Waste Incinerator

DENVER -- The Energy Department said yesterday it was abandoning a plan to build the country's first nuclear-waste incinerator in southern Idaho, a decision that was hailed by environmental groups that used considerable political and financial might to fight the plan. The decision was part of the settlement of a lawsuit the groups had filed against the department seeking to stop construction of the incinerator, or failing that, to collect $1 billion in damages if it began operating. The plaintiffs had been largely concerned that the wind might blow radioactive and toxic dust across western Wyoming.

The new owner of a Baltimore medical waste incinerator has agreed to cut air pollution by installing equipment to reduce mercury emissions by 90 percent and to pay a $75,000 penalty for past air pollution violations, the Maryland Department of the Environment announced yesterday. Environment Secretary Kendl P. Philbrick said Curtis Bay Energy also has agreed to install continuous mercury emission monitoring equipment, a first for Maryland. CBE also will perform $125,000 in supplemental projects, including research and development on new ways to control and monitor mercury emissions.

Contending that their neighborhood would become the East Coast's trash bag, residents of Curtis Bay and Brooklyn came to a City Council committee hearing yesterday to fight a bill that would allow the Hawkins Point incinerator to burn waste from a wider area.But by the time the opponents got their chance to speak -- nearly four hours after the hearing began -- most had left."We fizzled out, but the hard core are here," said Sierra Club environmentalist Terry Harris.At stake is whether the council should back a bill that would roll back statutes limiting the incinerator to receiving medical waste from a handful of Maryland counties as long as it stays within a daily 150-ton limit.

The city Board of Municipal and Zoning Appeals has again refused to issue an occupancy permit to a $27 million medical-waste incinerator in Hawkins Point.In a decision released Monday, the board found that Medical Waste Associates (MWA), the builders of the incinerator, were in violation of a 1989 city ordinance that permitted the company to haul trash only from hospitals in the city and Baltimore, Anne Arundel and Harford counties.The company has insisted that it must accept waste from outside Maryland to complete tests required by its bondholder.

Baltimore officials have finalized the $1.1 million sale of a 19-acre "brownfields" site on Pulaski Highway to construction magnate Willard Hackerman, who plans to develop a big-box store or warehouses or both, a city economic development official said Tuesday. The sale of the lot, the former site of a waste incinerator, was completed Friday, said M.J. "Jay" Brodie, president of the Baltimore Development Corp. The city's Planning Commission approved a "planned unit development" designation for the property a day earlier, allowing the uses proposed by Hackerman, president and chief executive of the Whiting-Turner Contracting Co. Hackerman formed Pulaski Limited Partnership to develop the Northeast Baltimore site and still needs City Council approval to proceed.

A federal toxic waste cleanup crew continues to test chemicals in thousands of drums that had been stored illegally at a chemical drum recycling firm in Curtis Bay, on the Baltimore-Anne Arundel County border.The cleanup, being directed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, has found 23,733 drums at Drumco Inc., a chemical drum recycling company, according to George W. English, EPA's on-scene coordinator. That is about 10,000 more drums than were originally estimated to be on the overgrown 14-acre property, which adjoins another site where hazardous wastes also had been dumped.

State environmental officials said yesterday that they have begun removing nearly 1,000 cubic yards of contaminated soil from the grounds now owned by a rail car repair and cleaning facility in the Trinco Industrial Park near Elkton.A previous tenant, the now-defunct Galaxy Chemical Co., dumped solvent residue on the site, contaminating soil with hazardous heavy metals and volatile organic compounds, according to the Maryland Department of the Environment.Most of the contamination is in the top 6 inches of the soil and will be removed from three separate areas of the site now owned by General Electric Railcar Repair Services Corp.

GREENVILLE, S.C. -- A trainload of 2,400 tons of contaminated soil, rejected by landfills in at least three states, is on its way to Utah for disposal, a Tennessee official said yesterday.Frank Cochran, senior member of the Tennessee Public Service Commission, said in Nashville that officials of CSX Transportation Co. told his office the cars of soil were headed for a Utah landfill after sitting in a Nashville train yard for three days last week.Greenpeace and other environmental groups, whose officials say the soil is contaminated with toxic chemicals, have been looking for the train since it left a CSX rail yard in Sumter, S.C., a week ago.CSX officials would not give location or destination of the train yesterday.

A story in yesterday's Anne Arundel County Sun incorrectly reported the amount of hydrogen chloride that will be removed from emissions at Med-Net Inc., which burns about 8 tons of medical waste per day. New environmental controls, which will be operational June 1, will reduce the emissions from 110,000 pounds per year to 10,000 pounds annually.A Baltimore medical waste incinerator has paid a $15,000 penalty for numerous air pollution violations last winter, a state official said yesterday.

WASHINGTON -- Saying her agency "has not done its job over the past 12 years, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Carol Browner promised sweeping changes yesterday to protect public health and the environment from harm by hazardous waste incineration.As expected, Ms. Browner announced that the EPA will spend the next 18 months assuring that incinerators and industrial boilers operating under interim federal approval are performing safely before considering proposals to add capacity."