19 few landfills in the country right now that are permitted to i 20 take PCBs. There is also a hazard associated with excavating 21 and hauling that material offsite. I i 22 Thj s option would take, or alternative C, approxi- 23 mately one year, maybe a little bit more. Alternative E would run about two years, and in that time there would be 25 tructs constantly moving through the neighborhoods, hauling

005169 i soil off or hauling material back on site for backfilling. [ The second option for disposal we looked at was the * onsite incinerator. This is a more costly alternative method i of disposal than the off site landfill, as you can see. i However, it does offer the benefit of totally destroying the i]' l waste. It also offers the benefit of not having to haul | waste out or haul back fill material in. The onsi te i nci ner a tor waul d be a camp let el y tt ansportah! e unit, essentially sel f -contained. It would I" ji burn only the waste at Geneva and woul d be dismantled and j, removed up or. co.Tipl etion of the remedi si action. 12 The thi rd al ter native di sposal method we lo-jked at 13 . was the offsite incinerator. Offsite incineration is by far ' |the most e^.pensi ve of the three alternative methods we looked i1 1 i ' at. Offsite incineration al BO has more 1 i mi tat ions in terms !|O. f facilities available than the offsite landf i 1 1 . ftnd the? three or four facilities that are currently aval lab 1 & to burn PC&s are running very close to capacity. Now, what that means is that we could only take a certain i amount of mater ial off the site at any one time. We woul d have trucks possibly for decades coming in and out of the si te, at , you know, very slow paces, maybe a few trucks whenever we can get into the schedule of the facilities so that they cou] d take our waste. However, because the schedules or the capacity is

005170 28

1 i so limited, that capacity becomes the limiting factor in how 2 i |.. qui cl.ly we can excavate? mater i al from the site. It does 3 !! offer the same benefits as onsite incineration in terms of i 4 ii| totally destroying the waste material, but it is the most i] costly. The f inal al ternati ves we looked at, F-l , F— 2, and the final one should be F-3, is excavation to the same level s of FCBs onsite and then constructing an onsite landfill.

!; This alternative, as you can see, ranges from 31.5 to 36,9 10 ! mi 1 1 1 on dol 1 ars. H i; However, in -- due to site limitation, primarily 12 ii the sise of the site and the lack of storage capacity for 13 [, i materials that we excavate whi le we are bui Idin^q the 14 i';; landfill, most of the soil that 15 excavated would be !j 15 [; contaminated and we would still have to take that offsite to |! 5 16 [. Permitted facility. 17 For that reason and because of the additional cost 18 over tne offsite landfill, these three alternatives were 19 jj rejected as possible for Geneva Industries. 20 What we wauld like to recommend as the alternati ve 21 for the cleanup of Geneva Industries is alternative C. We 22 will excavate soils containing greater than 1OO parts per 23 {million of FCfcs, all of the drums found at the site. 24 We? waul d backf ill the excavated areas, and 25 construct a cap, this multilayered cap over the site, and the

005171 29 slurry wall around the site to contain the contaminated water 2 ' in the 30 foot sand. We would also implement groundwater 3 i option 2, which was pumping and treating and disposing all of the contaminated — the groundwater contaminated with trichloroethylene, both m the 30 -foot and the 100 foot sand. il The total cost — Now, before I get into cost, I would like to say that we are considering onsite 8 jj incineration, offsite incineration, and offsite landfilling 9 .: as possible disposal alternatives. 10 |j The final selection of what disposal alternative is

n ..used will be based primarily en the effectiveness of the 12 jj remedy in terms of providing public health protection, 13 protection to the environment, the availability of facilities 14 '; at the time we would consider construction of the remedy. 15 '; Tne cost of the: remedy is certainly a consideration 16 'I that we will loot at, and also the ultimate reliability of 17 ;j whatever method we consider or we choose for the disposal of ,ii 18 •! the waste. 19 '; The cost of the alternatives would range from 14.9 20 j million dollars for the offsite landfill alternative — the 21 'construction costs, I am sorry, would range -from 14.9 million 22 n(dollar s for the offsite landfill alternative urp to about 29.2 23 million dollars if we were to consider an offsite incinerator. 25 Annual costs for these alternatives are estimated

005172 j to be approximately 1.8 million dollars, for the first two | | years, *402,OOO for the n«xt *ive years, and then $107,000 thereafter. Operation and maintenance costs were calculated out for a 3O-year period. 5 The types a* activities that are considered in 6 operation and maintenance would be the long-term groundwater ; monitoring program, periodic inspections of the cap across 3 the site, repairs if necessary, and the operation of the 9 groundwater recovery system for the period of time specified 10 for that par 11cular option. Thank you. 11 Oh, I am sorry. I am not done yet. The last two 12 slides I have -- I will go through these very briefly. This 13 slide shows the areas that would be excavated to a hundred 14 parts per million in alternative C. Over most of the site you 15 will see that the contamination is limited to approximately )6 the iirst foot. 17 However, there are some areas where the contamina- 18 tion would go as deep as twelve feet, and we would have to 19 excavate these areas in order to get to that contamination. 20 The final slide that I would like to show is a 21 cross section of what the cap would look like that would be 22 placed on the site toward the end of the remedial action. As 23 you can see, it starts out — it is a multilayered cap, three 24 feet of clay, then a 60 mi I synthetic liner, which is approx- 25 imately a quarter of an inch thick, a two-foot flow zone.

005173 1 |*ji What this does is, it is a — It captures precipi- 2 1ii'1 tat ion and tries to channel 11 away from the cap itself into the — what you will see on the l*?ft side there, is a small drainage ditch. And this water would just drain and be jdischarged into the flood control channel. i ; Then you see a two-foot vegetative cover and the Ii surf ace of the site would then be seeded and mulched to ' prevent — or to minimize the erosion of the cap. Oka/. i! q !ii: Thank you ver v much. jI i: 10 | ;i MR. EDLLJfJD: Everybody is blinking, I guess getting i1 used to our slide- show. All right. At this point I would 12 11 k& to start to turn the- meeti ng over to you a bit. 1 do 13 have a couple of announcements to make. I think — Father 14 Jose, is that — CJ'i, you have arrived. Okay. So thank you 15c, very much. 16 Fathtri Jo^e i s here to help out with translating i! 17 I|I. for those that need it. Mrs. Orosco volunteered — subbed in 13 j1! f or you whi 1 e you were out. We haven ' t had any takers yet, 19 And one other thing. I have now about 30 people that wish to 20 make some sort of a statement. 21 We promised Mayor Thiel that we would try to give 22 him back h,s hall around 10 o'clock tonight, or before. In 23 order to do that, I would like to have comments limited

24 generally to ten minutes. Five minutes. Four minutes. No.

25 I don't |. no* wc. „ I sai d ten minutes. I am sorry. Five minutes maximum. Olay.

005174 To help me, I asked for a volunteer. Mr. Charles 2 jj Tanner — or Reverend Charles Tanner, I guess, has agreed to be our timekeeper. What he wi11 do is, he has got a little watch over there and when four minutes have gone past, he will hold up a little -Hag so that if you are speaking and you kind of lost track a* time, take a look for that little flag and that will 1et you know that four minutes has gone by. 9 If five minutes happens, he will pop up a little 10 bit, 1 ool: at you, and sit down, and th^t will 1 et you know 1 11 ; that your ti me- i s pretty much up- Okay" Now, usual 1 y at the 12 very beginning of the public comment portion of the thing, of 13 meetings 11 ', e this, we of f er oppartuni ty far elected 14 officials to mate a statement. 15 || We have with us tonight Ms. Fat Black from Senator 16 Gramm's office. I don ' t believe she will be making a 17 statement, but I think you ought to know that she i s here and 18 j representing his office and is 1 istening in. Oh, I am sorry. 19 Thank you. Senator Bentsen's office is here. 20 Congressman Andrews is flying in from Washington 21 and he wanted to be here to give a statement and we are 22 looking for him. And Representative Ralph Wallace, I 23 bel ieve, woul d like to make a statement as Hell. Since 24 Representat i ve W*1 lace is here now, I believe, why don't we 25 start off with that and then we will proceed with the other p&ople that want, to make a comment.

005175 Pardon me"* I am sorry. I don't have a complete 1 ist. Represent at i ve l.yle Edwards — Al Edwards. State representative, sir? Okay. There is our comment phone Uf there. I am sorry. That is an oversight, I do want to thank Mayor Thiel for the use at the hall and also — I have it right here, Mr. Charles Wilson, Oh, you have a comment as wall, too. Oh. Mr. Mancuso. All right. See, we have these little — At the •beginning of this thing we had these little cards we ii1 led If! out up at the front. It helps us flgure out. My iolks at the back didn ' t give me a full deck of cards to play with, I 12 guess. Let me -- Another one. 13 Oka /. Wh/ don ' t we start then. Would you state 14 i your name and affiliation, please, and then we wil 1 be open t 15 i l!-fo< r your statement. ij 16 i!ir| STATEMENT BY REPRESENTATIVE AL EDWARDS 17 I MR. EDWARDS: Thank you very much. To all of our i 18

005176 t . the chairman a* the Harris County delegation, Representative 2 '.. Wallace. 3 ' However, I wi11 make this statement, because we 4 j! have voted unanimously from the subcommittee not to support II 5 |i this site and so he is going to get into some details about : i jij t why. So outside of anything outlandish, whatever- ;i i Represent at i. ve Wal lace says, I am saying the same thing j through him, Thank you very much. 9 MR. EDLUND: I don't know ibout bankrolling your 10 rjj -five minute intervals. If you could keep it to the five 11 j| minutes, we would appreciate it. 12 It STATEMENT BY MR. RALPH WALLACE U J! Statt Representative 1.1 MR. WALLACE; Is it hot in here or is it just me"> 15 I don't have « podium here. I am used to talking from a i. 16 jj podium where I can lay my papers out here, because 1 really i; ' 1? jj don't hcwe a written text. What I want to do is I really 18 want to ask you s bunch of questions, and hopefully during 19 this pr esentat i on tonight, you wi 1 1 be able to answer some o-f 20 my questions that I have concerning, specifically, 21 incineration. 22 First of all, I would like to read the resolution 2,1 that the Subcommi ttee on the Harris County Delegation, Toxic 24 Waste Disposal, passed just a couple of hours ago. That 25 toxic wast5? subcommittee, comprised of State Representative

005177 1 jj Lloyd Criss, as the chairman, and Senator Chet brooks, State

2 ^Representatives Robert Echols, Roman Martine2, of course, 3 ] Representative Al. Edwards, and myself, all of whom pretty 4 jmuch have toxic waste sites within their legislative districts or very near and adjacent that. I would like to just basically get into the 7 |j questioning right now about some of the problems that I have

B !st i with incineration. I am concerned about the emissions of .I :i g M d ION ins and ether hazardous mater i al s -from these il 10 li!! incinerators, 11 And I heard earlier in the testimony that the 12 i'[incineratori s supposed 1 y burn off al 1 these toxic wastes, yet 13 i''thj e document at i on that 1 have here from the EPA itself, from 14 i!the Science Advisory Board of the ERA in a report on April 5, 15 i 1935, one of their conclusions was basically that the (i : 16 1j1j toxi ci ties of emissions and effluents from land-based and 17 1, ocean-based incinerators are largely unknown. |i 18 | Also within that document, conclusion number ant — 19 iI and of course my questions are related to the report by your 20 science advi sory commi ttee?, since that is an agency or 21 division within the ERA itself — the major conclusions and 22 recommendstions in the synopsis in conclusion number one, it 23 says that "accidental spills and fugitive emissions," which 24 it refers to as emi&siona around valves, inadvertent minor 25 ruptures in containers or pipes or things like this do occur

005178 1 -\ at these sitt?s and during these processes. : i 2 I; &ut it acknowledges A possibility that fugitive 3 P emissions and accidental spills may release more than is t! released from incomplete waste incineration. In conclusion two, it states that "to date only a very small portion of the

;if l compounds found in emissions from incinerators have been identified qualitatively or quantitatively. 8 I! A*, a consequence, the concept of deatruction ii 9 ^efficiency, while valid for comparing the relative operating 10 iiii per f ormance of i ncinerators, does not completely address the 11 i protileiT of what is emi tted from the inci nerator stack and 12 ii does not, therefore, constitute a reliable basis for i'. 13 !' developing e:.pos'jre assessments," which, of course, is what H u •• we are primarily interested in here m this area because of 15 i| the densely populated population that surrounds this site. it ;i 16 |; Cont i nuj ng , on concl us ion three, research on ] i 17 !|J| performance of incinerators has occurred only under optimum 18 burn si tuatians and sampling on occasion has been 19 ; discontinued where you have had problems with that 20 incinerator and it has been upset. 21 So my question to you is when you have been doing 22 tests, you have been doing them in optimum type situations at 23 your first initial test burn, what kind of testing are we 24 going to see on a r&gular continuing basis of an 25 incinerator ~~*

005179 37 Conclusion number four states that "the exist! ng 'analytical data for emissions from hazardous waste incinerators has serious limitations. Among the major problems are the limited number of chemicals selected for analysis and the- fact that the analytical methodologies have not been validated either for the conditions of the test or for the complex mixtures that exist in incineration emissions." 9 Conclu~ion number six, -- 10 MF,. EDLUND: We have a flag. 11 MR, WI..LIAMS: — the committee found that "the 13 agt-r.cy 's ev^l uwL . GI-.E of tr ansport and fate of emi ssions, 13 whi le apparent 1 , emphasi ::ing the significance of the 14 ! dilution o* pollutants have not significantly addressed 15 mecham sn>5 in !:•,<. envi r on men t whi ch would result in the 16 concentration of e^i ssiori products. " 17 So i«hi'. I art. concerned about here is we already 18 have a site in Deer Far\, which is a 50 -- I am borrowing 19 some of Representative Al Edwards' time. 20 MR. EDLUND: I didn't think they were bankable, but 21 go ahead. 22 MR. WILLIAMS: Go ahead. And Senator Brooks was 23 here earlier, and he asked me too, because these are some 24 questio.E that the delegation has left and that is the last 25 one I have 1eft.

005180 38 MR. EDLLJND: Perhaps I could ask — AH right. I was going to say, if you would liLie to submit that document for the record -- MR. WILLIAMS: Would you like me to speed up a little — get a little faster? 6 MR. EDLUND: Instead of reading it, it might go a 7 little quicker. 8 MR- WILLIAMS: Sure. I thinl: the people here in 9 the audience? need to be aware of the serious doubts and 10 reservations that the Science Advisor y Panel has addressed to the EPA. No* just briefly, to be quid , there is about 15 other problems that I have. 13 I air. concerned about the bias syndrome that exists 14 in this agency. And right here, without reading from it, I 15 have -- the Office of Technology Assessment states 16 specifically that the status quo e;: i sting technology bias 17 syndrome within the? ERA i s that towards inci neration and not 18 towards new and upcoming technologies- I won't go into 19 detail. I will submit that in writing. 20 The other problem I have is with reference to the 21 company that did the feasibility study, IT. And IT has 22 interests in incinerations. In fact, I believe in 23 "Engineering Times" of 6-B2, IT was one of the companies that 24 helped de^elop the mobile inciner ator. So there i s a 25 conf1ict of interest.

005181 IT is also one of the companies that is right now . i wanting to manage and handle the Gulf Coast Waste Disposal Authority site in Texas City. So sure, they are going to !»recommen\i d incineration because they are in that business to make money. And 1 am concerned about that, that there could 6 be a conflict of interest and the feasibility study could 7 have been biased. 8 ;; I want -- there are a lot of experts that could |ftf 9 ij have attended this meeting from some of our universities that !i |j 10 t!j i I would have 111 ed to have summarized and quoted, but I can't 11 \\ji because I thin* it is critical we have public participation 12 ijand that the public gets the right to know from some of its 13 ji a•• sci entists and san.e of its awn peopl e, and certainly unbi as&d 14 !l toward incineration, type of input come in. ri 15 ; But that is not going to happen unless we can have 16 !j an additional meeting to provide our scientists the 17 i opportum ty to come speak before your board and argue wi th 18 you scientifically. I am not a scientist, although in the 19 1ast two weeks 1 feel like I have gone definitely through 20 some kind of a 1 earning curve. 21 You come in here and I am concerned about the high 22 tech aspect of this facility. It is my understanding that 23 you are going to be constructing a hundred ton portable 24 incinerator. Now that is twice the si^e of the Ral1 ins 25 i ncinerator.

005182 40 It is my understanding that that currently is not in exi stente anywhere in the United States. There is not a hundred ton portable unit. That is a question to you. Is there — Has there been one in existence? Is it burning and 5 j what has been the history"1 6 (j Jf this is going to be the first time far a new 7 | site, new facility, at Geneva, then we don't want a test site I g at Geneva. We can't afford a test site at Geneva. The other g ; point that I want to ir.at e is that there is a discrepancy here , jj ! 10 i,! on the number of cubic yards that are to be excavated and ! 11 12 fr I understand that currently, and I .ant to commend

13 you for tht J 14 j cleaning the = 1 t» up thus far. I j: 15 j removed approximately 7,200 cubic yards of dirt thus f l! 1 16 ij. that correct" 17 i{; : MR. WILLIAMS: I am not sure of the specific 18 !. number from the planned removal — 19 MR. WALLACE: i have a summar/ af your i 20 know it

2 MR WILl ' " - -»»1S: A quest,on Was asked of me if there 22 l| were approximately 320O cubic yards'- — 23 Mft. WALLACE: 3200 cubic yards. 24 MR. WILLIAMS: That have already been removed - 25 MR. WALLACE: That have been remQved. And ,.a

005183 41 1 jj million gallons of liquid waste, 80 tons of debris, and that H 2 ii cost you i million point five hundred thousand dollars. 3 [; MR. WILLIAMS: Those numbers are approximately correct. That was the planned removal done in 1984. MR. WALLACE: Okay. Was there any — Did you — Have you encountered any problems wi th that process so far? Were there any problems with that? g : MR. WILLIAMS: Would you clarify what the question t.;i ii 0 a is"^ What l.ind of problems iI!i 10 j! MR. WALLACE: Wel 1 , you have removed 3,200 cubic !! 11 . yards o-f soil and other con tarn in ants. Did you have any ii 1 12 !;i' problems in removing those" I mean was there any -- 13 |! MR. WILLIAMS: No. Physically^ MR. WALLACE: Physically. Was there any other 15 1] contaminati ons associated with that offsite, anybody in the 16 ji nei ghborhcod suf f e-r any l.ind of heal th side effect or i: n jj anything on that" i! 18 I! MR. WILLIAMS: No. And I believe that if it had, 19 iijit would have been stated in the feasibility study, so — 29 MR. WALLACE: Well, I think you are right. I think 21 it was very successful and you did a very good job. And I 22 commend /ou for it. Now, that is 3,20O cubic yards you are 23 talk i ng about moving off this site. In your proposal you are 24 asl.i ng to burn 22, OOO cubic yards. We are already 1? percent 25 there in remo vi ng the toxic soil from this site already and

005184 1 i ! we haven't had any problems. i i 2 Now, my question is, are we talking about 22,OOO or 3 35,000"* Are we talking about dredging half the site or part 1;1 4 of the si te"* Are we tal king about digging 30 feet down where i ; 5 («' the contaminants . are 30 feet down or what" Because if you take the topsoi1 out there on that site and say that you i ,: .....' j didn't have to dredge the whol& inner area dawn 30 feet, but i 8 i just three or four or f i ve feet down, that whole surface area g : can add up to over a mi 111on cubit yards. 10 jli| And theit could take 30 years to burn. And that is t • 11 Ii- why -- it might not be a mobi 1 e site, but you could be 12 i!' burning out there for quite some time. I have just got a !> 1 13 i couple of more things. 14 | Mk. EDLUND: Representative Wallace, it has been 20 15 'I minutes. 16 ;! MR. WALLACE: It couldn't be that long. 17 ii MR. EDLUND: You have used up three other — Ten? 18 You have only used up one other counci1 man 's. 19 MR. WALLACE: I think these records need — These 20 questions just, you know -- I don't want to debate with you 21 but I want to get a question in, because if you can answer my i 22 questions, then we can provi de thi s public input. 23 And I think the members of the delegation are very 24 interested in getting quest i ons answered. And we haven't had 25 Ii them answered in the last two weeks that we have been

005185 t requesting this information. So for the record, we want to 2 as t some questions. MR. EDLUND: Okay. Fine. r,. MR. WALLACE: The other argument right here is we do need to define that. Are we talking about only 22,000 /cubic yards or are we talking about 44, COO or 64,OOO? Be- 7 jj cause that can be anywhere from one to four or five years, a H g significant amount of time, or even up to 30 years. 9 ' The other question I haven't been able to determine ,0 . is we I naw there is emissions of dioxins. How are you going it to monitor -far these di o.: ins and fur an emi ssions? I know 12 that there is a test that you can use that is $150,000 to do 13 th

17 shutdown procedures if W£, have air stagnation alerts? That 18 ; is my question to you. And if not, then — which are re- 19 ||quired in states like Arkansas and some o* the other states- tl

25 i MR. WALLACE: Yes, I know. We have g£)t tc

005186 44 high tech. You & now the last three ones to lift off the pad blew up- The — I am concerned about what is the hurry. 1 have asked for postponement, more time for the public to digest this .information, which is highly technical. You yourself have said that there i s no immediate contamination or serious, threat to groundwater contamination. So what is the rush'1 What is wrong with giving us another 8 1! month, two more weeks, or si • more months in terms of taking 9 i! the feasibility study and expanding it, and in my opinion, i 10 doi ng one that i s not bi ased"1

11 j! The other question I have i or you is what are you t 12 1 i: going to do about fuel' Hon .are you going to fuel this i 1 13 I facility"" What are you going to do with the ash" You said 14 :h^t you are going to b

005187 1 to come back here in 2O years and clean it up again. 2 £ you have to concrete it and leave us with a 3 tomb, that doesn't loot lile the mast efficient way to clean 4 ; it up and I don't think all the methods have been thoroughly vexplored. &ut someone else will get into that. 5 • i Secondly, will the public hav& the right to know

7 ff when something does go wrong^ You know, since our Air 8 j Control E fact, it has 5 tendency, 1 believe, to really mess those I; 14 I, scrubber s. up real bad. The scrubbers are part of -- one of 15 the parts, for- the general public's information, that are i 16 ;; supposed to catch those little things before they come out. i| i. 17 j•! And your fuel si tuation. Are you going to fuel 18 this with garbage""* Are you goi ng to fuel it with other to>'. i c 19 wastes"1 Are you going to use 1 ow-grade cJiesel fuel? Are you 20 going to use natural gas"1 I don't have an answer. 21 The fuel storage problem out there is going to be 22 !- |i horrendous. You are tal king about bui Iding an inc inerator 23 [that is going to have to maintain TOGO degree temperatures, 24 so there i a goi ng to be? a tremendous amount of need for fuel . 25 I am concerned about burning garbage and the toxic waste

005188 t 46 r itself there as possible fuel for this facility, because it i' - would be a cheap way to get out of paying an expensive fuel bill at our expense. Real quick, and I am going to wrap up, but I don't like the track record of the existing incinerators across the country. And they have had problems and they have told everybody before they came in and built them that this is the high tech» the most current solution. s And that IE what we are being told right now, yet 10 the tract record ; s a very, very poor track record, even the 11 mobi1e incinerators. There has been proposals made to you 12 : jii for alternative ways to go about cleaning up this site. 13 i There WD^J] d be consi derabl e savi ngs not onl y to you r 14 Ii but the state of e,;as, who does participate to some extent, 15 ' in that funding. And I can tell you in the state of Te;:as's 16 ' i point of view, we are interested in expi or ing and 'I 17 iiji investigating those cost-saving alternatives. 18 And the bottom line 15, it is very difficult to 19 argue up here of fshore and onshore incineration when we 20 I|f| haven ' t determined yet whether it is safe offshore 200 mi 1 E?S, 21 yet we are ready to go ahead with this decision onshore. Now 22 I understand that what you are talking about there i s some i 23 I) old ships with old incinerators.

