The Poisoning of America

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Says Ken Hall, the Hooker official handling the cleanup: "You have to be careful about judging the 1950s by 1980s standards. I grew up thinking that if you put something in the ground it was safe. But that thinking was in error. If you don't do something about it now, you'll have an eternal problem." Indeed, much of the unsafe dumping occurred before the companies had a firm idea of how serious the waste problem was, and many disposed of material in ways they thought were safe at the time.

The chemical industry generally approves the new federal regulations that will require the tracking of all toxic chemicals to the point of final disposal. Violators can be fined up to $25,000 a day and jailed for a year for a first offense. Says Robert A. Roland, president of the Chemical Manufacturers Association: "We don't want irresponsible disposal. This is a perfectly reasonable thing for the Federal Government to do."

The industry is more worried about the EPA's new rules requiring that only sites meeting federal standards be used. The companies are fearful that EPA standards will be so strict that an insufficient number of sites will be created. If that happens, predicts Roland, "companies will have two choices: they will either have nowhere to dump and they will close down, or they will go out and break the law." Conceding that "the EPA is between a rock and a hard place, with an enormous task to confront," Roland contends that the agency too often acts on the basis of insufficient information. The industry, for example, insists that the EPA has not carefully evaluated the hazards of various chemicals and that its regulations are needlessly complex and burdensome. Up to a point, the EPA's Costle agrees. "I know that things aren't perfect with us," he says. "But just imagine how they would be without us."

On its own, the chemical industry has set up a hazardous-waste response center in Washington, where state and local officials who are worried about an abandoned disposal site can get expert advice about how serious the threat may be and how the dump could be cleaned up. The industry has also written a model waste-disposal-siting law for the guidance of state legislatures.

Irving S. Shapiro, chairman of Du Pont, reports that his company is recycling waste material to reduce the disposal problem and keeps a watchful eye on the contractors it uses for disposal. The most critical problem, as he sees it, is to clean up widely scattered "orphan waste sites" that no one has supervised. Says he: "Let's start with today, not worry about who did what in the past. Government and industry should work together rather than get emotional. We've got to get going rather than sitting around trying to figure out who's wearing the black hat and who's wearing the white hat."