space Press Releases, News Stories

by Jeff Hodson and Hal Bernton, Seattle Times

The Wan He left the Port of Seattle shortly after 4 p.m. bearing 14 containers of PCB-contaminated military waste. Defense Department officials said the political uproar over the waste prompted them to abandon plans to store it temporarily in Seattle.

Instead, the vessel was headed for Vancouver, B.C., yesterday as part of a routine shipping run. But authorities said the toxic materials won't be unloaded in Canada, where there also has been intense opposition to the waste.

Environmentalists, labor unions and officials hailed the ship's departure as a victory but expressed concern over the future destination of the waste. They said the ship would likely return to Japan and claimed the U.S. has stockpiled millions of pounds of hazardous wastes at military bases across the globe.

"This was just the tip of the toxic iceberg," said Darryl Luscombe, a toxics campaigner for Greenpeace in Canada. "We will be following the Wan He on its journey back to Japan."

Federal officials refused to confirm if the waste would head to Japan. But there is no possibility of sending the waste elsewhere in the United States, they said, because federal law bans the import of foreign-manufactured PCBs.

Several disposal sites are under consideration, and final destination of the waste may be determined in the next few days, said Army Lt. Col. Steve Campbell, a Department of Defense spokesman.

The ship picked up the containers in Japan, where the U.S. military had collected surplus electrical transformers and other equipment from bases around the region. It had initially planned to unload them

in Vancouver and ship them overland to Ontario. But provincial officials said the company hired to dispose of the waste, Trans Cycle Industries of Pell City, Ala., didn't have the proper permits.

The ship was en route here when Canadian officials rejected the Ontario plan. It made a stop in Seattle on Wednesday and nontoxic cargo was removed. But longshoremen refused to unload the toxiccontainers. Members of Teamsters Local 174, which represents freight drivers, backed the longshoremen by saying they wouldn't transport the waste. Two environmental groups threatened to sue.

"The real heroes are the longshoremen," said Dave Batker of Basel Action Network, a Seattle-based environmental group.

The U.S. government was seeking temporary storage until it found a permanent site. But Gov. Gary Locke and three congressmen -Jay Inslee, Norm Dicks and Jim McDermott - told federal authorities Thursday night the waste was unacceptable.

Michael Zarin, an attorney representing Trans-Cycle, said companyofficials thought the Canadian permit was required only for junk contaminated with PCBs at levels of greater than 50 parts per million. He said this military surplus was contaminated at less than 50 parts per million, a level not classified in Canada or the U.S. as a toxic waste.

"It's not our corporate philosophy at any time to try to sneak things in," Zarin said yesterday. "It's really surreal how this thing has evolved and taken on a life of its own."

Trans-Cycle is part of a multibillion-dollar and increasingly international industry that has developed to handle hazardous wastes. PCBs are one of the most common - and most persistent and carcinogenic - of these wastes, used for decades in the oil of transformers and other electrical equipment.

The U.S. waste-disposal industry sought to import large quantities of them in the mid '90s. The Sierra Club opposed the importation and won a 1997 court ruling that generally bans the industry from importing PCBs from foreign nations.

But other hazardous wastes can - and do - move through West Coast ports, including Seattle. Often, these wastes are headed for disposal sites in Idaho and Nevada.

"This is fairly routine and generally happens without any public outcry," said Jamie Sikorski, an EPA official in Seattle. "The types of wastes that can legally move through the port include old batteries, paints, pesticide residues and corrosive chemicals."

In the late '90s, for example, Philip Services Corp. held a contract with the U.S. military to ship hazardous wastes from Guam, and much of that material entered through the Port of Seattle.

"Solvents, inks, adhesives and heavy metals. These are typical things we might bring in," said Mark Mooney, a Philip Services manager based in California.

But the U.S. waste-disposal industry often has a hard time competing for the international business, since the costs of disposing of the wastes here are often greater than in Third World nations with looser regulation.

And U.S. environmental groups are increasingly keeping a close eye on the toxic trade and haven't hesitated to sound the alarm if they think an unsafe cargo is on its way. That's what also happened

last year when a Taiwanese petrochemical company proposed to ship 5,000 tons of toxic waste to the U.S., with Puget Sound as a possible point of entry.

That batch of mercury-laden waste had been tentatively scheduled to be trucked to an Envirosafe Services facility in Grand View, Idaho. But the plan fell through after U.S. environmentalists protested.