1 24 i!i ! Put if we are going to have a mobile incinerator, '! 25 I•I ! and I am sure they can get a mobi 1 e incinerator on a boat,

005189 47

so, you know, I think if yOu will resolve that problem, resolve the liability problem. You have got a bill in Congress right now that says that you want to limit liabili- ties to these people out here that live around this site. il You want to give them just three years in time to i 6 firespand to any physical damage and six years to respond i, 7 Ijthey have any kind of other physical damage. And you and , 8 kno« that in this Und of day and age, that you might not 9 . t.now till ten, fifteen, twenty years down the line. And 10 ..these people are go, ng to b& totally absolved of liability. 11 .^ ! ** telling you that we are not prepared as a 12 citizenry to accept your Lability for a new technology that 13 .is, in my opinion, hazardous to the population around this M 61 t*. And w.th that, I aE, that WB nave a continuatlon af 15 ^this meeting whfrreby these questions are properly addressed 16 I and we get a nr,, feasibil.ty study and allow for public 17 :^ participation in thiB process, because the people down here 18 ««nt to clean th.s thing up a, fast they want to clean it I aa 19 ;up, but not at their risl.. 20 1! And the, want to be part of this process, and that 21 is all we are asling for. And ,t ,s difficult to be part of 22 ! this prcces, when aH these people here are unable to digest 23 | the tons and volumes of technical ^formation that haS been 24 jQ.ven to ur. Wlthin the last just two or three days. 25 j find the f.mshed product, the bottom line, the

005190 48 i fjll finished product, you are talking about biodagrdation, you |j ! 7 • ,i looked French, Limited, and you *ent out thsre and you cleaned that site up with bi odegradation. That was 2300 acres of swamp land. Yet you say when I askod for that racamnmnclatian over here, that that type technology do»*n't oxlat. The finished product with incineration is nothing but a hazardous ;i 8 ;.; landfill. It would be nothing more than a testimony to our 9 ignorance. ;i 10 M Mfc. EDLUND: I would like to than*- you, 11 i Representative, for those points — those questions. We 12 j would like to answer every one- of those questions, and we i;|! 13 will in witi*ig. That is one of the reasons we have a court 14 ;: reporter he^e. Same of the general quest i one, I bel leve 1 It

15 , >? : can attempt to answer a little bit. 16 r «R- WILLIAMS: I thin! you ought to allow the n > public to continue to talk. 18 i MR. EDLUND: One of your concerns was the — mare 19 jtime for having more public meetings on this subject. We 20 opened the public comment period on May 2 and have held it — 21 or planned to hold it open for five weeks. Our regulations, 22 as I explained a little earlier, and I am not sure if you 23 heard, I m^n, but this is not a rule-making type of official 24 meeting 25 Our regulations only require us to give opportunity

005191 i for publIG comment. We have come to you to provide you wi th i the opportunity to Know what we are talking about. And franlly, with Congress debating the reauthorization of i! Super (und at the- moment , we don' t have the money for another .j public meeting, per se. We will consider holding the 6 public -- wr11 ten public comment period opftn far an 7 I] additional wee-I , until June 1O. And so I will be glad to 8 I have comment? 'Fzei -ed by then. I U'ltf. * ect*t ?. to a lot of the technical things that — 10 ; Now, I can ' t ar.sw&.' real 1 y ffiucn of the technical i terns here. 11 I am a general:;*, I only tnow a littl& bit of things. But 12 I will tr / t^ ^.:'_ i ~r a bro-ad wa / some of your questions and 13 ; not spend too n..:*- 11 rr-£ to allow other people to tall:. U A ic* r- the questions that you have are design 15 questions, abc. * *»cw would the scrubbers tat

005192 1 Us I know, does not have a working incinerator. They have

Plans, a lot of other people have plans. If we do go the

incinerator route, it IB going to be through competitive bidding and meeting a tough schedule of items. So I don't 5 ik there has been any conflict of interest. 6 With regard to —• let me see if I have summarized 7 this in — the efficiency of incinerators, per se. What 8 will — Will they make dioxins or can we control them? How 9 are you goi -ig to be sbl e to control them and make sure that 10 it i s a saf 5 oper at i on ~* 11 ager.cy is at s pcint where they have tested 12 numerous i nri e1 -si or s , different designs, under di f f erent 13 ij conditions, ncr*. just ideal test conditions. But when the u |!,, tests are done-, the, ^re done when they are burning the 15 ,! wastes. I. 15 .( You do that in trials — - as a matter of fact, in }! 17 ti:; trial runs the, have stressed the incinerators so that they 18 wi 1 1 p£?r form as poor 1 y as possi bl e so you know that they wi 1 1 19 ijI not later on deteriorate. These — The newer incinerators 20 are built with what is called feedback control mechanisms. 21 If something goes wrong, there is a shutdown 22 j! automat i call y. And you prevent emissions of the wrong kinds j! 23 j!j of pollutants by monitoring what is happening in the process* 24 !i You have.- ^ temperature sensor that knows if the temperature 25 iif! gets too 1 <.,*. , j t shuts down the whol e incinerator.

005193 I! MR. EDLUND: I a* sorry. I am trying to da that. Okay. Next. I am sorry for the length of time that took. I 3 believe we have State Senator Chet Brooks- is there a 4 statement -from — He i not present at the time. Mr. 5 s ilMancuso — Representative Philip ttaricuso, 6 STATEMENT &Y MR. FRANK MANCUSO 7 Vice Mayor pro tern, City of Houston 8 MR. MANCUSO: Than! you very much. I have got to 9 put these glasses on. If I could see, 1 would still be 10 playing ball. I am City Councilman Frank Mancuso, also the 11 Vice Mayor pro tern of the City of Houston, and I would like 12 to than* you for this opportunity and appreciate your 13 positi on. 14 But you tnow this ls the third time that we have haci An undesirable project that has been proposed for our 16 i: area out here. And I am happy to say that so far, we are 17 hitting a thousand. We w,as abl e? to stop a disposal plant 18 that was. going in out here to dispose of grease. 19 Also, these same people, I might add, that the 20 citizens of Houston and South Houston both, combined their 21 efforts to stop the part- and ride lot that was over there. 22 But they feel that once again tonight they have to come out 23 in numbers and protect their families and homes from a 24 project that the/ think might harm them and also our area. We want the site cleaned up, but we don't think

005194 that incineration on the site is the safe way to do it. So I 'would like, at this time, to read a resolution that the city counctI passed just yesterday, unanimously, and when I read ' this that will end my speech, so it won't take but just a 1 second. This is a resolution expressing the Cit/ of Houston City Council's concern regarding the possible use of onsite 8 iit! incineration to destroy hazardous wastes situated at the ji 9 j| Geneva Industries Superfund site. 10 ri Whereas, the United States Environmental Protection i 11 Agency, EPA, h««.s accepted the Geneva Industries site at 9334 ji:t 12 ; Candath, within the city, the- Geneva site as a Superfund site | 13 !; for purposes of its closure and the disposal of various i 14 I hazardous waste materials that are situated thereon, and !: 15 : Whereas, the EFA 15 currently formulating plans for 15 |' the disposal of hazardous wastes at the Geneva site and for iiii 17 i, closure of the Geneva site, and 18 Whereas, the closure alternatives being considered 19 ; by the ERA for the Geneva site include onsite incineration of 20 soils containing F'CBs and other hazardous materials, and 21 Whereas, the Geneva site is situated in a heavily 22 populated area, 23 Whereas, the city Director of Health and Human 24 Services has expressed great concern regarding the use of 25 onsite incineration at the Geneva site because thsre is

005195 insufficient experience with the use of this form of technology i r, a heavily populated area to validate its safety • in destroying the types of hazardous materials found in the l!'i • : Geneva site, where they are mixed with soils, (' Now, therefore, be it resolved that the City I i Counci 1 of the City of Houston, Te;

:1 it site and urgss the EFA to utilize other available 12 • technologies to accomp1ish thi s c1eanup. 13 i. Section I!!, That the director of Health and Human ji 14 ; Services, his deputies and assistants are hereby authorized (5 !: and directed to express the concerns of the City Council to i 16 ; the Er'A regarding the use of incineration at the Geneva ! site. 17 J; 18 M;: And this was passed and approved yesterday, and 15 ig [i signed by the mayor and also certified by the city secretary. 2Q -'' And I might add that we have Or- Herbert McKee, who is with 21 'oui r health department. And he is here at the urging of not 22 i(only the City Counci1 and the Mayor, but also Dr. Houghton, 23 who is our health director. 24 And I would hope that maybe you could work him in 25 :after this, because this resolution authorizes him to

005196 I represent the health department. Thank you very much, ti 1 MR. EDLUND: Thank you, Mr. Mancuso. 1 4 Dr. McKee is — have you filled out a card and gotten it — All right. His turn will come, and we will remember that he is — Let me see. I believe — Have I finished"1 — Congressman Andrews is not here yet, I believe" Mayor Thiel, would you like to make a statement , al Thank you. STATEMENT &V MR. AL THIEL Mav'cr, City of South Houston MR. THICL: Than I you, and good evening, ladies and ,gentlemen. First, I would like to say that I would like to

12 thank the citizen- in our community here that worked so hard 13 : to let our people tnow of this meeting tonight, so that the 14 i citizens can cnre out and understand what is going to happen 15 Ijjj here on this Geneva site. 16 j We wor ( ed many long hours the last two weeks to let !7 our people I now in this area that this was going to happen, IS and I expected C,OOO people here tonight. It looks like the 19 room is full. 20 I have lived in thus community for 25 years. I 21 have served the city of South Houston as mayor for the past 22 year. We are a very close knit, hardworking community, one 23 that I am very proud of. We care about the environmental 24 quality of our area and we care about our neighbors. 25 I am here tonight because the Geneva Industries

005197 1 I site is a threat to our community. It is a threat to our i 2 ! faffu 11ws, and a threat to our children. Its use far the !j 2 !jmanufacture of PCBs from 1967 to 1978 left a permanent hazard that we need to deal with. 5 We must decide how to deal with it now, and we must 6 do it -- do so in a responsible manner. We in the? community 7 share three goal s. We want the Geneva Industries s.ite 8 cleaned up. We want it cleaned up quickly. And we want it 9 ;j cleaned up s*»f el y - 10 We bel i £?ve that the EPA shares these goal s. 11 I However, we are determined tha ~. the unique nature of the i! 12 i Geneva site industry be recogm zed before a final decision

13 ij about cleanup is nade. As other speakers have pointed out t i"eacl h of the three alternati ves under consideration by the £F'A i!i! r invole risk^. ! ii 1 16 fj ; E

005198 57 highly toxic materials have leaked into the atmosphere. Increased toxic levels have been found in surrounding nej ghborheads*. In one case, a tank containing

4 II! f hazardous wastes bl ew up at an inci nerator, killing six peopl c?. In lignt of these facts and of the clear threat e incineration poses to our community, I urge the EPA to choose another alternati ve for cleanup at the Geneva 9 f Industries site. Onsite incineration is not safe, not IIi i proven, and not acceptable. 11 Ij1 j lal^ahavearesolutionthatl would like to put 12 jIi on file that has been passed Tuesday by our City Council that 13 I opposes on si tc- i nc. i ner ation. Thank you. i • 14 N; MR. EDLUNL: Thank you very much. Thank you, Mayor 15 I..Thiel* . 1 bcliL/e I have one more elected official that 16 jj wishes to make a statement also. Mayor John Ray Harrrison. 17 j Is he here"1 IT. Mayor Harrison outside" Thank you. Can you 18 i 19 STATEMENT &Y MR. MIKE ANDREWS 20 Congressman, 22nd District 21 MR. ANDREWS: We can hear outside. I am Make 22 jj And-ews '( 23 MR. EDLUND: Oh, I am sorry. Congressman Andrews. 24 MR. ANDREWS: And I am sorry j am late. We had a 25 .trade bill to vote on this afternoon and I have been to three

005199 58 i 1 ;i,t airports, but I am here, and I have made it by 3O minutes. n 2 ' So I Am delighted to have a chance to be here. I — Just 3 i 'initially, I want to say I am pleased that we are haviny a this 4 hearing tonight, that we are going forward with this 5 I process. 6 !|j In Particular, J want tc comment on some of the 7 | people that I think have really worked hard on this project. |j 8 jjClty Councilman Frank Mancuso, State Representative Ralph g j!:: Wallace, Mayor Al Thiel, Mayor John Ray Harnson, all are »0 people that have spent time and commitment and -feel strongly, 11 , as I do, that onsite incineration is wrong for this site and ! 12 should not. happen in South Houston. '3 We found this site in 1982, before I was —• after I 14 was elected, but before- I was sworn into Congress, and • t 15 commenced worl ing with a lot of local leaders, including the i. 15 i:, ones I have mentioned, on starting cleanup. All anyone needs j; |i to do is loot at the site to see what a terrible danger it !i 18 poses for the citizens of South Houston and the residents of 13 the nearby comnium ty. 20 The first time I went there, I saw chiIdren playing 21 in that ditch right along the site. There was r-.a fence to 22 keep them out, and anyone, i t doesn ' *_ have to be an 23 | environmentalist, could tell chat a heavy rainstorm would 24 push some of that toxic material down into that ditch. ThF- firs* thing v-e did wes to -}et it fenced in.

005200 r 59 T '"•i The second tnmg we set about doing was getting it put on the i, 2 ! 1 ist for Super fund si te-s. And we were successful in doing i' 3 '' that. In the summer « we had a major hearing out here in i! South Houston, and I thinl 11 was successful, because 11 , brought togethe- the Attorney General 's office, the i 6 Iit Envi ronmental Protection Agency, all of the local leaders, and we started the progress of cleaning it up. I thinl it i^ important to note that the £PA has 9 |iit made terrific ^-.d m£»jor strides in the last three years. Nut 10 I'.!' on I y is the site secure, test wel 1 s have been dug to be su^e n i'i, the watsr i i nr t contajrin^tecJ. sofr.e c* tne to;:i c substance 12 j has be-en r&ff.c *e J f rcm tl.t site. We have taken it away. The i 13 Hj: cleanup has, 1 : te'-al 1 v star ted on the Geneva si te. 14 N.OW we -»r t- dc.wn *_o the tough nut, the hard part, in !5 : what is one ct t",t worst tor ic waste sites in the United t' 16 !!.' States. I* i ^ surely one of the highest and most danger'ous 17 |ij site= in the staie of Te;>as, but make no mistake about it, it 18 s one1 of the worst si tes in our country. 19 At a time when Sup rfund dollars are very scarce, 20 ^nd we have literally just had to fight for every penny, we 21 I got over a million dollars in Superfund money to start the 22 i]! cleanup. And that is an effort that I think all of us, all 23 j the community, city, and county leaders, can be proud of. 24 i: 6ut again, now 1S the time to make the really tough 25 decision. We three choices before us, three realistic

005201 11 60 1 ., choices, one of those being onsite incineration. The other 2 two: mo/e the waste, store it; movt? th« waste and burn it. I 3 lj;: thinl what we should concentrate on arid what my primary focus is is that onsite incineration i s not the proper course of action to take?. It will not work. Now , in thi s i nstance, there ar« — thrre \ no precedent, first of all, for the EF'A tuso e this site. Never g Ijin the history of the Environmental Protection Agency has i. 9 1| there been an onsite location located this close to a ;i i ?0 l! rest dence. 11 Fifty feet, from this site is a neighborhood. 12 1i! Within one mile of this site is one of Pasadena's major 13 IuI elementar y schools. Never has the EPA attempted an ansite 14 l••l ] incineration project in a neighborhood, in a community, in a

15 !,citv, lite they are asking to be done, or they are 16 recommending to be done. 17 I thinf second, what has been clear in testimony 18 before my committee in Congress, and with other groups around 19 the country, is that we do not have enough data currently to 20 make adequate decisions about onsite incineration. All the 21 data has yet to be accumulated. One of the things we do know 22 about to>;ic waste sites is how little we do know about clean- 23 ing ther, up. We? don't have enough data for this kind of 34 inciner ati on. 25 Three, but we also I-now that there have been

005202 i\;! tragedies that have occurred because of onait* incineration. i': In midland, Michigan, in Louisiana. Accidents do happen. 'I; ; Things can go awry in a year period o4 time, or more, that it i | wi 11 take to properly burn this material, We can't let that | happen in & neighborhood. || We can't foresee what might happen during this year's period of time, whether a hurricane will com* through again, a natural disaster, whether an explosion may occur at the site, whetf.tr' somecne may mate A mi stale, whether the technology mav net be adequate, whether the debris itself,

11 the waste i t £e*l * >•*•* v not respond life we anticipate to this 12 1'!1 type? of high intensity burning. if 13 Thest. *re ^*11 things that I think the EFA should

14 ''considei' r serio-jslv in reevaluati ng what course of action to M tale. I am confident that you will not choose oneite ii |i i nci nerat i on. 1 believe that the EFA s primary goal i s shared j!j ! by all of us. That this site needs to be cl eaned up i irst, IB quickly. The time has come to clean it up. 19 And secondly, that it needs to be cleaned up as 20 safely as possible. As to the other two alternatives, I am 21 not an environmental engineer, nor am I a person that can 22 evaluate the economies of the costs that it might take to 23 move this wastf to Louisiana or Arkansas or some other 24 location to sto-^e it or to burn it or to use some other 25 future technology.

