space Press Releases, News Stories

by Mike Barber, Seattle Post-Intellegencer 

U.S. government agencies last night were trying to decide what to do with the 90 tons of PCBs aboard the Wanhe, which is expected to arrive in Seattle later today.

The hasty negotiations between the U.S. Department of Defense and the Environmental Protection Agency began after the Canadian government abruptly rescinded a permit to unload the waste in Canada, an EPA spokesman said last night.

"We're now faced with a boat heading this way with nowhere to take it," regional EPA spokesman Mark MacIntyre said.

Polychlorinated biphenols, known as PCBs, are used in transformers and electrical equipment. PCBs have been linked to cancer and have drawn environmental concerns over the years.

The Wanhe is owned by the China Ocean Shipping Co., which could not be reached for comment last night. Dan Williams, a Port of Seattle spokesman, said the company is caught in the middle of a government and environmental dispute.

Although it remained unclear late last night whether a permit to temporarily store the chemicals here would be granted, Greenpeace and other environmental groups were putting the issue into their cross hairs.

"We are entirely opposed to offloading this in Seattle, because we are not a temporary storage site for a company that did not do its homework," said Dave Batker of Tacoma-based Asia-Pacific Environmental Exchange, which opposes international shipments of toxic wastes.

Batker said the permit ought to be refused because the issue has not been discussed publicly.

"Too often foreign waste is handled ad hoc this way," he said. "We should not be a way station for this kind of mishandling."

The Wanhe, which left Japan with its cargo last week, is scheduled to dock in Vancouver Friday after a routine stop at Terminal 18 in Seattle. The Edmonton Journal and Vancouver Sun said the PCB cargo was supposed to be trucked from Vancouver to Kirkland Lake, Ontario, where it would be recycled at a plant owned by Trans-Cycle Industries. The company could not be reached for comment last night.

The issue surfaced last week after Stars and Stripes, a U.S. Department of Defense newspaper for troops stationed overseas, published an article about the chemicals.

Those chemicals were cleaned out of storage in Japan and were being shipped to Canada.

The article caught the attention of the Canadian media, and the Canadian government later bowed to public pressure and refused to allow the chemicals to be unloaded. The Ottawa Environment Board has said TCI was not licensed to import hazardous waste from outside Canada.

In 1997, the United States closed its borders to foreign PCBs, but under Canadian environmental law, waste containing fewer than 50 parts per million of PCBs can be imported. According to Canadian news accounts, TCI has said its cargo is made up of low-level PCBs -- under 50 parts per million.

Greenpeace and other groups dispute that assertion, citing leaked American military documents that indicate no testing was done to confirm the levels.

"The toxic shipment now has nowhere to go in Canada," said Miranda Holmes, spokeswoman for Greenpeace International in Vancouver, B.C. "Unless U.S. authorities want a political hot potato, it is likely to be offloaded in Seattle."