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by Mary Manning, Las Vegas Sun

The federal concern goes beyond the 5,000 tons of sludge and soils contaminated with mercury that a company in Taiwan is desperately looking to get rid of, EPA spokesman David Schmidt said.

Such hazardous materials are imported into the U.S. every day, Schmidt said. However, wastes containing dioxins or polychlorinated biphenyls, known as PCBs, could disqualify US Ecology from treating and dumping the wastes at its site near Beatty, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

US Ecology has a state permit to store and dispose of hazardous wastes there, but the company owned by American Ecology of Boise, Idaho, does not have a permit from the Nevada Division of Environmental Protection to treat waste.

"If they don't have that, they can't import the wastes," Schmidt said. "They have to have someplace to store and treat it."

US Ecology has to do much more analysis in Taiwan before the state considers a treatment permit, Nevada Waste Management Director David Emme said. Last year Nevada denied US Ecology's request to bury the sludge.

The EPA has asked US Ecology to conduct more analysis of the 18,000 drums sitting on a dock in Taiwan after Formosa Plastics Group tried to illegally dump it in Cambodia last year. After two dock workers died from exposure to the mercury-contaminated wastes, causing a riot in a coastal town in Cambodia, the load returned to Taiwan.

Asked why US Ecology could not treat the wastes in Taiwan with mobile boxes that cook the wastes, capture the mercury and allow it to be recycled, American Ecology Vice President Steve Romano said Taiwan lacks a disposal site and and has stiff regulations.

Taiwan is literally a rock island with no disposal site, Romano said. "The wastes will be double-packed to ship to the Nevada site," he said. "By treating it at Beatty on site, US Ecology can watch the process carefully."

The mercury can be recycled for use in medical thermometers, for example, he said.

Sen. Richard Bryan, D-Nev., and environmental groups protested the plan on Friday, saying it reinforces the image of Nevada as a wasteland. The senator promised to fight it every step of the way.

California officials and environmental groups successfully kept the shipment out of California last year when Safety-Kleen, another company, tried to dispose of it in a small town on the Mexican border.

But Romano said there is no need for such concern.

"We believe we can handle all the hazards," he said. "The mercury will not stay there."

The waste company, which has operated both hazardous and low-level nuclear waste sites in Beatty from 1962 until the state closed down the radioactive part in 1993, cannot sell the mercury it recovers.

"We'll have to pay for the recycler to take the mercury," Romano said. Formosa Plastics will have to pay for shipping, treating and disposing of the mercury, he said. He did not know if there is a market for mercury.