TT .»iinin,iin| i IIMUJ "BSS

005203 6= One of the goals that I have in Congress, and I thint. one o* the goals the people that work at EFA, is is to develop new technologies. The real long-range answer to some of these waste sites is yet to be determined. Ue are going j| to get there, but we ar« not there tonight. And Me don't I'l* |! have that alternative before us. ff jj What HE? are here to decide is are we going to burn ,I I i FCB», this waste -- this terrible wastt?, in South Houston or • t 9 is the EF'A going io choose one o* the other two alternatives. J; 10 |i ;. And I submit that the proper course o* action is to choose u jj one of the othe and not to burn il here in South 12 I, ! i Houston. t1 13 I MR. EU-UNDs Thanl you. i, 14 MR. Af^PFvEWB: I woul d 1 11 e to make one other very »5 Short comment. I have visited with Senator Bentsen twice in 16 the last weet . I don't believe that he has a representative 17 ;. here tonight, but he ha£ written a letter to Dick Whittmg- 18 !'tton• . and with the permission a* you in the hearing panel, I 19 dJ; would 11 l-.e to submi t that to you for the purposes of the 20 record. 21 I! Senator Bentsen al so opposes onsite incineration in this site. Th

005204 i 67-

1 ( VOICE FROM AUDIENCE: John Ray Harrison. 2 MR. EDLUND: Yes. Is he here'' He was outside. He 3 : is coming in right now* Okay. Thank you. This is Mayor 7 4 i' John Ray Harnson, Pasadena, Texas. Right I don't know if 5 t] you can see outside. We have been trying to use a five i $ .jminute rule up froot here. At about four miny.tffisj there 7 itj| might be a white flag that might fly up in the corner here. g 'It wasn't worted too well yet, but -- 9 MR. HARRISON: I would say something. If I can't 10 rr.ai e my poj nt in two mi nutes, I will qui t anyway. So — 11 . STATEMENT E*Y MR, JOHN RAY HARRISON 12 ;: Mayor, City cf Pasadena 13 M^- HARRISON: Members of the Environmental U i Protection Agency, I certainly want to thank you for 15 providing the forum here tonight which lets us express, 16 ' certainly, our concerns. I am John Rav Harnson, mayor of 17 jt the City of Pasadena, which is one of only 31 municipalities iI :i 18 |! in Harris County. | 19 I, I represent a constituency of approximately 123,000 20 rj, people. I recall in my youth and when I was growing up that 21 jiij the only real thing we had to be thankful for during the ?iir 22 ij Depression days was our heal th and our environment. 23 ,iij J can remember when my grandfather and grandmother, 24 iijwho 1ive^ in the country, would haul their wastes and would i 25 j; haal r esident i a I garbage many miles from their farmhouse or

005205 1 ij any other farmhouse to dispose of. I was taught at an early 2 age that you do not pal 1ute your neighbors in any form. 3 .; Thing shave changed. Even the nu me rout regulatory d ;< agencies. As I grew older, I saw landfills that municipal If c if!' governments had and that they were permitied by th» «t*t» and

6 rfederal agencies. They ware permitted to. burn and to polluta. 7 it[j Certainl y, this was done on an economi cal basis. g j[: Today, i f we even thint- ai burning or polluting, we

9 i! are loot.ing at the State Health Department, the EPA, and the !i !i 10 State Water Commi ssi on, who says no, no, no, no. Our commu-

n , nities and particularly our community has recently been iined

12 I ;' ! by your agency to the tune of .f160,000 because we pol luted it because peopl e were doing something that came naturally. 14 Sore one? cer tai nl y , wi thout p^ior consent or ^5 f knowledge, has helped pollute our environment by di sposing of 16 '* FCE<= at our Geneva site. This site is in a municipal i ty of ii.. 17 i one of our sister cities and we do not want the EF'A or anyone it! I [else ^c knowingly pollute our environment and our other jg |sister cities may not be polluted in ou'" area. 20 i Tram the environment that I grew up in and remember what my grandpa and grandma taught me, remove your waste and 22 I'garbage to the waste!ands and do not pollute your neighbors, 23 'T I am asking you, in my capacity, for you not to burn and 24 j pol lute my nei ghbors. Than! you. 25 li MR. "LUND: Thank you, Mayor Harrison. Is there a

005206 1 consensus of people that might want to take a ten minute 2 breat "* Mo~ AH right. All right, then. F'ut on your seat 3 i'baits. I believe that we have one other elected official 4 i! that I just heard about. Congressman — Councilman Johnny 1 *t Am-'yo" Is that — Pardon me, 1 don't have it writtsn down. Tamayo. STATEMENT &Y MR. JOHNNY TAMAYO Councilman, City of South Houston 9 i MF.. TAMAYO: Than* you, EF'A members, for the 10 i'opportunity to address you. I want to let you know, inform n you, that I oppose onsite incineration. I thinl" that you all 12 , need to find avenues other than onsite incineration to clean 13 up that Geneva site. We want your help, and we do want the 14 i site cleaned up, and the sooner the better. 16 E*'.'t onsite incineration, in my opinion, is not the ig answer. I don't thi n( it is good for our city of South 17 Houston. l thinl that you have to consider that we have a i 18 major elementary school in the area, we have a church within . t 19 50 to 75 feet of that site, and it would be a terrible sight 20 t.,. f or our residents to see you burn those toxics for the next 21 »•; -f i ve to thirty years. That might be past my lifetime. That 22 if ;t would be terrible. i 23 i| I Know Father Jose is planning a new church in the F ' ;i. immediate vicinity, and I know that his parish, I being a 1[ 1 member, do not desire that. I think that you listening to us | If:!

005207 66 will have an effect on ycu ,„ the decision. I understand that you have the r.ght to listen to us and then 3 j| you are going to mal^e you- own decision.

E-ut I hope that /ou don't just listen to us and have ,t in mind what you are going to do already and plan

on. j certa.nly nope going through the mot.ons during this meeting and then go follow through with onsite incineration. I do want to empnasire that I do oppose 1 1 and 1 thinl the residents of South Houston oppose it and oppose it

strongly and we hope that Our message reaches you and helps

12 I' you decide on an alternate mea5urE.. Tnank you. 13 Mfc. EDLUND: Per t,apa we inundated everyone with

I bel,Bve the d.c.des, the * ! ve to thirty year idea 15 of burn.ng. you weril oMslte. However, we got the ,6 j message, Hhat yo, /en one ye<3r , , understand 17 if Al 1 r i ght . 18 Mr. Tommy ScM i tsburger . Is he present here at 19 this time- Mr. Schlitsburger- Gulf Meadows Civic Club. 20 I believe I talked «tth hi. a Uttle - no. All right. U,

21 will put him on the ^lde. Mr. Joseph 22 Thank you very much. 23 STATEMENT &Y MR. JOSEPH STAMPFL.I 24 t Scientist, Indiana University y !I 25 «R. STflMF-FLI, 1 am Joe Stampm. J am a scientist |

~.i Mllli ri'BTTl'lvm'tfrH-rli.Jti.iil'jiliJMrlnJirii'Ki'i^artigrll.-iFiffaraiiii-

005208 67

' . *rcm Indiana Un.versity and Representative Wallace invitod me

2 I down here to comment on some of the issues. I am a guest I I here. I appreciate your hospitality. I certainly won't presume to te! 1 you what to do. I will menUon some facts j and you will male the decision. First all »neiiwr»tor., toxic waste incinera

tors, municipal waste , nc, nerators , emit dioxans and dibenzo-

8 now no

9 gnot when you ma, e the measurements with careful instrumenta- 10 n tion. NOK why are these so 11 Wtl1, the/ are extremely dangerous chemicals. In 12 ;| fact, T775 dio:-ir 1= the most dangerous rhemical known to 13 man. You don't have anything which is more taxic. That ;l (4 sounds very d^^mrtic, but it is true. What do they do" !' 15 l*Jel 1 , they cau = F? Ct?.nce-, liver damage, (j-Jney damage, birth 16 .defects, stillbirths, neurological damage, and a whole host 17 it'! of ether thi ngs. 18 I will let other people comment on th& medic*! J! 19 ,. aspects. Now, can we tel 1 whether these things are coming 20 !! out of the i nciner ator"1 Unfortunately, the testing in this jj area is very, very poor. What the ERA does is has a test 22 j!i; burn to begin wj th and at that time they look at the 23 Iitt(emissions, but from then on there is no requirement to ever 24 fl!i do another test burn. 25 I,!i Somt'ti nie^i they do and sometimes they don ' t, but

005209 ; ' i 68 1 .they never do them more often than once a year, and sometimes i * 2 i they don't do them for i\ve years. The conditions under 3 which the initial test are done are extremely artificial, as 4 ! ji! pointed out by the Science Advisory Board. i; Y 5 1|1[ OU arc? starting with a machine that is brand new, i*i|it is clean, it is fine tuned as if it were a racing car. 6 tI* ; ...... , . 7 i||| They bring in the top engineers to handle that part of it, 8 r! and then they run it very, very carefully with very skilled 9 ii personnel. They picl the material to be incinerated very ! 10 ''carefully. They da the eas/ stuff. 11 r 11 .11 £*>3 what you are getting is not a very realistic 12 i> situation. Moreover, if there is an upset, if something goes I!i, , wrong, they stco the test. You can see this. Moreover, when 13 | 14 jj the results are not favorable, in some cases they don't 15 tijj report the numbers. i! 16 jj They report such things as comparable, even though M I I 17 i the emission^ a^e ^0 times what they were in another case. 18 I If twenty to one is comparable in your vocabulary, fine. You i 19 will have to settle that. 20 Ol-ay. Well, now, what happens in the real world? 21 Most of you don't want to hear a lot of numbers. So let's 22 loot at some examples. Right down the street in Deer Park, 23 , they have an incinerator to incinerate toxic wastes. It gets 24 a very — gets very tough treatment. It is subjected to 25 temperatures of 2200 degrees Fahrenheit and to very corrosive

005210 1 • 1i 69 t i :[; chemi cal s. i i 2 ; It turns out that that incinerator is out of round. 3 !. It is what is called a rotary Kiln. It ift roughly a tin can 11 4 '' that revolves. That thing is out of round. That means it "A j| leals. It emits from both ends. Now they have tried to — 5 ji g . and also it leaks hot ashes out of the feed-in. Now, they have solved that problem partially by

g t;: i putting plates on it, but they haven't solved it completely. 9 There are also probi ems with other incinerators in this coun- ;o , try. At Bator* Rouge, they are having a Jot at problems there. 11 . In fact, the state has tried shut them down several times. 12 Orte more1 ex amp I e from thi =3 country. It is not edsy

13 t' to get an incinerator to wort.. They had one in Hemps ton, 14 Long Is]and, that cost 1 7-5 mi 1 1 i on dol 1 ars to build. Now, 15 ' where I am fro-r., 135 million dollars is a IOL of money. And i 16 i; that was bad in about 1976. They discovered it was emitting 17 i<| dio.Mns and di ben^of ur«ans. !f II 18 ijt They tried to fi:: it. They put *10 million more 19 i:- into it. That is also a lot of money where I am from. It 20 !{ turns out they could not get the thing to run safely. They 21 closed it down in 198O. It hasn't been used s;nce. It now 22 has three employees, 23 Oiay. We have often been told that, wel1, we can't 24 do it here, but in Europe they know how to do it. They are 25 real 1y way ahead of us. How about Europe? What i s the story

005211 70

; We1!, they had a toxic waste incinerator at Bonnie I Bridge, Scotland. It turns out that within a 30 mile radius, iI they were getting dying cattle, cattle delivering calves i [with -- which were with birth defects. And then this started happening with human beings. And within a three-year period, iIj!j' there were six children born with one eye. This is certainly ti not a normal course cf events* I!! - .. . • • • ji In H^ff.burg, -- *!i j! MP., ECLLJN'D: >ou have got a f 1 ag. * MF . ^TANPTLI: 01 ay. In Hamburg, they hav«? been i_ .detecting ;Ji o. in 1 evt ] s whi ch are e . lr emel y hi gh and they are ifi 13 ! taH ing about shuttina dowr.. In — To conclude then, h 14 l) inci nerat i on today is real 1 v not a safe technol ogy. It it 15 /reall1 y hasn't been show, to be safe and what needs to be done j ;g ;' is a lot more worl and a lot more research. 17 |, And they do not do enough anal ysi s of the i! ts jt *-"i ss-i ons. They ahoul c* be doi ng anal ysi 5 once a week or once 19 a month, but certainly the idea of doing it once a year is h! 20 i! '' not acceptable. Thanl yea ver\ much. 21 j MR. EDLUND; Thank you, Mr. Stampfli. We will j! 22 [. attempt to address your concerns in our decision and our lfi 23 j; final desig" contracts, I thini: what I will do i s -- oometi mea it is hare1 i f you are readi ng a statement, you ! i 25 I dor t see t^e white <1ag over hero m the corner. I will

005212 ! " just say "flag" at the four-minute warning. 2 Mr, Eruce tund^» I believe. Is he here still^ 3 Yes. Excuse me-, Mr. fcundy, are yau going to read that" 4 ' MR. bUNDvi No, no, no I am not, I might hold up 5 il!• some documents and suggest that people get them.

6 = STATEMENT &Y MR. PRUCE &UNDY Researcher, Indiana Public Interest Research Group Mfc. &UNDY; My name is Eruce fcundy and I am a researcher with the Indiana Fublic Interest Research Group, »0 nfhich * s 1 oca* t?d in £] oorr.i n.jt on, Indi ana. Our office is an n , the campus oi Indi ana Uni ver &i ty . 12 tlooftii ngtori, IncJi ana, is probabl y the PCB capi tal 13 i of the war i d. W& have four Super fund sites, two other si tes U that probabl >• belong en the Super fund list. I have been 15 studyi ng FCE^s for three years and di sposal technol ogy for . 16 about a:, lon^. I would Ii(& to rial e ci few points h^>r e i; tonight. 18 Unfortunately, I didn't have the time to look at 19 the entire feasibility study. Representative Wallace wanted 20 |i; me to 1 oak at the que^t i on of the ul timate di sposal 21 i technologies » so that 15 what I will focus on. 22 t, I waul d like to start off by saying that I have a 23 ] report with me. It 15 cal 1 ed the "Superf ian,Gl Strategy ! ..,....-.. 24 : Report ," published by the Office of Technology Assessment, T 25 ilI which is an office under the control of the United States

005213 •j | \ Congress. It is very critical of how the EP'A has handled 2 Super fund up to this point. 3 1 recommend this book to anyone. If you — You can 4 il order it from the Superintendent of Documents. You can 5 probably get it free from your elected officials. All I can 6 say is I hope the EPA does not rail road through a pi an here 7 like they railroaded it through in our community. 8 The first and most vital thing that you can do as 9 citirens is get involved. Public participation is your only 10 assurance. I don' t t< now what will come of thi s. Most of • i t^esi hearir.g-- -- I h^^-? been through quite a few -~ are a 12 dog and pony show. They are a public relations effurt. 13 They are not an effort to gather concerned, 14 construeti /(? comments from the citizenry which they take into 15 h• [Consideration. I urg«- you to do everything you can to 16 establish a real dialogue witn this aqency. 17 I have made some suggestions, and I have left those 18 suggestions with Representative Wal1 ace as how to implement a 19 real public participation plan that will make a tangible 20 difference in this cleanup. One thing I did was I reviewed 21 the feasibility study and there are some problems with it. 22 I review a 1ot of documents like this, and in fact, 23 my agency publishes these documents and I — or documents 24 jSimilar to this, and we have to -- I have to review then f be-fore they are published. If it was up to me, this document

005214 would not have been publ i shed. li I was teac' >. ng ^ cl ass and ii 2 ]! a student submitted this, they would get an F. The major problem with this document that I observed, and I h«ve not been through i t thoroughly. I concentrated on the ultimate disposal technologies. One of the problems with it is it has -21 :* of date references. In

other words, it has very few rttf • inces. It is big on words, low on data. 9 These old references tend to mat.e incineration 1 ool 10 good. And new promising technologies such as biotech and 11 j high temperature r.uro Lysis 1 ook bad. In fact, it did not 12 assess high temperature purolysis, which is a method of 13 t| treating waste using heat in the absence of oxygen. In using 14 this process, ro dio;;ms or furans can be produced. 15 There is a company in Te;:as that manufactures such i 16 I a r*evice. It is called the Huber Corporation in Borger, 17 Texas. I suggest that somebody g&ts in touch with them. 18 The — It is bad that there hasn ' t been more citizen 19 participation up to this point and that the citizens couldn't 20 get their own experts involved in the selection of a 21 technology to clearn up this problem. 22 1 thint. that i rival vement of experts after a 23 technology is selected amounts to fine tuning a disaster. I 24 thinl that — What 1 recommend be done is that a new 25 feasibility assessment be produced by someone who does not

005215 [have a pro-incireration bias and that the public i ; participation process be perfected so that the community and 3 jjth.ir leaders can have a rsal vo, c* in making the decisions that will ultimately affect them. Thanl, you. Mft. EDLUND: Thank you, Mr. Bundy. We will take your comments and concerns and, as a mattar of fact, if you

would like to make a written comment, we WOuld appreciate

I' that, maybe with some of the references that you think He

j. should include ,n our stud,. Next we have a Johnny Tamayo. jOh, this is - Ye,. He has already tailed. I had the card 11 'in the wrong pi I*. L-r . J« Mataon, with the University of 12 ij i' Houston. r' 13 j; VOICE FRDr; AUDIENCE: Wnen are the citizens of 14 South Houston that signed those white cards going to get

15 I mean lt is nine o'clocl no. and some of us do

16 to get up IKe at five o'cloc* in the morning. 17 MR. EDLUND: I am sorry. I didn't hear the camme.it. 18 VOICE FROM AUDIENCE: I said when are you going to i1n9 1I1j ^get to the white cards that the citizens that live here in 2Q it South Houston are going to be able? to talk? TTffean, II 21 pciat*e th*Ke experts, — OCT-71985 SYSTEM 200 22 MR. EDLUND: I an using the white cards. It i

23 just tnat some people used the yel l ow cards sometimes too. 24 jjThe yell ,,- cards and the white c«-rds don't make any

25 {difference. It is just some came wlth yellow paper and some

005216 came with white and I am just -- I am at number six now, supposed!y from people that 3 |! waited in the door. So I understand. I know it is getting (i long and you sai d you al 1 didn' t want to take a breal- and I wi11 hang in there with you. I will try to make sure 6 j| everybody has an opportunity. '•' STATEMENT BY DR. JACK MATSON Professor, University of Houston DR. MATSOfJ: Hopeful 1 y I am representing some of 10 |i'! your views here and you would lile to hear what I say. I am 51 ! a professor of environmental engineering at the University of 12 iij Houston. Anci 1 do quite a bit of hazardous and toxic waste 13 wort . I am familiar with your site. 14 The gentleman before me said he gave the stud/ an ;5 ! F. We in academia give it what we call R and R, return and 16 it'' resubmit. Eut I think, that is appropriate here. This is a 17 iij publ ic hear i nq. I am gl ad ERA is holding a pub lie hearing. 18 ! It is a ti me to be creati ve and thi nl, what other alter natives 19 , haven't been presented so ERA and their contractors can go 20 iI back and rethinl. just how to do this site. 21 The big question here that I think confronts all of 22 ii us is the citizens here have been exposed to a considerable 23 ' net in the? past with this site and how now to minimize this i! 24 triel of cleaning it up. And it as a tough question and a i ; 25 ! tough i ssue because there are ris^ s assaciated with whatever ti ;

005217 76 alternative they us*?. 2 I am not against incineration basically. I like 3 incineration. I think it has a real strong place in doi ng i 4 'away with hazardous waste, fcut I think it is misplaced in i this application onsite. I think the risks are much too great for the citizens in the area to be exposed. And here is the reason. I consider this a 1ow probabi1ity, big problem type g r i s1- . Sure , we engineers can design -f eedbacl systems and so P• < 10 i{:| -forth. None of them are fail safe. We see big accidents in ;' the headlines every day. Our technology isn't perfect. n i! 12 i]'! There is potential problems,, and we have a hard time i i 13 ti appraising technology that is law probability, high risl. 14 Okay. W^ try to -- what we do are linear extrap- 15 i|t ol at ions -from other inci nerators other pi aces and it i s a

15 very imperfect £C1ence. And so I understand and appreciate 17 I!.your concern here. What I would lile to suggest is an amal- 18 gamat ion o-f ideas I have that have al ready been presented as 19 ljjon! e potential alternative you may want to consider. 20 l:!! First of all, certainly I like your idea of capping 21 and slurry walling, con taming the material. I think 22 secondl y, oMsite incineration here does have a de* inite role 23 jjwith the higher concentration PCP and dioxin materials. 24 but certainly not down to the 100 parts per million 25 range. As was pointed out, you would have trucks going

005218 77 through your community forever and you don't want that. 2 jjThirdly, I thi nk- here is a chance to experiment wi th some of the newer technologies that are being developed, that of biological and chemical remediati on onsite. Okay. If we can contain the material, there is, of course, a suggest!on of acti vated carbon. There are other Mays to do it. Okay, there is chemical oxidation, f ollowed by biological. There is just a whole variety o-f ways to do it onsite that present essentially no hazard to the cits ens 10 there. it The only problem is these tale a long time. &ut on 12 the flip side, they are quite inexpensive. And I think these 13 alternatives have not beer, adequately considered and need to 14 be. Thank you. 15 MR. EDLUND: Than! you, Dr. Matson- We will take

16 !ij i those comments to heart. Write us if you wish. You didn't 17 really asl A question, but I might add at this point that we 18 didn't loot preliminarily at biological treatment. As a 19 matter of fact, we don't have a bias against that. 20 We are using it at some Superfund sites that are 21 different than the South Houston site in that they don 't have 22 the groundwater patenti al problems and there is more uni farm 23 waste* k)& are open to those kinds of technologies and we 24 welcome other comments as they come. Al 1 right. Mr. John 25 R. — John F. Stevens, pi ease.

005219 7B STATEMENT BY MR. JOHN F. STEVENS Episcopal Church a* the Advent

MR. STEVENS: One of the great things about thls 4 ;i;jcountry is that we not only are allowed to have but c iiija^ficially sponsor this kind of a meeting. I hope what i s •ii l| said here is heeded. I am John Stevens, Episcopal Church of 6 : i

7 ii the Advent, but I al so represent the Metrapol i tan g " Qr gam zat. i on, whi ch is a coal i tion of some 65 churches and a g !•'1 variety of civic associations. •; the debate about onsite incineration. ii 13 !; It is important, that we move on this site. II

14 ,, Thi^ country has a long history of endangering, and 15 >: indeed damaging people's health by drugs, radiation, a ' i 16 ; van ety of things, -frequently when we did not know what we ;j 17 :! were doing. The people here did not have anything to do with I 18 (polluting this comrnuni t y. They have a right to have it cleaned and cleaned 20 jpropei-ly. They also have a right to have it cleaned saf el y. 21 And we seriously question, and therefore oppose, onsite 22 I incinerati on. 23 My expertise in engineering is electronics and not 24 jj chemistry, but I can read and 1 can hear and it is very 25 obvious that there- is considerable debate in the scientific

005220 79 1 community about :ncineration of PCBs and some of these other 2 j wastes. 3 Ij I do I now from my experience how easy it is, when 4 : the data are inconclusive, for people with a priori H fJ. I[ jj assumptions to use the data to support their assumptions. I «3 g ; do have some experience, though, wi th technology. And high tech equipment works properly, <1) when i t is proper 1y designed, <2> when it is properly constructed, (3) when it is properly maintained, M) when it is properly t' 10 . operated, and evpr^ one of these has dangers and the track • , record of incineration of to>; i c wastes makes it too 1? \ dangerous.

