PCB waste may find home on wildlife refuge in Pacific

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PCB waste may find home on wildlife refuge in Pacific

Wednesday, May 3, 2000

By SCOTT SUNDE
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER

Fourteen containers of PCB-tainted waste that weren't allowed in Seattle could be destined for a wildlife refuge surrounded by the largest collection of coral reefs in the United States.

The waste from U.S. military bases in Japan left Seattle on April 7 after union workers, politicians and environmentalists stopped it from being unloaded and stored here.

The 110 tons of waste was returned to Japan on April 18 and remains stored there, said Gerda Parr, a spokeswoman for the Defense Logistics Agency.

Officials with the Fish and Wildlife Service and Environmental Protection Agency said Johnston Island, a mere speck 700 miles southwest of Honolulu, is under consideration for waste.

"We think it's a bad idea. We don't think the waste should be brought there," said Robert Smith, Pacific Islands operations manager for the Fish and Wildlife Service.

The island has been a wildlife refuge since President Calvin Coolidge designated it as such in 1926, Smith said. But it also has had a heavy military presence, being used as a missile-testing range in the 1960s and, most recently, as a place to incinerate chemical weapons.

Smith said Johnston Island remains a valuable resource.

"There are 50,000 acres of coral reef," he said. "No place under the U.S. flag has more coral reef."

The island has suffered. Military construction to enlarge it has filled in reefs. A bad missile test in the 1960s caused plutonium to be scattered there.

But the chemical-weapons incinerator has almost completed its job and is scheduled to be dismantled and removed. Then the island will be turned over to the Fish and Wildlife Service.

"It's time to give this place a break," Smith said.

The break, however, may not come soon if the PCB-tainted cargo is shipped there.

Parr said yesterday that the Defense Department has yet to select a location for the waste.

Smith said the Defense Department has approached his agency in Washington, D.C., about using Johnston Island. The EPA also has heard of the proposal, said David Schmidt of the EPA's San Francisco office.

Johnston Island is part of the Johnston Atoll, a collection of reefs and small islands in the Central Pacific. Johnston Island has a landing strip and a harbor.

Because of its legal status in the United States, it is also outside the jurisdiction of the Customs Service, Schmidt said. That means the military PCBs can come there without EPA permission, he said.

By contrast, the Defense Department had to get EPA permission when it wanted to unload the waste in Seattle.

The EPA does regulate the chemical-weapons incinerator, Schmidt said.

That incinerator has disposed of a small amount of PCBs in the past. But to do so again would require a permit from the EPA, Schmidt said.

The Defense Department has not said whether it intends to dispose of the PCBs by incinerating the waste on the island.

Smith said he is worried that the Defense Department, which has said it intends to store the waste in Japan for no longer than a month, is in a hurry to find a spot for it.

The hurricane season around Johnston Atoll has already begun, he said. Last year, the threat of hurricanes forced the evacuation of low-lying Johnston Island.

At the same time, the EPA in San Francisco is trying to make sure that the PCB concentration of the waste is less than 50 parts per million, as the Defense Department says.

The department says it culled out any waste of greater concentrations before shipping the containers out of Japan in March.

Under federal law, if the waste has concentrations of greater than 50 parts per million, then it would not be allowed to leave Johnston Island, said John McCarroll, chief of permits and technical assistance in the EPA's San Francisco office.

"That could be a big problem. It would be stuck," McCarroll said.

P-I reporter Scott Sunde can be reached at 206-448-8331 or scottsunde@seattle-pi.com