1 13 : 1 It is Linconscienab e that we have submitted the 14 ; people of this comnunit> to the pollution which is upon us. j 55 \ We have no right to compound it by making them guinea pigs 15 in a process ab^ut which we know too little and in which i 17 [; there are? so man, dangers of something going wrong. 18 iji : MK. EDMUND: Thank you, Reverend Stevens -- 1 i 19 i ji suppose. The next person is Christine Mayglothling. 20 STATEMENT BY MS. CHRISTINE MAYGLOTHLING 21 State House of Representatlves, Austin 22 MS. MAYGLOTHLING: Good evening, ladies and 23 'gentlemen. I than! you for the chance to address you this 24 evening. I didn ' t have a prepared statement but we do — I 25 was taking notes a^ we went along and there are some things

005221 I BO t *; that 1 would like to address. Some of them are technical*- 2 i ties that the scientists and distinguished scholars have i i 3 ;i talked about. 4 ! Some of them are just logical flaws as I 5ee them. iOne of the first things that was mentioned in one the first 5 M 6 !|P°rtians of your testimony was, not to worry. Incinerators 7 j; have automatic shutdown valves. Not to worry.

8 I|I i One of the greatest concerns is dioxins and furans, 9 ; and when the temperatures are reduced, which happens when a ji 10 i shutdown occurs, is your greatest, production of dioxins. We must beware. 12 You voiced a great concern and did say that 13 j; accidents can happen. Yes, we know that they can happen. We too w«l1 that they can happen. This is just a little 15 point. We requested an additional meeting, five weeks to 16 study your entire- feasibility study, to study all of the 17 divferent methodologies whi ch ?re termed feasible. 18 There is one biodegradable company here that is 19 permitted in Region 6 who was not given a chance to submit 20 any new information on that technology. According to the 21 bibliography on the feasibility study, the last input that 22 you have had from this company was 1984. ; 23 I don't make any guarantees, but I do ask the EPA : i 2-1 to please loo* again. Things have happened in two years, and . 25 in one* year, and in si:: months. Maybe yesterday, who knows.

005222 81 You must not use dated material. For the people of South Houston, I say the question 3 jj to the fuel, what type o* fuel are you going to use, what typ.» — what are you going to da with the ash, which will be considsred hazardous, unless they change the law. It is hazardous because it do^s contain dioxins when it goes in. 7 ! Your answer was that these wi 1 i be addressed in the design 8 i phase. 9 ;j To the people of South Houston, I say the design | 10 I phase is too late. You f-ave already selected your method. ! i

n i ,! ; You ha^e already spent money on it, and then you will advise 12 J-! ; the people how it will be. They have no input. That is not -i 13 ; I; public participation. That is a stalling o* the -facts that f!: 14 ' perhaps they may not want to hear. 15 : We h^ve talked about the tract- records ai permanent P 16 !i incinerators, the- accidents that have happened, the mishaps, 17 i|i| the deaths, the explosions. We haven't talked at all about l| 18 j! the track record of mobile incinerators. And that is what 19 is — will be projected if that alternative is selected here 20 at Geneva. 21 There is very little track record to study. These 22 are new incinerators. There are a few that are under permit 23 according to information that I have received from the EF'A. j One tnat i«, ur idt-r per mit, the EFn cannot tell me what the 25 volume capacity of that incinerator is. Two others are under

005223 consideration -for permit There is another company who is building one. That , is the IT Corporation. We know that thsy have a Ic ory ;• related to incineration. Yes, this will go out fo, aid I process- We understand that. We are glad of that. But there 1 : are not very many companies who make incinerators. I, When one company who makes an incinerator prepares Ii i your feasibility study and actually it were two. Th....e three . | names on this feasibility study are — What was the first 10 !;one- IT, ERT, and Rolling These are the people that • i ,1 1 prepared yc?L"- feasibility study. 12 ,; They may not be speaking on behalf of their company ^because the, can make money, but they are speaking on behalf 1 of their industry, which is a very Bmai! , select group Qf 15 ; people who operate and make incinerators. We talked about the 16 • alternative methods and I sa/ they have not been looked at. 17 |j MR. EDLLJND: You have got a flag. >t 18 MS. MAYBLOTHLINGi I have got a flag. The 19 alternative methods have not been looked at — 20 MR. EDLUND: That means *our nunutss, not the end. 21 M5. MAYGLDTHLING: Dh, four. HOK much more do I 22 have"* 23 MR. EDLUND: You have got one more ninute.

iT. -*< MC. MnVGLOTHLINC: One more nunute. , wl U .rap 25 up. Dlay. I sav that, to the people oi South Houston, you

005224 deserve a better feasibility study. You deserve to have the al ternat i ve methods 1 oor-ed at not onl y bv the EF'A and the Texas Water Commission. I maintain that the publie citizens here and the elected officials here should have a say in it. You need a public participation plan. You need to have a group of peopl e who will be in on thi s deci si on-makin.g_ » 7 process. Not that the process is completed , nd then they are 8 advised what they must 1ive or die with. Thank ycu. 9 Mr:. EDLUND: Than I- you, Ms. Maygl othl i ng. Frankly, 10 that is what we are attempting to do with this meeting, is to i 1 get ycu invoiced. There were a number oi questions. were 12 you looking for specific answers to some of those quest i ons 1 13 right now" 14 M5. MAYGLOTHLINb: There is just one thing that I 15 would lile a specific answer for. The --- when it was 16 proposed eat lier that perhaps there can be anot . r scheduled 17 meeting, whe^e the pnople here have had a chance to study the It 18 alternative1 methods, to bring in perhaps unbiased scienti f i c 19 expert! se, the answer was that the 'IF'A could not afford to 20 come back to the city of Houston far another meeting. 21 I would like to know -- I would like you all to go 22 back to your budget people and see if you can't find enough 23 funds If you can spend 20 mi 111 on or, an incinerator, one 24 and a Nal f mi 11iOM on a pi an , one- and a hal f mi 111 on to do 25 what you have done, I thinl- that the EF'A could probably find

005225 G4 money to come back and I would like an answer to that. MR, EDLUND: I would like to thank you for that question because I may have answered it a little too slickly the -first time. Okay? And I think you deserve — I was trying to be a little straightforward with yau. We do have budget problems. That is true. We do not, however, hold multiple public meetings on the same site unless there is some new 9 in+ormation that has occurred that we weren't aware of or 10 something that would completely change the remedies that are 11 under consideration. 12 VOICE FROM AUDIENCE: That is not true. We have 13 I had dozens or meeting? in F-o-t Arthur. And that is not true i! 14 ! The ERA - 15 MR. EDLUND: Pardon me. That is not true in Region 16 6. However, we have had more than one public meeting when 17 something like that occurred. Now, frankly 1 had agreed to 18 extend the comment period and I would like to extend comments 19 to June 10. And we will be looking for your comments. 20 If it turns out there is something that is 21 completely novel or completely wrong with what we have got 22 that requires another public meeting, we will do it. But we 23 don't want to get caught in a spin cycle of meetings. And 24 that is basically our regional policy. 25 All right. Now, I also would like not to get into

005226 1 a debate or a cross-examination on the — Christine? 2 iI MS. MAYGLQTHLING: One last question. 3 I' MR. EDLUhD: All right. Shoot. MS. MAYGLDTHLING: Who will decide if the material is worthwhile enough for another meeting? 6 VOICE FROM AUDIENCE: Who will make that decision- 7 MR. EDLUND: I will. (laughter) Now, you asked. I 8 don t mean that lightly. I understand your concerns. And we

9 dc t intend, whatever we do, to keep people in the dark. As 10 •a matter of fact, I thought that this very meeting is an i 11 | example of our efforts to try tc at least get you to know 1? what we have done so far. i 13 | We do have a community relations program, 15 what

14 we call it. And wc? try to keep you informed every step of 15 | the way. So — All right. If we can get back on track a 16 little bit here. Mr. Anthony R. Collins. 17 'STATEMENT BY MR. ANTHONY R. COLLINS 18 Member, Metropolitan Organization 19 MR. COLLINS: I am Tony Collins. I live approxi- 20 mately a mile and a half south of the Geneva site. I am also 21 a member of the Metropolitan Organization which Reverend 22 Stevens spoke to awhile ago. We urge a prompt and satisfac- 23 tory solution of the problem at the Geneva site. Everybody 24 has said that tonight. 25 We regard this hearing as a first step towards that

005227 1 86 i !i solution. * And we hope when the solution comes out, that it 2 J will be satisfactory to all parties. And I would say here 3 ii especially to those of us that live within breathing 4 di stance. 5 T am not trying to emotionalize this issue. But I 6 do get emotional when we are discussing a process that is going to affect me and my back yard and my house and my 8 '-\ family for the ne. t ":;" number of years. Forgive the effiot lonal i sn--. it is just a natural sort of reaction in a 9 n; 10 t]I;situation lile this.. n ;; Wh_-*_ I at. saying is that we are the ones wno will 12 ;> pay for any err or . CJh, your careers may have a blacl mark. . ;t 13 You may be cJiEg^a^ed or may be this or that if something goes boon-., but we are the ones who will breathe it in. So we have 15 : a ver y veste-:: i r. Lerest in being here tonight. 16 i] I * +C'- instance, think thepolicyof not having a !i 17 i! folloiwup mee-tirio if you have a turnout like this with i(tj 18 ;i hundreds oi peopi e out si de -- Now, maybe you are going to 19 i1! 1 hear a lot of repetition. You already have. But these are 20 the people who are involved, who are affected.

21 It 1£ their life. lt is also their tax money that 22 is being spent. It is our ZO million dollars, or 15 million, 23 or 5 million. It js our money that has already been spent. 24 j And I thirU wt have the right to participate in the decision 25 jmating. I am not tnocking technology, I am not knocking you

005228 87 people who put your time and your effort into this. 2 !j But I am saying the process is terribly flawed. 3 (; When the public 15 given very limited choices, a lot o* tech- 4 ' nical information, and not enough time to digest it, I think i 5 j that is not a proper way to conduct something that is very 6 J much i rivalved with our wel1-being day in and day out. | ? Ii• Need I say we are opposed to onsite incineration. g i•t That is perfectly clear. We believe that it should be trans-

ported. And ,f that ls goi ng to cost an e;:fcra fc(m 10 • i million dollar-., alter all, it is our 11 I MR- E-DLUMC-: Thank you, Mr. r 12 !Anita Locher. Did I get it right-

U tj STATEMENT By MS. ANITA LOCHER M 1!: fcaha'i Faith o< South Houston 15 hS' LOLH£K: Ves, you did. I am a membe 16 .of the community o^ South Houston. I came tonight because I

17 igot a flyer on m, doOr 1 night and -fi

18 :jU very, very .mportant to me. And my husband and I have

t9 lived in South Houston < or about a year- We are planning fco 20 have our family here. 21 We want to have children and raise them in an 22 |ienv,ronment that is safe. I do not Want to be a Love Canal 23 commun.ty. I do not Want to be a Cnernobyl .ncid.nt. I «ant 24 South Houston to be a ,a,e place for my children to grow up. 25 *nd 1 thin, that all the dlscuss,on about technology that has FILMED- "OCT -7 198S

005229 , 88 | gone on today .« very fruitful. I think it is very interest- ing for us to learn all of the., different alternatives.

It doesn't seem l,le the EFA has examined all the 4 alternatives and I really think that they should further 5 > study some of the things that have been brought up. Also, in 6 •• closing, I would 1 U.e to recite a brief quote from the

7 !j religious scriptures of the faith whlch l belong fcQ regardlng

8 j' technology, and I think this ,s something well heeded. 9 |: "" "rried to excess, civilization will prove as 10 , prolific a source of evil a=_ ,t has been of goodness when 11 .. lept within the restraints o< moderation." And 1 think

12 l| moderation ,a what we have to I ool here, and we do have to i 13 ;,10C " at the thin<3S lhat *r" 9°'"9 to happen to the people who

.4 live m this area and to m,Eel f as a woman who will bear 15 [ ' chi Idren. 6 am ' ;: ' terrified o< what could happen to my children

17 : because ai l^.na ,„ this ar Ba now, especially if you go with '• 18 onsite incinerators, where we are going to have all kinds of ' I

,9 chemical things floating around in the air that 1 am going to \

20 be breath,ng in and my ch.ldren are going to be breathing in. ! 2, «hd that terrifies me. And that is why I am here tonight and ! 22 that is what I wanted to say. Thank you i' Mrv EDLUNL: " - Thank you very much, Mrs. Locher. | 24 Brian Green*,. Mr. fcr i an Greeney- j i 25 ii !>

005230 89 STATEMENT BY MR. BRIAN GREENEY

MR. GREENEYi Q^y. My name is Brzan Greeney and I did a history fair project for Hoffman Middle School and '? We 4 ;;«on second place in state. We are now going to — On June

5 u 15, we are going to proceed to nationals. And *e have

6 j| researched for five months on toxic wastes. And I would like

7 |jto thank Dr. Matson and ERA and also Dow Chemical and Rollms J! 8 j'for all the information they have given us.

9 ne thl I W uld ii! ! ° ^ ° *"* ^ say about incineration is

to || I do thinl it is a pretty good way to start out because

„ , Rollms has proved that they can do it safely. And if we

12 |; don't incinerate and just leave things like — this site, we 13 ;| leave it there and cap , is gomg to be there for my it lt lt 14 ;generation. And I dor, t want that for my generation. 15 I want to have it disposed of ao it won't be there 16 when I grow up and have (ids. And also, as far as 17 : transfer ing it to another site and disposing of it, it is 18 i. going to be a danger to people xn that — around that site tl ,9 |and the environment also there. Also, transporting it there 20 j is just as dangerous as onsitp 21 I And ! can understand the concern on antute. 1 do

22 think ,t is pretty dangerous, but we have got to do Bo»eth,ng

23 and I thir.1 the ERA is taking the right stsps and , would

24 just like to than^ the,, for starting to help my generatlon 25 jjget its start on the right tract.. Thank you.

005231 !l 90 1 * ij MR. EDLUND: Thank you very much, Mr. Greeney. Mr. 2 ;; Thomas Dardas. Dardas. 3 •! STATEMENT &Y MR. THOMAS DARDAS 4 II President, Detox Industries, Inc. 5 MR. DARDAS: That is close enough. My name is Tom 6 Dardas. I am the presi dent of a company by the name of Detox Industries, Inc. It is a Houston, Texas, company. Actually, I 8 \ we have just recentl y moved to Sugar land , Texas, where we ac- |! ii 9 ji quired four acres and we have two buildings and a process 10 i plant 11 Our company has been referred to by a previous 12 speaker. We are approved in Regi on 6 to bi odegrade F'C&s. I 13 am very, very happy, Mr. Edlund, to hear you make the comment 14 ; that you do favor and want to look at alternative technolo- iji 15 1i1. gies, and in particular biological degradation. 16 In reviewing the -feasi bility study, I am a-fraid I 17 I have to male a comment, and that is that I think that there 18 has been either an error or an oversight made in reviewing 19 biological degradation. The feasibi1i ty study refers to our 20 company, not by name, but it gives a note and it refers to 21 Dardas, I9o4. 22 This probably applIBS to our original application 23 to the EPA, which was signed by me as president of the 24 company. 5i nee that time, a 1 ot of things have happened wi ^. 25 our company, and in fact, I actually had a meeting with ERT.

005232 91 But before we get into it, 1 want to say that the feasibility study says that this particular ^achnique, when it is referring to us, has been approved by ERA Region 6. It says this technique has not been successfully demonstrated for PC6 contaminated soi1s such as are present at the Geneva site. I take issue with this fact and I state unequi vocal 1y that 11 has been demonstrated. Our approval grants us the? approval to biodegrade pol ychl ori nated I jbiphenyls in any matrix, i 10 When we did our demonstration f it was in a combined 11 I matrix of oil, sludge, sedi me?nt, w^ter, it was just every- 12 thing all mixed together. And it had a concentration of 13 iIIi 2,000 parts per million of contamination. We did it in three M months, just over three months, and brought i t down to a 15 level of less than four parts per million. This was done — 16 Thanl- you. This was done in a biorsactor. 17 Now, what we did to get the approval from the ERA 18 is first, we did a feasibility study with the EPA's approval , 19 and that was done in a laboratory. After we successfully 20 demonstrated to the ERA that we could biodegrade PCBs in the 21 laboratory, we then asked for permi ssion to do a pilot study 22 to demonstrate to the EF'A our capability to transfer this 23 technology to the field. 24 Because we did the pi 1ot study on approx imately one 25 ton of contaminated material , that, is why we w&re granted

005233 1 |j approval by the ERA. I would like to suggest that the pur 2 j pose of a pilot study is to demonstrate the -feasibility of 3 i' |j scalin,- g up to a larger demonstration or to doing the full 4 i:f seale job. il Most companies, when they build a product, they 6 | build a prototype or a demonstration in order to show that it 7 II!j wi 1 1 work. And then if it works, they go on forward. Well, 8 I;! i in thi s feasibility study, it al so goes on further to say 9 that "due to tnt volume ot contanji nated soi 1 that would 10 require treatment , the bi oreactar is not considered 11 applicable. a= m-* -y years woul d be required for treatment. " 12 I believe because of this statement that the people 13 reviewing our method concluded that what we are going to do 14 is came onto the site at Geneva Industries with a little tiny i 15 ,ti biorsactor, and that would take many, many years. What I 16 ; would li^e to suggest is that instead we will build a large i' 17 tank , a 1 arge bi oreactor , and that we can treat al 1 of the 18 contaminated soi 1 at one time. Al 1 at one time. !i 19 i' We can have the whole job done in less than a year. 20 Maybe as soon a& three months. So I really feel that there 21 has been a tremendous error done in thi s i easibi lity study. 22 i Now, some of the things that the peop] e asked for here is the 23 possibility of

005234 T or there is new information or a major disclosure. I submit 2 'that this is a major disclosure. I don't care really whether I 3 |i we have a public meeting or not, but I think that the 4 'community should be given the opportunity to look at this. 5 Ok.ay, let me go on one second further. Okay. I am 6 not in favor of incineration. 1 am not going to speak about 7 it. I think that it is -favorable in certain situations, but 8 not i n all major situations. I am also not in favor of 9 j landfi1 ling, obviously, but in some cases certain things must 10 be 1end*i1 led. 11 However. I am tremendousl/ opposed to landfilling 12 because that is not really a solution. That is postponing 13 it. That is moving it from place to place. That is playing 14 musical chairs with the contamination. So I am opposed to 15 that and I thir.i it is the wrong thing for America to do. 16 I*, is the wrong thing for the world to do, because that will 17

005235 1 t, contamination that you have on the* site. If you want to 2 'bring it down to less than 1OO parts per million, which is

3 :_ what the first pnase, alternative C, is being proposed, we it ' 4 i will bring it down to less than 10O parts per million. We t : 5 \j will guarantee it. 6 L We will put up a letter of credit to stand behind i "" r 7 [ this with an acceptable financial institution. We will do 8 I- this -for 50 percent of the total cost o-f 1 andf i 1 1 i n . So we 9 i can s,sve the t*.-payers 5O percent of the amount of money that 110 you are proposing to pay- That might give you more money to coftie and ha\ e p-.-t 1 i c hear ings. - M-,. ECLUNL : 1 am glad I hao a chance to amend my 13 statement. 14 h'.^.. Cr-.KDAS: Al ; right. In addition, I would lile 15 tc also mate anciher firm offer. If the EPA would like the 16 entire site biodegraded. we- will biodegrade the entir'e site 17 to any level it wants. And I will give a firm price for the 18 same thing. Again I wi11 guarantee it. 19 MR. EDLUND: Why don't — If I may — because I 20 thinl what I started hearing was the outline of a contract or 21 a proposal. And we are open to those kinds of things, so why 22 don't you write us about that. Now -- 23 Mft. DARDAS; All right. I will. 24 MR. EDLUND: What I would like to do — I really do 25 appreciate? VQv«r romme-nts- 1 would like to respond to them a

005236 95 ,, little bit because I think that this has come up in various !ii! 2 :' and sundry ways. And I ask Mr. Wi 11 i ams to talk a little bit 3 iiii about the feasibility study and how 11 looked at biological 4 |!jj treatment. I can speal more generally. E i' EF'A is not opposed to biological treatment. We 5 i bui1d them our selves under our construction grant program. i : 7 j The sewage treatment plants are, in essence, biological ii 8 ii!' treatment pi ant s. So their concepts are understood by us. g ''We are current ly at <3 Super fund site in Loui si ana using i > in .biological treatment. " il ! n i|r And it turns out that this was an old oil refinery i t2 iU with groundwater problems and a very consistent kind of 13 1'[contaminatio1 n that did not include FEE'S and some of the other things th^t we have found at this site. Now, we are not 15 ;' bi ased against the biological treatment, per se. 16 However, biological treatment was ruled out in the !l ;7 t! very beginning of the -- If you have seen the — Well, you ii IB ji remember the charts that we had. We had options F-l, F~Z, D- i 5, and — Well, that is trie condensed list. When they 20 started their feasibility study, they had over 30 of those 21 that they looked at. 22 Now, they may not have cji -'e-n i t enough attention to 23 satisfy everyone. I would like to ask Mr, Wi11iams if you 24 could give us a little bit of background in the feasibility 25 study and why biological trest.nent was or wasn' t ruled out. MR. WILLIAMS: Basically, the information "in the

005237 96 research literature that we have seen, that these decisions were m-ade on, indicates that PCBs degrade very, very slowly, 3 Ij if at all. And the specific process that Mr. Dsrdas is talking about, we did not look at in extensive detail. Howeve", I did evaluate it. Mr. Dardas's process, basically, as I understand it, -from what I have seen of it, would be similar to a sewage treatment plant activity, and we just didn't believe that the 9 site conditions, because of the way the contamination is 10 i; spread out over the site and the problems that would be I ; n !j involved in building such a unit, we didn't believe that trie 12 site condi t i ons waul d warrant suet- an alternative. I U j; MR. DARDAS: That is understandable, Mr. Williams. 14 However , I would life to suggest that all of that is very, j very feasible, very, very possible, and much much cheaper i 16 j than anything else the EF'H IE looking at. In addition, it is i 17 • a final solution. , 18 We have made a technological breakthrough. We have 19 , filed a patent. We are the only company in the United States 20 that has EPA approval, unfortunately, in this very awn 21 region, and we are not even really being considered. Now, we 22 talk about information. 23 I just passed up to Mr. Edlund a copy o-f the letter ! 24 that I wrote on August 13, 1985, to Mr. Tim Whipple, of ERT, 25 ,the Environmental Kesearch and Technology Corporation, that

005238 ., 97 t | has done this feasibility study. In this, I summarized our 2 process. 1 had a meeting with them. I showed them slides of •f 3 ; everything we did. 4 i: And we have done many, many more things. Just 5 iI! recently, we completed a study for th« United States Navy and 6 f in on& wee* , w« reduced major contamination a* R-4-1260, which is one of the worst isomers of FCBs, by 50 percent in g ''one weel. Now, I submit that nobody else in the world has 9 !;| thi s capability. ij Anc 10 ji * * really would like to have an opportunity and ij 1t a chance to prove to the EFA that we can do what you have 12 i;i! already approved us to do. Please give me a chance. 13 Mft* EDLUND: Mr . Dardas, I appreciate your 14 :' comments. 15 MR. DARDAS: Mr. Edlund, one 1ast comment. My •,6 company will be more than happy to pay all of the EPA costs Ij 17 !; to have another meeting here. 18 ii MR.. EbLUND: Well, if that is the only gaff 1 make 19 i, tonight, I am alay, I guess. I hope we do get bac» in touch. 20 And we do have — We have extended the public comment period, 21 :Mr. Dardas, and we will 1ooK forward to having something from 22 you, 23 MR. DARDAS: Thank you. 24 MR. EbLUND: Thanl you. Next is Dr* Herbert 25 McKee.

005239 98 STATEMENT &Y DR. HERBERT C. MOEE Department of Health and Human Services, City of Houston ! DR. MO EE: For the record, my name is Herbert it ij Met ee. I am Assistant Health Director for Environmental jt Control for the City of Houston Department of Health and Human Ser v i ces.

t I have submitted a written statement to both the g \l ERA and the Te; as Water Commission, first of all, because I i!'| 9 1j| thinJ- there .are technical and engineering considerations here 10 j| which are worth f ar more than five minutes. I certainly 11 .; spent more th«*n i i ve minutes studying this issue. Five months l? ! perhaps, five v-s-^s perhaps. i 13 ii! First of all, we are the local environmental i 14 : control agency *cr the city of Houston, charged by city 15 l ordinance and b, state lav. with worling with the state 16 ;i agencies on a:- pollution, water pollution, solid and 17 I; hazardous wastes, d-inking water, several ether environmental 18 i!i act!vities which we are involved in. 19 i In that — With that responsibility, we have 20 reviewed the remedial investigation and feasibility study and 21 we were under the impression that the purpose of this meeting 22 was to discuss three alternatives. First of all, from that 23 report, there were two alternatives, onsite incineration or 24 offsite landfill disposal. 25 In the- press releases announcing this meeting, the

005240 Sf " r' <; third alternative of offsite incineration was also added. We [!;| were not under the impression from the notices of the meeting or -from the report which we studied that other alternatives ;! were under consi derati on, so we have not looked at any of

005241 -1, 10O I .i1 operated landfill is satisfactory for the short term. ? • But no one knows how short the short term is, and J 3 ii there may be 1ongterm problems over a period of many years if 4 : the 1 andf i 11 does not keep the material i sol ated. Our Mi e fl objections to onaite incineration «*re based on the lact of 6 f; experience with incinerating solid materials such as 7 !nl contaminated dirt. fij1 Inci nerati on has been known and used for many g . years, merely by adapting oil-fired boilers, which have been 10 ;i in existence for decades, for liquid wastes. For solid 11 " wastes, adequate figures are not available, so far as we have f{ 12 " been able to -find out. Many of the existing j incinerators <\i 13 , threw solid material in a barrel at a time. i 14 So with this sort of batch feeding operation, it is 15 totally in-possible to maintain steady state combustion 16 ^conditions that are essential to obtain complete destructi on n i 17 M,j and to obtain whatever minimum amount of dioxin formation may j M ( 18 Mjj bo passi bl e. Feeding sol i d wastes aggravates all at these > 19 I i problems. f 20 Changes in waste composition further aggravates i 21 ila lot of the problems that exi st. The amount and type of i 22 ij contarnination varies from one batch of soi1 to another. The 23 water content varies from bone dry or slightly moist up to, 24 after a rain, a wet gooey mess that can ' t be handled with 25 i ordinary solids handling equipment.

005242 101 So this would make it more difficult to maintain I steady safe combustion conditions, Dioxin is a problem that t has been mentioned. I would just add one fact to that. The common method of measuring dioxin requires six hours of sampling time and two or three days of 1aboratory processing. 7 Bo if combustion conditions change over the short- 8 term, due to the batch feeding operation, a six-hour sampling 9 time will not detect that change and relate it to the 10 i!j l combustion conditions that caused it. And the two or three 11 ij hour -- or two ur three day delay in laboratory processing 12 makes it impossible to use that as a means of process 13 ! control . 14 The monitoring that is normally done with carbon 15 !i j 1 monoxide, to try to maintain complete combustion, will 16 respond to changes in combustl on that are not related to 17 dio:: in f or mat i on. Agai n , especi al 1 y with the batch feeder. 18 MR. EDLUND: You had a flag. 19 DR. MckEE: Now, the EPA and others are working to 20 overcame those limitations, but success in those efforts is 21 several years away, and we don ' t feel that a research project 22 or research and devel opment project to overcome these design 23 and operat i ng 1 i mi tat ions should be conducted in an inhabi ted 2-1 25 1'inaliy, even if these design and operating

005243 102 limitations are overcome, no mechanical equipment operates at 100 percent efficiency 100 percent of the time. There is corrosion, there are mechanical breakdowns, there are operator errors. And long experience — operating experience will reduce the incidence of these operating problems, but will never eliminate them completely. i . •

So, in summary, we urge that onsite incineration be rejected as totally unacceptable. Off site incineration is an {acceptable alternative and would be our preference, although we recommend, for the benefit of anyone in the area where this is done, that it be done at a facility which has an 12 |! adequate buffer .one separating the incinerator from nearby '.3 t! ! I residential property. 14 If offsite? incineration is considered too time !j 15 h consuming and expensive, then we would recommend the offsite 16 ij landfill disposal, realizing from the beginning that this may ji 17 ; not be a permanent solution. But until better technology is 18 j- developed, 1 ar.df 11 1 s will have to be used in our society for 19 '. di sposal of some waste materials that now and in the im.-ne- 20 diate future cannot be handled in any other way. Thank you. 21 MR. EDLUND: We will take those comments and those 22 are very many of our concerns, as wel1, Dr. McKee. Thank you 23 •for your comments. Dr. George Smith. 24 25 OCT -7 1986 SYSTEM 2OO

005244 i 103 ^ STATEMENT BY DR. GEORGE C. SMITH Sierra Club, Houston Regional Group MR. SMITH: Good evening. Yes, I am George Smith. • t I am a member of the Air, Water, and Toxic Subcommittee of - the Sierra Club, Houston Regional Group- The Sierra Club is 1j1| a nationwide conservation organization. We have a longterm ^commitment to public health issues and the cleanup of toxic *! waste sites is a matter of high priority for us. And we- thirU that the long-term protection of 10 .idrinling water and air quality must be the yardstick by which

,( we measure th&se alternatives they have presented — We 12 support the goal of complete, safe destruction of the toxic wastes through neutralization, detox ification, or incinera- 14 tion. It is important that the wastes be destroyed, not 15 ! buried or attempted to be contained. 16 Contammat of the drinking waters at this site jt lon 17 jj demonstrates the problem of just leaving the wastes onsite. ;l 18 !| Wastes can and do migrate. By the finding of the trichloro- 19 !I ethyl ene at the 10O foot aquifer, it is already in the 20 aquifer. We find that disturbing. 21 We would not like to see an attempted containment 22 on the site. This would not be a viable longterm solution. 23 Likewise, containment at another landfill elsewhere would not really resolve the problem since we know that eventually 25 landfills will 1 eat . The proposal to incinerate the waste

005245 *|» > 1O4 1 ir onsi te has several drawbacks. 2 1 Texas law raises special concerns tor the impact of j 3 |, air emissions when sources are close to schools. This site ii 4 |j is exceptionally close to a school. Young children are i' j! especially sensitive to pollutants. This operation would ji pose an unacceptable risK We are aware that incinerators, can be operated with extremely high efficiencies. 6 Just as EF'A standards, though, are set for an 9 adequate margir. ct safety, the onsi te incineration plan has 10 Iji no room for an* m^rgi n o< safety for the school chiIdren, for n ' the ~5,0'"'»~> cDt-»idfnts neat-by. Indeed, some buffer area should ilI 12 !Hi be allowed since emissions will fluctuate due to waste feed 13 var iabi 1 i ty , hum^r; operator error, startup , shutdown, 14 mal -f uncti on, anJ adverse weather. 15 The--e is no doudt that prudence would dictate 16 piacement of the incinerator offsite in this instance. It is 17 possible that another incinerator for another Superfund site 18 could possi bl y be used. I thin I: this 15 one al ternati ve that 19 ought to be investigated. Perhaps pairing this site with 20 another 51te f01 another incinerator. 21 It 1-5 imperat i ve that we not trade water pol lution 22 •for air pollution, and we recognize the unusual complexities 23 of this part i CLI 1 ar site. We urge concern for the protection 24 of the publ i c ht.'al th. Thank you. 25 MR. EbLUND: Than! you. We appreciate your

005246 105 suggestion and let me clarify this. Was there a question as 2 j: to whether or not our feasibility study assessed the margin 3 j; of safety for onsite incineration compared to the other I alternatives'* Or was that a statement, you didn't think they

DR. SMITH: That was probabl y more of a statement. MR. EDLUND: All right. Some efforts were made to !i do some of that kind of assessment in these, and basically the incineration opt i ons had about the same level of r i si as 10 i perhaps the longterm landfill option, that the longter m 11 | landfill might degrade. 12 But these are? ver y, very 4 unny kinds of numbers to 13 come at, so ther e i*

005247 fi 106 it 1 || just want to go on record as opposing onsite incineration 2 i because of the many unknowns of health and environmental

3 i!: • risks. Your exposure to onset of disease can be up to 20 \' 4 I! i years. We can't wait 20 years to find out what is going to 5 j ; happen to these children. : I! T g •; ( I did not 111e the intimi ddtion of your statement, 7 i though, with truct s being dri ven through the area. Those ! g . trucls don't have to go through the area. They can use the 9 i feeder road anci corner in the bad wa/. You do not have to 10 ie;;pose these people to the hazard of true I traffic. i - •i Trtc ai-- is not an unlimited dumping ground, and you 12 '• need to consider alternative technologies. I won't go into fi l! 13 that. I belong to man r- environmental groups. There will be 14 statements coriing from them. I feel lite the process suffers 15 '. from tunnel vision. And you have to change because what we ;! 16 '-' have done is not working. •? And dio;. in, although it is not cancer causing, ',8 according to t'e research I have been reading lately, it 19 lii increases the risk o* a person exposed to a carcinogen of i 20 •• having cancer many times. So you don't know at what level-- ?l there is too many unlnowns. 22 You cannot use Harri s County any more as a guinea 23 pig* And that is what we have been all along the ship chan- ?4 nel , wherever wt- go. And 1 will submit written testimony. i 25 1! MR. EDLUND: Thanl you very much. Sol i ta Ann

005248 107 Walker. STATEMENT BY SOL1TA ANN WALKER- MS. WAU ER: Thank you. As people around here know, when I get up to tal k I have usual 1y done my homework, being a teacher. But I haven't had the time nor do I have 6 ij the knowledge a* all the. technology to do th© homework that needs to be done on something like this. i 1 do have some questions. One o-f them, and it hus i : been touched on just basically. Super fund is due to expire i 10 |ithe "1st oi Mav. That is nine days. What are the chances 11 | that you are going to get the , _ _.___ 12 h legi slators that you are? going to need to continue these 13 [1 Super-fund cl 14 li I have my doubts. I pay taxes, but I still have my 15 douDts of ju5l what they are going to do. Also, I want to go i j 16 n['on record as saving I afii against onsit& incineration -for numerous reasons that have been mentioned tonight and some 18 i] questi ons. 19 It you excavate to take this material to some other 20 place to either landfill it or incinerate it, what guarantee 2) ifc it that in the excavation a wind won't come and blow the 22 cJust particles onto South Houston and Pasadena and the 23 children^ What precautions are taken** What will be taken? 24 What will b& darty to protect us"1 25 What Aoout -- You tailed in the presentation about

005249 108 1 | some F'Cfcs that are beyond this site. In the cleanup, will 2 i.t . they also be cleaned up or are they going to be left out here 3 |!j| on the perimeters and peripheral areas^ And the 70O buried jl 4 | drums, that you evidently don't know what they contain, what ll 5 5 ,; are you going to do with them" 6 . Are they QOIng to be capped under? Are you goi ng 7 || to dig them up and see what is in them"* These are just a ii 8 j of the questions, c*nd I thinl Mr. Bundy has left. I don't ; Fi g • ! see him. He said he came from the F'CB capital and I think he 10 .' said he had four. 'I!! V " Well, thrire- 3"-e nine Super-fund sites just in the lj 12 i!i: area o^ Houston, Harris County, two of them within ten miles. < i 13 '&no is just right acrc.ss the freeway from us. So if the M wind blows from that one, we will get it too. i 15 '• Mfc- EDLUNl): Yes. Than! you. I think you asked a 16 ^number of very good questions. I count four. I car. answer i/ ; one. And I will give three to my cohorts. I believe your 18 i; f i rst. question is —- concerned funding and Super fund is 19 i.i, expir i ng May --1 agai n. Yes, it is true. 20 The original statute expired in September of 19B5. 21 ji; This agency had pi anned this fiscal year, and government 22 i years run funny -- they run from October to September. But 23 ; this year we had geared up to spend about 900 million dollar1^ 24 Nan Superfund, but thc?re was only T5i-' million dollars left. i!i 25 { We were able? to get along until along around February on this

005250 109 money, but we weren't able to start nf»w projects. Congress did give us, in April, 150 million dollar 3 !ij| ahortttrm funding out of the general revenue* and Bramm- Rudman applied to it. And we were able to use that to fund some more contract*. So basically now we do have name contracts funded over — that will last for a few more months and up to & year. 8 11 And we are waiting 4or Congress to do the job once

g j and for all and keep us from being on a string. As far as 10 !j Geneva is concerned, it won't be until Congress reauthor 1zes

11 jj the Super-fund statute that funding w, i i be available for the 12 remedies that we are tall ing about. 13 MS. WAU E&: So i n other words, we could be blowing 14 steam and not h^tve any money comi ng down to do anythi ng about 15 it otne*~ than what has been done. 16 Mh. EDLUND: We are told any day* &ut I would 17 expect -- We are expecting it soon. Debate has been going on 18 seriously on it and the representatives that we have had here 19 tonight, the, are very aware of it. And they are trying to 20 work 11 out. So — If you don ' t mind. 21 There were three other questions and I —let'S see 22 i f we can t answer those quickly instead of giving you a 23 speech. I believe they were — one of them was, Will the 24 excavation cau^e air pollution" And the second one was, What 25 about the FCB& t h*t v»ent beyond the si te"* And the third one

005251 t no 1 . was, What happens to all those drums that are in the ground'" 2 . * Mfc. UlLLlAHSi O> ay. The answer to your -first 3 quest i on about protection dun ng excavation, what wou) d 4 ,! happen during thta excavation itself, we would set monitoring t i 5 !1:i *i l«s up along the? boundaries of the site and ii any o'

5 = ;i those — any o* the concentratl ons of dust that; wfi look 7 <| samples from showed f-"'CE

;j >£ijf «t = tiG''i about tne drums. Incse drums !l 12 . i be excavated and d; sposed of alofig with tne contaminated soil 13 by whatever met MLJJ i & chosen. And your third question about ; i H ' offsite contamination of soil, when wt would go out and tale 15 i j' ' sampl es i n the ^- t c- to show whether or not any thi ng has 16 ! mi grated i ron-. vJ.t remedial investigation"1

17 jii We would probably turn that data over to the Center 18 ,; for Di sease Control and ask for a recommendation from them. i 19 ! H, you know, this- concentrations were as high as what we are i 20 t| finding on the site right now, that soil certainly would be 2) addressed as part of the remedial action. 22 MS. WALt-ER: So, in other words, there is a chance 23 j of contamination to the citizens when you da the excavation^1 i 24 " MR. WILLIAMS: You can ' t be heard unless you are up 25 [I here at the microphone wery nel 1 .

005252 Ill MS. WALl ER: In other words, no matter how you do i; 2 fit, there is a r i =t to the citizens in the area from, I guess M 3 ji the word would be fallout? f• ii MR. WILLIAMS: Yes, ma'am. Unfortunately, we were talking about risk a little bit earlier* These are all j technology cal solutions and they all have a risk. And we just try to protect as much against that as passible. |j MS, WALl Eft: Thank you. g M g -; MR. EDLUND: Mr. Gregory Gebhart. Has he left? I 10 ,! thought someone was getting him. All right. Mr. Gerald U iiij W«3l L er . 12 jj STATEMENT &V MR. GERALD WALKER \ 13 } Resident of Pasadena i! !

005253 112 Really what we are doing is just dumping our garbage on our neighbor s lawn. The other option is offsite 3 ; landfill. The nearest landfill that is permitted for PCS is 4 £mil@, Alabama. That is 600 miles from here. If we move i! 1 5 r 22fOOG yards of dirt and other contaminated solids to Emilfc, 6 li| we are talking about over 1100 truckloads going out. jj . i ...... 7 1 This is about a 12OO mile round trip. We are going l! 8 ', to be exposing every citizen between here and there to a 9 i:| possible co". tan nation due- to spills o*- automobile accidents. !• 10 |: That is everybody along that road, Texas, Louisiana, r; r 11 :. Mississippi, and Ai abafr.j. What riqht do we have to expose f 12 the* to that when we have the capability to destruct this 1 13 j; mater i *1 r i ght here" 14 At- the present time the only known method of i 15 j[ complete PCD destruction is incineration. All these other !i 16 ;' methods are possibilities or experiments. This is a proven '( 17 [ method. I will just refer to my notes here a little bit. i 18 I want to point out that these wastes are Texas 19 wastes. They were generated right here from Texas operations 20 that some of us may have even had — gotten a payroll from. 21 Now, with incineration the proven technology that it is, and 22 available right now, it is just unconscienable for us to 23 handle these wastes in any other manner. 24 We- would abdicate our responsibility and expose 25 others to the hazards of transport. And beside that we are

005254 113 going to be expecting another state to handle our waste and be responsible for it. Landfill is not the final solution to the waste problem. These wastes are going to continue to exist and at some future time they are going to require .. somebody to take care of them. »' And we have already stuck i t to our kids with a 7 staggering national debt. And I recommend that we take the F 8 [responsibility right now and get rid of this stuff right now 9 j and not leave it for somebody el re to worry about later on. 10 I 1 a.T, really not prout* of the state of Texas for so 11 !' little that they have done- to permit hazardous waste 1 andf ill 12 ! or destruction facilities in this state. They rely on 13 ; somebody else to tale care of their problem. And they show td no i nc1ination to even improve that. 15 Inci nertst i en is an ef f ec ti ve means of disposal . 16 ]. The mom tor i ng of i nci ner ator emissions i E a proven 17 hi technology, and it will assure that there is no hazardous 18 i; emi ssions resulting. Now, our acceptance of this incinerator i 19 li here may provide an incentive to other citizens to do 20 jIi ! likewise in other locations so that they won't have to send 21 ! their waste over to Deer Park. i 22 I Now, i f ERA determines that onsite incinerati on i s 23 j| feasible, I waul d ask that we would cooperate by minimizing 24 ;any local objections. Than! you. j 25 MR, EDLUND; Than! you. Mr. Walker, you might all

005255 II I! 114 be interested, and perhaps the rest of you might too, the 2 i:i offsite disposal sites that we have looked at included Emile, Alabama. I believe the one that offered the cheapest rate, whi ch was used in the figures, was in Nevada. MR. WILLIAMS: Bady, Nevada. MR. EDLUND: Bady, Nevada. So that is even a little further away. Let *s see. Joyce Thielepope"7 Q In] MS. THIELEPAPE: No, but that is close. !j g ; MR. EDLUND: Wel1, maybe you can correct the record :11 10 ! ii here. i!ti STATEMENT BY MS. JOYCE THIELEPAPE Glenbrook Valley Civic. Association 13 MS. THIELEPAPE: It is Mrs. Joyce Thielepape. The H-I is si lent. I am president of the Glenbrook Valley Civic i

15 M1! Association, which represents 13OO families residing in front I 16 .i i •.* of Hobby Ai rpot-L. And I am also president of the Pasi ti ve 17 ' Interaction Southeast program, which is a crime watch HPD 18 ! citisen association representing over 27 civic organizations 19 in southeast Houston. 20 1 thinl* one thing I would like to commend you on i s 21 this is one of the first publie hearings that I have ever 22 been to where the public is not heard. I have been to a lot 23 j of them with metro. We have fought with them -far three years. And I think the people here tonight - there was - I

know we had quite a few civic clubs represented and the

005256 II 115 people had to go home. I think the information we have gotten tonight has been great* but I felt also that it is important that the ! i! people that were here and left needed to have their say-so. :Liki e I said, it is ten o'clock. A lot of them have to get up i '• earl y to go to war I , I am one of the lucky few that is 7 retired. a But I will say this. As far as incinerating on the 9 ! site, I am ver>, very much opposed to it. I am also the t 10 j, owner of ten acres which adjoins the field that you have now i: n ! m the 6200 block on South Acres. I would 1ike to commend ii 12 t) you for cleani nq that up. I had three barrels over on my 13 ;! 1 and whi ch they have taken care of. And I think you are 14 -doing a great -ob out there. 15 ; We have got enough pollution out here. We have got i • 16 |; the refineries. We have got the chemical s off of the Port of i? ijHouston. We have noise pollution from the airport. And 1 18 don't think we can stand much more out here, I really 19 don ' t. 20 And like I said, if it is our tax dollars, then 21 there is not that much difference between doing the 22 incineration there and taking it off because I am sure that 23 extra amount wuuld be what we would pay out to our doctors 24 for cancer bills and for our birth defects and our hospital 25 bills. And I thank you.

005257 U6 1 M;i And like I said, I hope we have 2 fri hearing because I i now there is a lot of people that left |l 3 i*I| that did have quite a 4eu comments to make to you* MR. ECLUNDc Thank you, Ms, Thielepapts. I hope that those who diti have to leave — I go to work tomorrow, 6

tr/ tc care

Oh. I a, sorry. Oh , here 1! J Manirtjso. . Is she here7 Qk.ay. We might be to 13 Let s see Hr . Henr / Hardy

" U"'LL'i: Hy

005258 117 take this. I don't want tc taK* this. And I don't want — Any person that has ever had a cancer always has this fear of having another. So I don't want you to ever have a cancer. It is no fun. So we don't want this. And I am speaking for myself as «ell as other*. And I thini there i* no questions that I want to ask. They have ail been asl-ed, but I do think that you, might tale that minister's — about this minister, male your sermon a little shorter. 10 MR. EDLUhlD: Thanl- you. I wi 11 try to do that,

11 jJMrs. Read. Than! you. Mr. George Smith. FrOm the Sierra 12 Club. I believe - He has already spo. *n. Far some reason 13 j. he may have filled out two cards. Mr. Edward Williford. K STATEMENT Ev MR. EDWARD W. WILLIFORD 15 Meadowbrool. Civic Club 16 MR. WILLIFORD: Than! you. I guess I wi11 just get 17 down short. Th*t is oi.ay. I am with the Meadowbrook Civic 18 Club and I would like to go on record as being against the 19 incinerating. One fact, you still haven't proved to me you 20 can effectively control it as far as there is not going to be 21 any accidents. 22 It i% just not possible. I have seen the 23 incinerator at Rollins work. I have beem in pollution and 24 hazardous chemical control for the past eight years. I have 25 seen acczdent^ there. i ha-e seen accidents just about every

005259 HB plant from Houston all the way to Galveston, Fr««port. 2 ti It is not possible in a populated area to burn this

3 ; \t l type of material without having a mistake at one time or another. And that is all. MR. EDLUND: Thank you very much. Mr. or Mrs. 6 j J.A.S. Adams. Mr. Adams. MR. ADAMS: That is true. 8 Ij STATEMENT BY J. A. S. ADAMS ••ii 9 ,1 Professor, Rice University |; 10 ij MR- ADAMS: Let me introduce myself. I am a 11 .! professor at geochemistry at Rice University where I have ! 12 : been 4 or — years, only 16 to go. And my remarks take the j 13 'j form of a letter tc Congressman Andrews, who ~ the first letter that I have ever written to my Congressman. but he 15 j| wrote me first. 16 Dear Mile. ThanI you for your letter of May 15, 17 1986, regardiny the Geneva Industries site in our district. 18 As you suggested, I did contact George M. Fertoni in your 19 Pasadena office, and he was most helpful, including making 20 the Apri1 15, 1986, feasibility study available to me and my

21 associates Terr v 0'Rourke and David Todd. 22 We find this study most i nadequate. My col league 23 from the Univer sity of Houston would gi ve you an ft and R« 24 rewrite and re^ubmit. That is mercy. At Rice, you would 25 hd^e gotten j jstice-

005260 iI|t 119 • i: First and foremost, this study is not politically acceptable, the onsite incineration being opposed by near 1y , ii '; every elected official as we 11 as many others. Simpl y .1'stated, the American Revolution principle of no taxation ij ,|i witnout representation has now evolved into "Do not put us at risJ without our infarmed consent*" t\ This study exhausts, but it does not properly and comprehensively inform and thus there can be no consent and • p.there is no confidence. One of the several alternatives to 10 onsite incineration, mentioned in passing in the report, is ,- the rotary kiln. Buit tne main importance of this type of i ncinerat ion is not developed. I The fcl 1 owing ley points are missing -from the study 14 and should have been emphasized. Near Oslo, Norway, Ncirsam, a cement plant, has developed and patented a process for compl etel y incinerating PCE and sirni 1 ar organics. 17 :>ii This process has been studied, documented, and 18 ''approveli d by the Norwegian government and the ERA. The main 19 advantage ave>~ all other methods of incineration is that the 20 material is i 24 process, and hence there is no economic advantage to skimp en ( 25 fuel by ^Derating at lower temperatures or pushing materials j

005261 12O t :' through at the risk of incomplete combustion. As one alternative technology, thr economic and environmental trade-off should be evaluated for leaching Geneva site soil with solvents like kerosene, blending the leachate would currently produce toxic wastes suitable for 11 g !'j, combustion, shipping to rotary kilns and existing cement 7 (plants in standardised high integrity containers, and total 1y H g j* combust i ng the 1 eachate with the proven Norsam process. 3 ' In addition to the economies in fueling the cement 10 ii making, the economies in shipping leachate out and cement in i. 11 i mig^vt be real i zed. Time? does, not permit a page by page com- 12 i!;: mentary on this, study, when I was writing this as wel 1 as 13 now. ':I !! 14 f•!' The absence of a pilot pi ant stage is shocking and i 15 | throws all the study's cost estimates in doubt, particularly M (6 j,lj since the 4O<> to 7OO buried drums can contain anything from 17 j;j ; sodium metal, an incendiary bomb, to poison platinum cata- 18 1ysts, maybe worth 110,000 or more of recoverable platinum. 19 The term toxic waste is perhaps not useful because 20 much of the material is of unproven toxicity and at the 21 Geneva site the organic chemicals can be considered a low- 22 grade resource wh.^se value -- fuel value could be recovered 23 neatly by incineration in a cement rotary kiln. 20 MM,'. tDLUNO: Flag. Just tu let you know. 25 DFv. ADAMS: To have a sustainable society you must

005262 f ! in restore the prei nduatr i jl situation, where ono organism or ii 2 I* industry '5 to:; tc waste i s Another organism 's or indue tr y '» 1 1 3 i: leach. Five minutes. ij 4 s MR. EDLUND: Thank you, Mr. Adam*. If you wish to i 5 i submit that to us for tha rscord, we will take it. It 5 I|jlikt « there was mor» to it than what you read. Thank you. ! 7 !' have about 15 cards here and I see Mayor ThiKl is getting I g 'bags under his e/es. We promised we would get out by ten.

9 ): Can I have a show of hands as to how many people 10 [( i wauld still wish to make a statement, pi ease, so we can get 11 'i an i dea. One, two, three, four, five, si >; » seven, eight, . i 12 :f ni ne , ten, el even , twel ve. Al 1 r i ght. Can -- Do we have — 13 f,;! Can we have the use of the hal 1 ~* f eep rol 1 ing, he says. A] 1 i! right. Okay* then. Dr. Harry M. Walker, please. l,' r STATEMENT BY DR. HARRY M. WALKER t6 ii; DR. WALI ER: I am Dr. Harry Walker. I am a 17 .! resident of Did inson. I am a retired environmental control ii 18 official. I spent many years as a 1aboratory research 19 chemist and my concern is mainly the astonishing cost figures 20 in your report. 21 You have mentioned figures that could vary from a 22 little, but not for the options you choose, to ten to twenty ; ! 23 to thirty to forty million dollars, and nobody seems to know \ ( 24 what the upper 1imit is. One has to keep in mind that there f 25 are £><'""> to 1,OOO of these sites in the United States. If you \

005263 1 1**•*1. »r* going to spend SO million per on the*, you ar* talking

About fifty billion, p*rhap»f which I don t think will b* *ad» aval Therefore, funding for thi» Site has to coma out of th» twholo pi». And AS a practical mattarr, 1 really don't think, if you get over five million dollar*, you area — 1 don't thinl you are going to get it. It just is too much

8 l; money and the people are not going to get their money's worth 9 ! i f or it. r You ff-a. feel that you are tal i nc the money away induslr, i,.- *he Sup**-fund type taxes, but you are not. 12 |j You are tal ing it away from the people, because industry 13 | passes the co=l on to the customers. 14 Or.e rfiifig that greatly concerns me, though, is the

15 fact that so m~-.t of our industries have met their demise in 16 recent years, wt f.ardly can manufacture anything in the 17 United Stales ar., more. It all comes from Korea or Taiwan or 18 Singapore or HC.OQ tang, and it isn't helped by excess *9 environmental costs. 20 So I Uunl. you people in the environmental business 21 have to be very responsible in the magnitude of ct; . t you lay 22 on the public and on industry for your ends, which certainly 23 are very good ends, in many cases. But in this particular 24 case, I thinl UH figures are totally out of the question for 25 the value to be r eceived.

005264 ! Now, I think we can analyze wf-at is in your report i a little bit. First, that I thought the presentation this

3 [; evening was very interesting. I enjoyed your detailed talk, Ms. — t forget your name. And you had some figures in there 5 I |Jj that were not in your big report that 1 read over at the 6 • 1 ibrary . The picture presented of what has been done I thini || is excellent. It appeals to me that what has been done is ! completely saf ey-.--.rdi n the public r:ght now as it stands, t y 10 | and w,th a little more finishing off, you could make a very 11 i safe situate. ! certain!* don t support incineration of i| 12 jj thousands. and thousand, of cub1C yards of dirt as a viable 13 ji sol

005265 124 1 the figures in there. There is almost nothing quantitative 2 iI except the statements about FCfc. i 3 I The statements regarding all the other things are 4 jqualitative. 1 thinl you will find that if you analyze air, 5 i| water, shallow groundwater, almost anyway, you will find 6 |ii| every one of tnenu There is nothing unique about that array 7 i j! of materials, &TX or clorinated hydrograms, they are every- 8 ;; where. So this 15 not a very unique site in that respect, 9 |j &ul ; thinl the PCt figures are acceptable and 1 10 i thint that ,-Q.jr whole justification 1= resting en PC&s. To 11 li get this ir. * little better perspective, I thinl you have to 12 !'[ i recogni re -- ii1 (iI N*. EL-LUNL : Flag, ii !' C.-\. wV%L( EF : I have- roughed the figures out a

15 !> little bit. v-G'j t e talking about about five drums of RGBs j 16 'distributed through the 20 or 30 thousand cubic yards. It is i! 17 I an almost impossiblv dilute situation to start with. But your 18 report does ma*e it clear tnat the groundwater is rtot going 19 down to deeper aquifers. They are clean, if not, coming up. 20 There is a cap on it. 1 thinl the cap could be 21 improved. That would be a minimal cost proposition. I would 22 suggest adding some more of the clay cap, paving it over, and 23 renting it out as a staging area for trucks or something like Lthat. ! thinl tne land out to be kept in use. ! don't think l| j| you sh i abandon it and put up a "keep out" sign, which is

005266 just an invitation to peopi* to get in, you know. So I think with an approach 1 Ue that, which I 3 i would say ifi a * minus presentationt that 1 think you could ksep the leval well below five million dollars. I do think

th« slurry walls are ufi*iess b.c-u.« you ars conc«rn«d with

«tu*+ going down, and the *iurry w*u* eUm't hava a bottom. Thank you. 3 MR. EDLUND: Than! you very much, Dr. Walker. We g ;| MI 1 1 consider those comments. Miss I aren or Mrs. Karen Hunt. Is she still here" » aren Hunt^ How about Nancy !| Funderbant """ 12 MS. FUNDERBUY : Burk. 13 MR. EDLUNL: Burl. Pardon me. 14 STATEMENT E-V MS. NANCY FUNDERBURl. 15 Ha^con, Inc. 16 M5. FUNDERBUW : Good evening. Please excuse my 1? baci « Everybody turns their backs on you and really you are 18 the people that I am here to talK to toni yht. We — 19 MR. EDLUND: Could you use t.he microphone, please. 20 MS. FUNDERBURI : Oh. You ca»-»not hear me? I am 21 sorry. Please -forgive me. The reason -fcr my being here 22 tonight, a/ course, is the notice in the paper. My husband 23 and I have a company that has been formed in Houston, Texas, 24 for about a year. I have to confess that in essence I would 25 be considered ^ vender here. But it said in the paper that

005267 126 I you were looting for new technologies. We have A patented formula far a chemical treating of F*CEs, whatever, any type of contanu nant, where we have j shown the EFA in Washington, D.C., we have shown them in Austin, Texas, that we can take a substance of 2210 parts per mi 11 ion of arsenic and reduce that within the time that it tales the mass to solidify to 1.9, which is less than your 8 j] standards set. 9 Whe»t we waul d life to dc is asl you and to asi 10 these pecpl e that they waul d 1 aal at our folders, let them 1 ! [now that. tS.E" e are other technol cgj e = available besides 12 i ncineration. I am not a public speal er , so please forgive 13 (r.e. There are other technal ogi es avai1 able besides 14 i nciHeration . 15 To answer some of the people s questions as far as 16 : how this can be? contai ned while it is being cleaned up, what 17 we have proposed after wort-ing with the DOD also at the 18 Pentagon, i5 thst we wauld construct or raise an t9 environmentally controlled building that is something like 20 the Yankees use to play tennis in up north that is the size 21 of si:; f ootbal 1 f i elds. 22 Thi s waul d gi ve you an ai r 1 ocl; at the end where the 23 trucks go in, do their work af solidification, and the" they 24 are decontaminated and go out the other end. I was happy to 25 hear people say that the trucks would not have to go directly

005268 i.1:l1 127 1 i!;i through the communi ty. We woul d ask that we woul d be put on 2 I your list so that when you issue requests for proposals, we 3 j are not overlooked. 4 \l I understand that you did want same other ii technologies. If there would be same way that we could have ji!a transfer of custody of some of the contaminated soils, we i j would be glad to solidify that. You could test it and you |! 8 i' wou! d see — I agreed wi th the gentleman that said why burn g at I of the so;1s when some of the contaminants are so minute, 10 '; it seems ridiculous. 11 11 Sc I waul d lilt? to 1 eave you m/ card. There are 12 tl e;: tra brochures. There are a I so scientific laboratory 13 rsports i nside of seven of these brochures, and I would j, t4 j; welcome anybody s questions. Thank you. li 15 ; Mn. ECLUML: Than! you. Leave us one of the seven 15 !I|j wi th all the stuff in it. We will take the grade fl pact-age 'i ; 17 I' here. And for the record, the agency doe?s have an innovative J I ' 18 ft technologies program where new and emerging hazardous waste 19 ij treatment technologies are being requested. Mrs. Funderbank, 20 burk, Pardon me. Are you aware of that program? 21 MS. FUNDERBURJ : Sir'1 22 MR. EDLLJND: Are you aware of our pi lot program for 23 • innovative technol ogi es""1 24 MS. FUNDER&UR* : We have already applied. 25 MR. EDLUND: All right. She has applied. Okay,

005269 128 fin*. Than^ you. Mac Qrosco. Did you want to say something for — MS. OROSCO: Yes. ! had a card in th*ro. MR. EDLUND; Oh. You have got a card in here too'1 MS. QRQSCO: 1 would like to say something. MR. EDLUND; It is — You are married to him. I am [ sure it is MS. OROSCO: No. He is my nephew 9 MR. EE'UJND: Nephew. All right. 10 MS. ORCSCQ; Too old. 11 STATEMENT Br CARMEN OROSCO |j i-•*•> ih.i MS. OROSCO: I am Carmen Orosco and I am a member 13 of Tempi o £taut i sta, which IB r i ght here on Washington and 14 probably not even two miles from the site. I am also a ;:iti! member of the F- as^dsna Independent School District PTA and 16 [I because of this, I an, v«ry concerned especially about our 17 chi 1 dren in this area, 18 I live m Pasadena, but my church is here, the 19 Jpeople and some of my relatives and friends. And my concern 20 for everyone in general being human being has brought me here ; 21 tonight. I thint everything has been said that I agree to. 22 I am not knowledgeable in all the technologies. 23 But I do know one thing, that I would not want to 24 see onsite incineration. I have been to one public hearing 25 before and it hart to do Mlth House Bill 72 on education. And

005270 IZ9 some of the things that the people apoke against, they still went right ahead and voted it in. So my question to you tonight is, After hearing public opinions voiced here tonight, would you still go with onsite incineration? And how could we override your decision"1 MR. COLUND: We didn't come with our mi ad* mad* up. We thought it was our duty when we sent out the feasibility stud/ to provide the citizens earns idea about what w* thought I might be a good idea. We had -- As I explained at the very 10 beginni ng, you I now, we lool for solutions that have to first 11 ail 12 ironment.

13 Ther£ several options that we looked at. There 14 clhBr wel , we ,oo , 15 ,r»d o< the pollul.on or Aether lt I5 a longterm solutlon, 16 the cost. uhether or not the th.ng wl1, take a ,Dng, long 17 time, f.t cetera. Cons.der.ng those factors. it seemed 18 -ncin.rat,on of

-anted to taH, W1th you a!1 about. Qffslte landfin has ben^.ts, ,t is a little shorter, et cetera. But ,t is -m.th.ng call., nimby, not in my back yard. It goes over to 23 Ne-vada and 7O vr'are; 24 as an agencv qet critlci^c-d for that. 25 Well, I wouldn't give any more speeches

005271 130 Th« rp«ftan that we hold a public meeting like this is that we |r;| want to understand how you all thinl and feei about it. ji 3 jj whether there are some other* ways to skin the cat that we have yet to »>. ami ne. And we wi 1 1 tale your comments into

consideration% certainly, before we mate any sort of decision at this Site-. MS. OKOSCOi I felt that 1 became

I: g i|;[ I nowl edgecstil fc* m the process. The doctor from ftice talked 9 ijij abG_ t sounotJ .o . i n*. e-~ 6=;- j ng. One thing that 1 would lile- 10 ij! to bring up i~ J.=it there are over £00 children At South I £1 t-n.t-it e'.- , r-u>K, nz-t sure. ii E»u*. OL-- chi I our m»in concern. I belleve 15 if that we- oo. nc; to i mess f or our chi1dren. ;! 1S ijj! don't believe in pushing it off to another state, e.ther. 17 E'ut unl e*3» techr.oi ogv can i nsure that you can do 11 through 18 :!j| l^^ese bi odeqi acJ^tjl e methods, I can t see how it could 19 Possibly b£? don.:- right here in the middle of all this 20 community. ?1 And that is whr 1 came to speak against onsite 22 >cineration. I hate to put it into another state, but I 23 thinl so«.ewhe> e where it is completely isolated is much 24 better than somewnere where you have a community of this 25 ;! sire. Th^nl you.

005272 1 i Hfc. EDLUND: Fine, Thank you vary much. Beth 2 /Sellars. Is she here"1 3 STATEMENT fcY Ð SELLERS 4 ! MS. SELLERS: Yes. I am a citizen of South 5 ' Houston. I have been here for 2O years now. And I am ;; represent ing my peers, the South Houston High School g h 7 |jstudents, South Houston Intermediate School students, which 0 jlj! my younger sister is enrolled at, and I am also here to 9 represent rr»> children, future children. 10 J1 Is it fair for thG'T tc come into the world with all if !• jj tni s i nci n~r at i c ~. b-s i ng s-jrned in the air" Is it -fair0 Have n |i 12 i: i you tonsi dered whtat it is goi ng to dc to them i n these TO, "SO 13 j: years" I mean h^i.e- you al 1 stopped and thought" I want an 14 i answer to tha'^. Have you stopped to thinl,""* li 1 15 I MR. EDLUNE.: fxigh*. now" 10 ij h5. S£ LER9: Yes. Right now. That is what I am jl t 17 Ijj here -for, i a* here for an answer. Right? 18 ' MR. EDLUND: All right. Beth, why don't you — I i ig iwill taie a list down -- II MS, SELLER'o: No. Ksep going. That is an immediate answer. Yea or no^ Have you thought"1 22 I MR. EDLUND: All right. I will be on your five lIIi 23 !j mi nutes 11 me dur i ng my answer , 24 MS. SELLERS: Have you thought, yes ejr no"1 25 MR. EDLUND: Vas. *s a matter of fact, we have

005273 131 1 • iij And as a matter of fact, that is why I work for the Environ- j 2 ) mental Frotection Agency, because we are concerned about 3 I1 that. il 4 • MS. SELLERS; Okay. If you thought that, you would ::j 5 if j have decided no, wt don 't want that stuff floating around in 6 the air. Also, we have Hobby Airport right beside us. I am not a public speaker. I am scared to death, thank you. And we have -- Thi s is approximately 6 mi 11 ion 9 ! [ peopl e com; ng in and out of Hobby Airport. Right"!5 They have-- j ! 10 j!l There i s hotel s around, they stay for the weekends. We are 11 i, subjecting the^ . peopl e from Washington, people coming down i 12 i:I' from wherever , we are subjecting them to ~- 13 i|;. Mr.. EIL-LLJNC : Tor public meetings. Yes. 14 L 1^5. SELLERS: Right. Oh, you are so smart. We are j 15 li i subjecting the-- to all this stuff that is floating around in 16 j the air that we are burning. So here are. Let's — Why I we 17 not mess up the world here. Okay. This is fun. Another 18 I question for you. Would you buy a house 100 yards or a mile 19 away from that That is where I live. I live right 20 near it. It is not fair. Okay. 21 I am just against it. I think it is wrong. Also, 22 I think all the alternatives are wrong. I think you all 23 ought to go bacJ to the drawing board and find another way. 24 We car.'t cover it up. The young boy said, no, that is wrong y 25 t oo. We can t cover it up f or the ne:; t gener at i rn. Why do

005274 r that? Let's gel rid of it, but all three a* these proposals are wrong. 3 You have got to go bad to the drawing board and 4 dig and find something else. Okay. 5 MR. EDLUND: Okay. Thank you very much for your G comment. Douglas Wilson. 7 STATEMENT BY :V<. DOUGLAS WILSON 8 MR. WILSON: 1 am alarmed at the potential 9 incineration here in South Houston. How much PCS and other 10 cancer causing or other poisonous materials are going to be put into the air if the plant is operating under optimum 12 conditions^ What amounts if less than optimum conditions? 1 13 What are the trad record o4 other facilities" 14 Considering the large population in this area, how 1 15 much greater it the potent i #1 for harm here than el sewhere"" 16 What are the Would the incinerator be dismantled 17 after burning this material or would

005275 ;: 134 \\ 1 |! We will answer all of them in our responsi veness summary. 2 I Let me see * f I can hit maybe one or two, and I won ' t spend a 3 ij long ti me. i • 4 i ; '• The tract record for incineration operati ons, I !|

5 •1 ! think that should be something that we will put into the I 1 5 i record. I don't have the figures with me now. Do you, Don" MR. WILLIAMS: What I have seen are two recent 8 \, inspection r'rpcjrts. -from the PCB incinerators that are 9 permitted i •-. Ro^io-i 6 and those inspection reports indicate 10 that the x nc i r.erator& therr.s&l ves are operating very wel 1 . 11 There has beer, 12 |l MR. LL'LLJNT': U,e include more statistics in our 13 J; write-up. The assurance about whether or not it would be 11i id | dismantled, ts.it is the concept. We are not in business to ih; 15 H make money bu^-ung other people's wastes* This is a J 16 gover nment pr o jt_->; _ . We will be taling it down. I And yc'ji- other questions, I hope we will be able to II address in our responsiveness summary. We are trying to be 19 responsive tc your concerns, and I understand your concern 20 about wanting to be involved in the decision making, and we

21 that you r;n c through this process. And we will have our 22 r& open here and through the written record- And you can 23 call us. You have got our phone numbers now. 24 VOICE. FROM AUDIENCE: Can we call collect^ 25 MF.. rOLUNt-: Pardon me" Collect"?

005276 VOICE FROM AUDIENCE: Do you accept collect calls? MR. EDLUND: No, 1 am sorry. The government doesn t. 3 ! i would like to call Washington sometimes on my tax bill, but i! 1 4 i!I it is not a collect call. All right. Mr. Mike McGinness. STATEMENT BY MR. Mil E P. McGINNESS MR. McGINNIS: Yes. I have several questions that I would 1iIe to get some answers to or get the ERA to address m«,be at a future time. First of all, I have serious reser- |;

g !(vations about thr lack of licensing requirements, liability i; 10 j: insurance requirements for the operators at Superfund sites. 11 erious reservations about the lack of 12 It pe-'-mi tt i ng requirements and monitoring requirements in the 13 'la.-i per t<3i ni ng to Supe^-fund. It i = mv und erst and i ng i rom i| 14 what I am reading in the Super fund regulations that EFA can 15 !;ii pretty well do what they want to do as they see fit. 16 A contractor can come in there, operate under 17 f und with no 1 iabi 11 tv , no per mi t, and i-f he kills half 18 the people in the community! he is not liable for it, under 19 the law of Super fund. I have serious reservations about 20 that. 21 I al E^O am concerned, from an ai ticle I read in 22 "Sci ence News, " February 19B5, the EF'A in Sweden has issued a

23 rtor c»tor i am on all nen incinerators in the country. They are 24 quite concerned about the dioxin generation by all incinera- 25 to-'s, including municipal incinerators. ell MPT)

SYS" EM 2O,

005277 1 They seem to have evidence that the dioxins that 2 are generated in the incineration process are entering the 3 food chain, gradually, and building up in the population. 4 And I thinJ this needs to be addressed before we go much 5 , farther with incineration projects anywhere in this country. 6 u. Another thing that concerns me is that there is t'. 7 | nothing to require EPA to shut this incinerator down at the 8 termination of the Superfund cleanup of this site. As 1 g understand, you all could start bringing in waste from other 10 ; locations, burning it at this site after this site's cleanup 11 tasi is camp} e-tej . 12 [. WE as citizens under the regulations have no 13 ' recourse. We have no capacity to go to the court and get an 14 '; injunction or fight, other than public comment, what you all 15 i; choose tc do at <=• Super-fund site. 16 i Thc_- onl y other comment I have is I think you need i;' 17 to put yourselves in our shoes, visualise this incinerator 50 Pi 18 J! feet fro.r. the home office of EPA in Washington, and see how 19 ' you feel about it. Thank you, gentlemen. 20 Mf^. EDLUND: Than! you. For the record, we are 21 .from Dallas. So if it is in Washington, it would be further i 22 i away. Mr. McGinnis, let me see if I can't summarize — 1 23 ; thinl you had thr ee major question5. We might be able to get 24 > fOf some of them. 25 r

005278 137 One of them was liability insurance, whether our

contractors Wer& required to get liability insurance, and the

3 hanger IS, They are. And as a matter of fact, it has held

up ~ It is very d,*flcuit to obtain now, and it has held up a lot of our working projects. Another one, really, you mentioned licenses and 7 permits and I Want to mal.e SUre I get this question right. 8 It is that ERA under Suptrfund has a free- hand, and does not 9 get license* and permits, et cetera, tc. clean up its site*. 10 Isthatmv~~IsthArhj5-ir-^itnac ba-icalli y your question or your 11 concern or — 12 MR. McGINNESS: As I understand it, under the 13 Superfund boc* S wh,ch I have been reading, which you all have

14 published, the orlginal ll|tent „, Supe,.fund ^ fco ^ Epfl 15 the authority to go in under an emergency response program, 16 clean up a site, hire a contractor without issuir.g a permit, 17 without issuing a license, to meet the needs of the 18 community. 19 MR. EDLUND: I would llke to addresg that_ r __ fl 20 little earner, We had Mr£. Green^eld. I. she still h,r.7 21 W& had our attorney come ,n and »alb out. Let me address 22 that part.ally. then. Dk-y? j wlll reserve __ and f wiu 23 have our lawyers .hen we do the Write-up make sure that I 24 have said the right things. 25 But under — tt I5 true that under the CjRCLfl

005279 \\i 138 jj statute, the EF'A does not get the permit, per se, the air permit or the water permit or the RCF.A permit. That was a term that was used earlier. Instead, you have to perform to I the level required in those regulations.

Now, when we were discussing a little earlier, there were some acronyms that were thrown out that may have

been a little too — \ am sure, the 4lrst time I heard them, 8 jj I didn't (now what they meant either. There was one called I 9 | T05CA, that ,s the Toxic Substances Control Act. Another one Ii* 10 j; was KCRA, the Kesourc* Conservation and Recovery Act. Thant i1 E 11 ;: you. 12 Anyway, the reason that those statutes were being

mentioned is because these cleanup Jr,els were being designed 14 i to meet those statutory requirements and the regulations that 15 were promulgated underneath them. There was some concern a 16 i|i little earlier about air permits. ! | 17 jj What wlil happen at these Uiperfund sites is that 18 ;iwe will clean them up to exceed — to meet or exceed what 19 e:;i*iiing environmental requirements would be. The require-

20 ment for the administrative issuance o* a permit per se was

21 waived under the statute, but we go

005280 139 I ! basical 1 y^ O( ay. *| MS. GFvEENFIELD: I missed the question. ,j VOICE FROM AUDIENCE: He wants you to read the fi thing that went into the November Federal Register. Re^d it c into the record so he has to obey it. '; 6 '! MS. GKEENFIELD: Just to document — 7 MK. EDLUND: Would you please use the microphone^ g ' MS. GREENF IELI): 01. ay. I am just walking around -- [ i g This is a little prepared part of the program. 1 was i; 10 I! speal ing to Dr . MerracK at the beginning of the program and j!: | he -- the beginning at the evening, and he asV'ed me about I. -what • i ncis d standards we apply and whether we apply state 1 ! 13 • standards anc state permit standards and so -forth at ;. Super fund sites. 14 ,i 15 And basically, I thinl Carl has given the answer. . I just, told hiffu and 1 will spare you all, that I will not 17 'read you ream^ o-f regul ations and so forth, but last November 18 "20, I9B5, in the Federal Register, EFA published an amendment 19 \I\! to essenti ally what we call the national contingency plan. 20 II It is the basic format that we follow in deciding 21 j how to study and select a remedy at the Superfund sites. And 22 at that time, we changed the national contingency plan. We 23 changed our rules and regulations and said that we were nnt 24 j going to applv -- not mat-.e the federal government or state 25 gaver nments in the event that states take the lead i n doing

005281 140 cleanups were not going to make the government apply for permi ts. What we meant by * hat was we were not going to male governments go through the whole permitting process. How- ever, we were going to ask that ERA and the states, when carrying out remedies, would apply the existing federal 7 criteria or state standards in developing alternatives at Super*und sites. 9 j So the answer is Ves. we will be "following the 10 |j standards of state law, in all likelihood, with respect to n , the regulation and operation of incinerators. Does that 12 ''. ! answer your quest:on~ 13 Mr.. EI ^.UND: Thank you. 14 MP. McGINNESS: Can I make one more comment? I 15 understand, if ; arr, correct — 16 MR, EDLUNL: Well, WP aren't getting this on the 17 reco-d. I prefe- not to have back and forth — Come on up 18 and make your — real quick, here. H we get into just a 19 casual discussion, we won't get finished tonight. 20 MR. McGINNESS: Ol-ay. I just want to clarify one 21 point. I ^m still under the impression that a contractor at 22 a Buperfund site is not subject to civil and criminal 23 penalties for -failure to comply with RCRA regulations and 24 requi r ements,. 25 MR. ELLUND: Okay. Barbara, do you want to — This

005282 141 1 ii is liability. MS. GREENFIELD: Yes. Essentially, they will be

;( held accountable for the substance? of those standards through

: contracts and they will be monitored on the substance of 1 1i 5 - those standards. They will not be held liable in the same 6 j| way that we would hold a RCRA -facility — a regulated 7 | facility, a regulated incinerator or a regulated landfill 8 |j liable, but they will be held liable to the same standards. 9 i1 f1R- Mc&INNEBS: Which means you -fire them if you | '0 :j don t like the.*. M MS. GRCENFIELD: Essential 1y, yes. 12 it MR. EDLUN&: Tnanl: you. D. Marrack. Is it Dr.

STATEMENT &Y DR. MAR-RACK ; DR. MARRAM.: I am Dr. Merract . I might continue i ;this legal point. The state of Texas will be filing an i {opinion, the Attorney General of the state, will be filing an opinion on tnis. My understanding is it is likely to be that you will, in fact, get a Texas Air Control Board permit to perform in this state. There are some other points that have come up. The problems that one hears here — the "not in my back yard." j Damn it, it is already in your bad yard* Don't you under- stand" It is sitting out there. You say, well, the cost of doing this clearing up XE greater than what is going on.

005283 142 As a physician, I suggest >;Q you that is not the case. I am a physician, I also happen to be a chemist, and I am very concerned about the public health aspect. I seem to be the only physician here. The costs a* health care > result of the possibilities **-om this site and other sites are very substantial. They run into the millions, too. You are not -- There is nothing you can do which hasn't got a risl. It raises the question, all you fine 9 'Christian people^ What is the Christian force and ethic of 10 taling your rubbish into someone else's backyard in their II ! true Is and spi 1 1 i ng it on their side' 12 Just remember, mo^t of you made, at one time or 13 another, some of your banl balances from the same product 14 ji par t of which is no*-J in that waste site. It is par^ t of, ' 15 unf ortunatel v, the may we have run our technological society 16 It is one that, is very unsatisfactory. But there it is. 17 It needs to be cleaned up. The young gentleman in 18 the red shirt who stood here earlier pointed out that his 19 generation didn't want it. We have to clean it up now. He 20 is right. And as to the risks, I point out to you, the risk 21 cf the drunf drivers outside tonight are a lot higher than 22 anything you ever going to have from this site and al 1 its 23 contents. 24 There is another matter. A 1 ot has been said — 25 All right, let one other thing. I, like Dr. Matson,

005284 and other people wauld have given you R and ft for this. I am also an academic, or partly so. I am more pragmatic. I would demand my funds back that I paiJ them with, it is so bad. Get the money back and give — p3y it to a decent study. Cancel the check. The information you are being given on incineration really belongs in the garbage bag. It is dodo. It has come from plants which were badly built, never really designed with ',_he thought gi ven to how you do incineration 10 effectivel> and without producing masses o-f pollutant 11 :, downstream. 12 The performance of the Deer Par*, and the Louisi ana 13 plants is abysmal. Not the? least reason for that is the 14 ineffective performance of ERA and the lack of reducing 15 standards and enforcing them and doing it right the first 16 I time. Those who went to the BIRUTH conference i.-» -——many 17 last year, MS those who have been following the curi ^nt 18 technology in burning, wi11 be aware that you can burn 19 organic chemicals, chlorinated chemical 5 very efficiently. 20 Most of the problem that is arising in the pi ants 21 that are around arises nat in the burn process but in fact, 22 in the f1ue gases af ter the burn, reacting together to make 23 new toxic chemicals, FCBs and diox ins. That i s wel1 24 established now. 25 The proper technique involves incineration in

005285 144 chambers where the temperature is around 1500 and over -- h iI;j unde^ 2000 and if you go higher than that you make too much |j | nitrogen oxides. You then have to have the second and third l jstage burners in there with excess air. You then go to a scrubber, a 1i me scrubber, and i! finally to bad: houses. You h /e considered the best available technology, electrostatic precipitators. Eff: i i|i should update itself. It is out of dats in that statement. !i;| The pa.-ticles of interest in terms of human health are cne 10 i!j! micron down to about . i micron. Those particles arg carrying 11 ii sometning or, the- order of BO percent of all the tonics that i 12 flI come out of the f1ue gases of an incinerator. 13 II| Electrostatic precioitato^s can't remove particles 14 .1 t! ijbelo* about .5 micron. That leaves the most toxic particles 11 15 hi•lefti . Bar-1 houses, run properly with a lime scruDDer ahead, 16 jj can do much better tnan that, and get down to a tenth of a ii 17 ji micron. And that is where you need to go. 18 Another question arises. What do you do with the 59 that comes out of one end and the backhouse material the 20 other"1 21 MR. EDLUND: Is that a question, Dr. 22 DR. MARRAQ No, I am telling you. 23 MR. CDI-UND: Dr. Marracl. . You have used up your 24 five mirmt£?3, please. 25 . MARRACl : Well, I am going on for a moment

005286 14! And you have a lot of this information. And you then tak-e that and you u?- it with some mere 1ime and same eand and you make solid blocks of concrete. There are a number of technologies, one of which is stabelite, There are others that are around far doing this to immobi 1 ize that to;; ic mater i al that is in that fine flue gas in a permanently stable form, out of the way. Now use it to M fill that site again when you have f mi shed. Ill 9 You cannot ethically take this material from that 10 || si te and pi ant it around the country si de, ei ther burning it 1 t some othet pi --•- -- 1 remi nd you, the oases that go out of 12 the stacf go ten and fiftv miles. If you burn it down in 13 | Galveston, it will be back in your backyard anyway. MR. EC-LUND: Yes. sir. Si!l lj , Dfl' M^-.RACI : You cannot ignore the risks that are I 16 || there. And I suggest you get someone to go — I happen by 1? j chance to be privileged to have a copy of a paper that is 18 going to be gjven at the American Air Pollution Control 19 Association on June of this year by Marjorie Clark who 20 happens to be from the New York City Environmental Control 21 Center, probably one of the most efficient and able of all 22 the agencies in thus country in this matter. 23 Mi,. EDLLH4D: Why not submit that for the records? 24 DH. MAKRACI : And lastly — I am not — I don't 25 j thint I am privileged to. It has not been published yet. I

005287 146 happen to have a copy 2 i|jl Mfc. EDLUND: Oh, I see. Well, Dr. Merrack — 3 ij DR. MAftFvAO : And lastly, let me point out to you 4 j there are large plants running. There is one at Purdue 5 iij Sound, running a hundred ton a day facility. I I MR. EDLUND: We will loot, into these matters, Dr. ! Mar rack. Than! /OLI for your comments* If you have other I i suggestions for •..•?. in the design or incinerators that we 9 j would 1 ool at, *»!-,• not w-ite us, a note about those and w i 1C •will try *_G odd i ^£i that. Than* you. Mr. Lynn Brasher, 11 i £T~T£K£NT t f M.:v. LY1JN w. BRASHER 12 Fu'f n.^r M*/or , City of South Houston 13 Mi>. fr -_HER: Thanl you, Mr . Chai rman. I have been U sitting here .i-'enir.g to

005288 could have stopped this whole blouming thing before 50 million dollars needed to be spent. We all should take the blame for what is out there now. We could have stopped it, i| al 1 of us. There isn't a single politician who was up here tonight «ho ever went to one of those meetings at the Geneva site plant. And I blame them more than anybody else because 8 jit is their duty and their responsibility to try to stop I 9 jthese types of environmental problems. They failed. The 10 fact that it is there shows that they failed. And so have 11 ;, Our i! i 11 r e? n j failed. 12 Uhen I tool the office as mayor in this town three 13 years age, I thought it was incumbent an me to try to start a 14 process under which we would evaluate environmental problems 15 in our town. I appointed four or five people and sent them 16 to school to study what was going on in the dump sites if 17 j| located in our town, which is a result of our own negl I genes. h 18 |j And every time an area starts going down, 11 ends up being a dump site. All the undesirabies came in, all 20 those who want to dump their junk here, came in because we 21 dan t pay any attention to what they do. It is indeed 22 !Uunfortunate, but that is what is happening in this town right 23 I now. The- ne.-t adrr., ni str at i on comes along and they fired 25 [ all the peopie who were traced to find dump sites, and FILMFD we OCT -7 1986 SYS EM 2OO

005289 148 -found four of them right here in South Houston. Your '• organi zati on has been appr i sed of two of them. You consider ii ! them to be very dangerous sites. Two of them are located on i | Main Street and a couple of them on Kentucky, Those people who had the knowledge and the training and background to try to evaluate this have all been fired. I think it is sad, that one administration has to come in and 8 i tear up everything the other one started. And that has been I 9 going on fo^ 5O years in this town, and that is why this town 10 is 1 i t-e it is today. 11 | Loot at all o^ the poor trai1crs and camps we have ; over here and you can see why nobody has tried tc do anything 12 •ipi !i 13 in this town. What we need tram you people in the ERA is an 14 environmental assessment of our town, not just a chemical 15 dump site. 16 We need some help here to help replenish the 17 standard of living that we have been denied by the 18 environment that we have here that is socially and J9 economical 1y depressed, according to your own statistics. 20 1 couldn't help but be amused at the little lady, 21 as pretty as she is, tonight made a statement. And I don't 22 know what her bacJground i s, but I have been a gealogist in 23 |I my past and I understand faulting and salt domes and 1 24 petrol (.H.im r E?<5,G?r ve& and water movement and ground. 2$ She said that there was no faulting which might

005290 149 affect the migration here. But I would like to know how does she know that" Now, did you make? a structural map of the 3 j subsurface on any horizon from any of the electric logs which are in the South Houstcn oilfield"1 5 MR. EDLUND: I would like to accumulate — IB that 1 6 the onl y question you have"" 7 MR. BRASHER: Oh, you can just take the question 8 down i f you want. No, it is not the only question. But 11 9 appears to me that you have made the impression, or gi ven the 10 impression that faulting would be significant in the 11 distribution of these to:: i c wastes because they would go 12 along the fault plane?. 13 Now if v'Ou don't know if there are -fault planes ; 14 the^e, and you are going to say that they are not there . 15 anyway, believe me, I can assure you they are there. Because 16 I obtained a map from Amaco Oil Company and I made it 1? aval 1 £ble tc your personnel dur i ng the -first two years that I : 18 was in of fice. | 19 And 11 showed every wel1 that was dri11ed and al 1 ; i 20 the structural data that you would need to help advance you^ , 21 studies. If there are no wells -- no faults there, how did i ! 1 i 22 you ever use that map" [ 23 MR. EDLUND: All right. We will try to answer that i 24 question. And you had a flag -- 25 MR. BRASHER: Well, to heck with the flag.

005291 150 MR. EDLUND: Well, does that conclude your 2 ]: remarks' 3 MR. BRASHER: Everybody else has gone past the flag 4 tonight and I have got a few other things I want to tell you. 5 I I have waited a long time. 6 MR. EDLUND: If you have got another question 7 beyond that — I understand. What I am trying not to da is 8 to get into a cross-examination kind of situation. 9 MR. BRASHER: We 11 , now, that is another subject 10 and that is what I would like to address, too. i i MR. EDLUND: 01 ay. 12 MR. BRASHER: I asked you gent 1emen in another 13 public meeting, and there is a difference between a public 14 meeting and a pub lie hearing. 15 MR. EDLUND: Yes, 51r. 16 MR. BRASHER; I asled you to conduct a public 17 hearing en this project. You never did so. You told me you 18 didn't have to. Now, in a public hearing, I think we all 19 ! understand, that our experts can come up and question your 20 iexperts for the record and find out what they know and what 21 they don't know. 22 Whether it is a fault or whether there is a good 23 incineration program that will meet the requirements oi our commum tv or not. And how are we to ever determine what is 25 proper or correct or scientifically sound if we cannot

005292 151 7 ( interview your experts You gi ve us a 600 page report, over there and I 3 !• don't have the time to read it. It would take me four days 4 it to read it. I have read it. 5 i!! But you are very unspeci fic about the incineration 5 ; process. We have no idea and have no way of knowing whether ii) t) . • ' ' 7 |j it is legitimate, whether it is scientifically good, bad, or g ;it| indi i f erent. So how can we come up here in a publ ic meeting, 9 iif ! not a hearing, and tell you what our objections are when we i| 7 10 ;I i don't even know how to get the basic facts from you* ;i Tf-ieit i 3 the quest! on. And I have heard thi s

12 }''echoe! d half

005293 1 I This was a very important problem to me at the time. ri' 2 1_ Many of my constituents were begging me to tell 3 iI'' them something, something concrete. And I thought I 4 |j reiterated that to you people. 1 wanted to see and be in on \\ 5 |j the planning of what went on with the criteria that you were setting up ior bids. You specifically excluded our citizenry and me as a 8 j; public official so that I could not get the facts and convey , bacl to then,. 1 consider this as wrong. The whole spirit of j 10 || a public hearing is to have public input. And in order to 11 i ha-.e it, w_- hav- get to have some facts ahead of time. 12 11 does .Tie no goad to corns up here and ask you a 13 few questions th^ you art going to answer offhand without i 14 ;, your technical people here &o that some technical people that 15 1 I might want to BUT.™on car, ^sl- th&m questions in technical 16 |i terms. So I am going to suggest that you do hold a public

18 hearing, H-r-A-Fx-1-N-G, so that we can cross-examine your 19 scientific people with our scientific inquisitors, if you 20 want to call them that. But we just want to get the facts, 21 sir, and I don't want to give you the impression that we — I 22 personally am not against incineration or any other phase 23 that you have come up with. f •* I don't »now if *L is gooJ or bad at this point, 25 and nobadv else does either. From what I have seen here

005294 153 1 ) tonight, nobody knows. A lot of people have come up here and 2 j told you, We don't want incineration. But they haven't said 3 t why. They have given you the idea that there is a fear and 4 i that is all they have is a fear. I have the same fear, But I have no concrete facts to base the fear on, ; and I suggest that all of our citizens and our politician consti tuents have the same fear because you have not done the job of telling us what these facts are as to incineration. I 9 am not saying "r.o incineration at all." Please bel i eve me. 10 ' I have nothing to base a conclusion on and I haven't seen anybody else here who has. But I am suggesting 12 that you do hold this public hearing. I am requesting it now 13 ; as a citizen and I expect my politicians who represen,. me to .1 insist that you have another public hearing. That is all I 15 have to say. Than! you. 16 MR. EDLUND: Than! you. Thank you. I would 11 ke ji 17 f| to respond, but I think what we have here, if I understand 18 this correctly, we have three basic points. Number one is 19 your concern that we have made a predecision already and that 20 we are not letting the public into the process and that 21 evinces your request for a public hearing on this subject. 22 MR. BRASHER: No, I don't say you have already made ' 23 that conclusion. l say that we do not have enough 24 , infer matior hu-. t? to determine what you are going to do or how 25 you are going to do it.

005295 ; 154 1 ', MR. EDLUND: I understand. 0^ ay. You need more 2 :, information. 3 MR. BRASHER: I believe we do. 4 MR. EDLUND: The second thing is that you were

5 , excluded from the design criteria meeting during the

G feasibility study and therefore — this sort of wir^d it all 7 ,| Do we fcnow if tha~ is true"1 1 8 MR . WILLIAMS: Do we know if they were excluded 9 10 , MR. EDLUND: There- was a meeting to set the 11 feasibility stud* objetives and apparently the town was not-- 12 , MR. WILLIAMS: A couple of years ago^ 13 MR. BRASHER: That is right. 14 . MR. WILLIAMS: I dor. ' t I now if that is true or 15 not. 16 ; MR. Eb^UND: We will checl into it. 17 : MR. BRASHER: I can tel 1 you that it is true because 18 i I wrote you letters and I asked to be included in it because ii i 19 !' our ci tirens thought it was e;< tremel y important, and they i 20 couldn't get in, and not only find out if there was a system ' t 21 under which we would be able to test our water. i 22 You proposed a program of having a series of ; i 23 monitor wells around this site. We were proposing a program to dig a well all the way into our aquifer and test it first, 25 and let us (now ahead of time whether or not this water was

005296 1 'contaminated. And nobody knew. And we were all scared to 5 •; death. fiat you would not even listen to us. MR. EDLUNL: 01 ay. AH right. Well, we will look into that. And I am sorry if that occurred. MR. BRASHER: That i s why I say we need a publ ic

6 hearing. 7 MR. EDLLJND: Factors changed a little bit. All M 8 ;; ri ght. I understand your concerns. Let me get to one that I g ; thinl we might, be able to answer . And that is what happened i 10 to all the information you sen., in on -faults. You said you ', sen- in .-i buncn of information^ MR. BRASHER: I had a meeting in my office with 13 j> several of your people, at which I exposed the map to them Ij;! and showed them the 1 aq~ and how Amoco came to the conclusion 15 'of how the faults detected. And there are two faults of 16 h major size in what describes a qrab^n over a salt dome. 17 One cf them i5 about 5OO feet and the other maybe 18 i 7-5O or 40O feet.. That map is available at Amoco. If you 19 will go tali to them, they will give it to you. They would 20 not let me gi ve it to everybody because it had con-f identi al 21 1 nf or mat i on on it with respect to thei r oil exploration 22 program 23 MR. EDLUND: All right. We miU go pursue that. 24 were you aware of that map"' 25 M5. CURL: We do have a map of the salt dome. We

005297 9 iujiigiiujj«arti!li*i«iBtlii<^ 156 also did look at dozens of electric logs from wells in the area and did do a lot of structural maps to come up with the fault study. But what we are dealing with here is just the upper 400 feet of — anything deeper than that would not affect the site in our cleanup, because we don't have any ki:->d of contamination anywhere near that deep. So what our study showed was that wo did not have a fault in that upper 400 9 foot 2one that would affect the site. 10 MR. BRASHER: Any fault of 600 feet— of a 5OO foot 11 ; throw at about 600 feet or even 2,OOO or 3,GOO feet is not 12 going to just peter out suddenly. It is all the way up in 13 the strata unless there has been an erosion on a deformity in 14 |i a hiatus, then it may not. 15 MR. EDLUrJD; Mr. Brasher, I will tell you what we 16 will do. to a will look further into that and see if we can't 17 explain it ever, more fullv in our record. Sherry Shat. 18 Still here"* toe are getting down towards the end here. Is 19 she still here"1 How about a Mr. Dipak Dessi ? Or Miss? 20 Okay. How about Dr. Fessiar"1 Fessari? It depends if I put 21 the umlaut on the "r". Mr. Joseph Zapata? Zepeda? Zepeda. 22 STATEMENT BY MR. JOE ZEPEDA 23 Southeast Vista Apartments for Senior Citizens 24 ( MF . ZtF'EDA: My name is Joe Zepeda. And I am here 25 representing thr Southeast Vista Apartments -for Senior

005298 157 Citizens. This apartment complex, which is a federally sponsored project, is approximately half & block away from the contami nated waste site* And it took us a long time to get that project out. It is a joint sponsorship of LULAC Council 6S8 and the Latino Learning Center. It is the iirst senior cltizen housing project that has been done by Hispanics here in the Houston area and we are very proud of it. However, there has been a lot at alarm both amongst 10 the board and amongst the people there concerning the Geneva 11 ; waste site. Our basic concern has b&en. -from the very 12 beginning, we touched base early with the EF'A when we •found 13 out about the was. te &i te to mat e sur-e that we were no*. 301 ng 14 to put peopl e i n jeopardy. 15 And wt r ece?i ved very good assurances and very good 16 cooperation f^om your agency that we would in fact not be 17 putting anybody in any J i nd of danger . We were pleased with 18 it. We too* it to HUD, the Department of Housing and Urban 19 Devel opment , and we got approval to bui 1 d on the si te. But 20 they also did some bad, and forth talking with ERA. 21 Now, our concern is this now. It is that the 22 cleanup be done in a good and order 1 y fashion. We very much, 23 lil-'e a* -mayor Brasher here, we don't have the data, we don't 24 have the t nowl edge to male dec i si ons about which way 1 1 25 shoul

005299 158 we do know is that we feel like we are being jammed something 2 li down our throat. 3 It is What you guys have done is probably one of d the biggest political mistakes that I have ever seen. I 5 mean, you just can't understand the kind oi fear and the kind G of taU that I hear all aroumi in hers. This whole community 7 is now coming together around something that could have been S handled very much better. 9 Not-., o,;r resident-^ over there were here today, the/ 10 ! got tired and the, went home. And I a.r, t

11 ;!• home, too. SL I *.i. uoi ng to make it. short. I think that you 12 i should have another meeting where people can have the 13 II opportunity to

24 , living over there, tru s 1S the ia5t place that thay are going \

to go befor-r, the, die. The/ don't want to live in fear. j

005300 ; is? 1 We have done everything that 3 can to prevent frc.v. i 2 i that happening over there. And we have a lot a* support from 3 a lot of people. Arid we will use that support. We are no 4 longer the kind of humiliated people that we were many, many : 5 i'| years ago. 6 1 We are willing to go and tat e radical action if iM 7 ,. that is what it tales. And we might be considered radicals g .: at one point in time. I think Mr. Brasher here sometimes is

9 • being considered * radical, but that is what it takes to get !• 10 • thi nqs done-. 11 | And i^ l **- 15 K.iat it take=. to get a meeting again, 12 j!i; maybe that is what we? will do. I thank you -for your time and f 13 i' I thank you fcr coming here. i 14 MFv- EDLUND: I want to thant you too for sticking i; 15 - around as long as you did. I know that it was late, ! 16 |i especially -for the people from that res-.dence there. Thank ij 17 you very much, Mr. Zepeda. Mr. David Bray. Is he here"1 We 18 are getting close here. "i ess Land. Margaret Gonzalez? 19 STATEMENT BY MS. MARGARET GDNZALEZ 20 District Director, LULAC 21 MS. GONZALEZ: I know it is late, so I will keep my 22 comments to a m-.nimum. But I am Margaret Gonzalez and I am ?3 the District Director for LULAC, which is the Gul-f Coast 24 )•i area. I represt nt 7-L' Lu'LAC councils. 25 And Mr. Zepeda, I am glad I followed him, because

005301 160 jhr e said this is a LULAC project. It is not. LULAC does not own that project. And if we had known what was going on, we ij wauld never have gone forward wj th that project. I have read and have information that is shocking F *! to me, that the ERA and HUD would approve the building of housing for the elder1y at a place that we knew was contaminated. In 1963, I have a document right here with me, where you I'new that the pi ace was contaminated, and yet we g i[ spent C million dollars to build housing f or the elderly in a I 10 contaminated area. And he is ri ght. It Old peopi e shoaldn t have to 1ive in fear of their 12 1i ves. And I thinf we aw& more than that to our citizens. 13 And the people in South Houston right now who are affected by 14 I what is go;ng on are poor and they are a minority. 15 And I think you h^ive

005302 ;. ,j 161 1 (j I don't — I think that was the last of my cards. Da we have 2 !j one"1 Yes, sir. 3 ; MR. GARZA: tobbv Garza, LULAC. MR. ECLUND: Would you come up to the microphone please and identi fy your name and affiliation and — STATEMENT BY MR. ROBERT GARZA LULAC !! M*. GARZA: First of all, I want to correct Mr. g !-i| Zepeda. I CUT. the founder and organizer of Council 668 and 10 !• what he has presented here tonight is -false. I do have 11 1. documentati on that I w^r.t to present to the EPA and I al so , i 12 \[ waul d like to know and find out if the EPA mom tared thi s

13 ! j•. project wi tri HUC-" I t4 1i1, The rc-asor. I arti asking, this is false information. 15 i(• Just last December I found out that m/ name, and let me 16 t!i' ver i -f y this and clarify that I don't live on this part of 17 jjtown. But m> name appeared on the South Houston Vista j! 18 p!• Apartments as one of the directors of the project. .9 i! I have never been aware or had any knowledge of 20 this project until just about two years ago and became aware 21 of the directorship last December. I have asked Mr. Mike 22 [Andrews, Mr. Jacl Fields, and also Mr. Henry Gonzalez to 23 ! j investigate thi-. thoroughly and I wll 1 pass this information 24 to the press media. It is vital important. 25 Apparently there are some kjnd of loopholes, there

005303 is possible -fraud. Whether the EF'A is involved or has 2 i|t knowledge about i t, there i s fraud i nvolved on thj s housing ii; project. Why would the HUD project want to be built 200 feet away from the Geneva Industries two or three years ago when 5 i they knew back in 1971? Although yet in 1903.you had a meating, the EPA, on Airport and Lamar, one of the motels over there, and this was | brought up. In October of 'BZ or '82 the loan for 2 million ii I dollars was recommended and given to the South Houston Vista Apartments. H LULAC does not own that building. The LULAC 15 not 12 IIi! invol ved in that project. This was done only by a certain 13 group of people- This is the reason I am asl-ing you, the EF'A 14 people, and other officials to investigate this because there '5 is fraud concerning that housing. Thant you. 16 ! j MR. EDLUND: Thank you. Could you spel1 your name, 17 please, so we> can get it straight in the record. 18 MF\. GAF- 2A: Robert Garza, G-A-R-Z-A. And accord i ng 19 to Mr. Zept'da ' s statement, he stated that this was a project 20 j of Council 6B8. I want to go on record that I am the 21 j founder, the president, and organizer of 6BB and I do know 22 for a fact that that was false. 23 MK. EDLUND: I appreciate that. Thank you. We 24 Ii don't know anything about EF'A -- 25 c. WILLIAriS: I am not aware of whether, you know,

005304 |i 163 } ji anything that went on in 198^ concerning HUD and EPA. 2 ; MR. EDLUND: We will checl. into that, too, as « 3 '1ifollowup thing. We appreciate it. Is there one more? Yes, 4 j; sir.

5 ' STATEMENT BY MR. RALPH GQNZALEZ

6 j| National President, Mexican American Engineering Society MR. GQNZALEZ: My name is Ralph Gonzalez, and I am || the national president of the Mexican American Engineering 8 !i g :• Society, a society of professional engineers with a 10 membership of several hundred all across the United States.

n J, And we tooi a personal interest in this project because of 12 |j;the Hispanic coir.mum ty irwol vement close by. |j ii w d 13 j' ^ ^ have a couple o-f recommendations. First of 14 j!i| all, the recommendation that follows is that the decision- | 15 i mating process i& already flawed in this. I believe that the i' 16 ; constraints that you put on the criteria for the development 17 of the feasibility study was such that you left out a number IB of very viable solutions, namely the biochemical and 19 biodegradable engineering analysis that could have been done 20 and could have been applled. 21 That technology on this project was eliminated from 22 consideration and therefore not reflected in the feasibility 23 Study, That is

005305 164 Number one, you do not have public official support for incinerati on. You do not have public support for inci neration. People are looking for a solution that is acceptable. Number one, incineration is perhaps expedient 5 and perhaps is why you chose to go this route, but the 6 problem, itself is biochemical. So let's have a solution that 7 is in that field. 8 The? second point that I want to express to you 1 s 9 ou*- serious ccncerr. that the public: is not fully aware of the in il dangers of the. to . i r cant ami nants and the lethal character- n i istics of thoEe cont^mi n

005306 165 projects until the solution has been completed here. Thank you MR. EDLUND: Thant- you very much, Mr. Gonzalez, Is there anybody else? Goad. MR, BRASHER: Can I make one last statement? MR. EDLUND: I just pointed to one fellow right here. He is coming down. I will lot you make a last statement, Mayor Brasher, if you wish. Yes, sir. 9 j STATEMENT BY MICHAEL CHILDERS 10 MR. CHILDERS: I am just a resident on the other it side of tne freena/ on Easthaven. 12 MR. EDLUND: I need your name, sir. 13 MR. CHILDERS: Oh. Michael Childers, C-H-I-L-D-E- • 14 R-S. And I was onl y IT when Geneva Industries took over out 15 here. And being a kid, a teenager, vou I now, our generati on 16 was not aware ot what was going en. 17 I 1 now there was miscommumcation back in the 50s 18 and 60s in upper management of big corporations, because my 19 father was an asbestos worker. They did not always notify 20 the employees of the hazards. And so they did not know what 21 they were wort ing with. The same for the residents out here. 22 ! We did not I- now what came through aur neighborhood. 23 Many at us, you I-now, we like organizations, com- panie^ becc-uTif it dots help the economy, but you know, we 25 don't always I now what goes on behind the doors or behind the

005307 nr;.. ' - n i:

:! 166 . < I 1 * ,ji fence. As one person put it about the fine Christian people, j "I > 2 " we don't want tc, damp it in someone else's back yard. It is : t' ; 3 ! in our yard. i 4 i And we need to take care of it, but we don't need ( : i s 5 1 ; to put it in the air. But we can, I -feel like, get rid of it u t• 6 : saf el y . I thinl there should be more studying done, more h • • • 7 tj information made available to the public. My wife and I have \\ 8 '' four kids and th^s- will all be going to South Houston 9 lIi' Intermediate. Cr.c- goe^ there right now. I don't w^nt any iI.' 10 ' har.f. to cotf.E' tc ther,. ti{- I aa. a! r eacJ , 31 , you \ now Ha it of my life is !• 12 |. already gone. 1 guess, but >ou know, I want to protect my H 13 'children ^r,o *.h*_ir- children. And you I now , a lot of big 14 j; i ir,DO^ta".c people we--e? here tonight, ( nowl edgeabl e people, but Ii "; 15 j; more the public that dan t I now ^11 the technology, you know. 16 .:; I i eel 1 i i- fe the > shoul d be more awar & cf, what i s goi ng on and

17 jij th& dangers and th& alternatives. 18 And 1 4et. li»e, you know, you all should study 19 other al. ternat i ve=; like, you know, the bacteria or 20 mi croorani SfT.s that might be able to dissolve this stuff, you 21 I .tow, onsite. I wouldn't be opposed to that, you know, if we 22 can contain it and get rid of it safely. 23 I wouldn't care i{ it took ten years, you know, but 24 let & don t bul i done through ; t and hurt dt lot of people 25 through it. I do appreciate you all coming out and

005308 167 1 I everything, and, you L.no«», I have learned a lot tonight, , Ibelieve me. Thant you. 3 MR. EDLUIMD: Than!- you very much. A -final minute. 4 MR. &nASHER: A minute. Mr. Chairman, I don't — I 5 want to male you understand that I was very impressed with t 6 the personnel that the EFA put out there on the site to test 7 our water strata from our — for our water production. It 8 was the basic primary concern that we had at the time. 9 We were not so much worried about the surface i 10 contaminant-. We all figured you could handle that somehow. ! M EuL the c-cr.tc*.!! ration of our water supply wai. a major threat 12 and I had people calling me all the time wanting to know, Is ; 1 13 our water safe tc dtmi" There were so many erroneous • 14 statements made in the public, people were scared to death to : i 15 dr mi the water even. 16 Now, if you can imagine me having to explain ten or ; i 17 fifteen or twenty calls a day to people wanting to know about * 18 the wate". tut I want you to understand that I think that 19 you did a very good job on the engineering techniques and 20 methods for testing our reservoir. : 21 I tailed to a number of your engineers out there | 22 and those people had a scheme in which they were going to run 23 water through one well and out through some others and test 24 it anc, the, wouiu be a&le to calculate the amount o-f volume

25 coming through r«r>d then sample any contaminants that were in

005309 1 ,: it. It was a good scheme. But I ne^er got the results of it. 2 |j Now, if you would have those people that conducted l! 3 MI' that study put that into a report. And i know that your 4 - statement over there that I read says that the water sand is 5 ! not contaminated. At least you have no evidence of it. Please gi ve us the facts on ha*-; you know that. Ar'i I doi.'t think it would be very difficult to 8 ; produce a little map which would show where the well was that

9 !'[• was drawing wate- from the monitor wells to — or going ir an I 10 I injection well to the monitor wells, whichever way you did I It :t. And e::pl*;r. t= us how you did it and what the 12 i* conclusive we^e and the figures on which you based your 13 conclusion. 14 Ther. I would be a whole lot more satisfied with it 15 |j myself and 1 WOL. i d feel 1 11 e maybe I di dn ' t let the communi ty 1i1i 16 i! down by not getting this report. But unfortunately, the i 17 , report apparently wasn't available at. the time when I was i

18 ; 1 easing the office. So I thi r.t that would do a whole lot for j 19 | some of our people who are very worried auout the water. 1 20 ! Now you haven't heard a whale 1ot about that 21 tonight, and some of this may have been kind of orchestrated 22 i; about no incineration, and all that. I am not worried about 23 i that. Ji I AIT. worried about that down there, because 25 II we st i i 1 tht> cheapest water, at 5O cents a thousand.

005310 169 anywhere in this county or any ten counties around here. Pasadena hat gone to *2 a thousand and we Are going to have to stay on this unless some of our old people are going to be having enormous water bills. So that is a primary concern in thia community And although there hasn't been A whole lot »Aid About it, t would like to see the proof of how you came to your conclusions 8 that our water supply is not contaminated and is fit to 9 dnnl . Than* you ver > much. 10 MR. EL-LUND: 1 see people are leaving. We will 11 ij!i ttf t e and we w; II attempt tc answer that in our wri tten 12 responsi venes= summary. I want to thank 24 25

005311 REPORTER'S CERTIFICATE

3 [^DOCKET KUMBE; (none) TITLE; Public Meeting Re: Geneva Industries Waste Site Cleanup 5 Li i HEARING DATLnay ; *.Mfl* v, ?3 'LOCATION: South Houston, XX If 8 . I hi:-.. :•/ certify that the proceedings and evidence g : herein arc c-:-.'.-. . fully ^".G accurately en the tapes and

to jt notes reports : \.m t the hearino ir. the above case before 11 :• Environmental Protection Agency ,2 ji and that thi z : 5= •.:o .Tnc correct transcript of the same U i i 14 !' ]' 1 15 i 16 i; Date: June 2, 1986

20 Official Reporter On the Record Reporting 3102-5 West Terrace Dr. Austin, Texas 78731 "23 ;ii 24 25 OCT £M3OO

005312