PEORIA -- Members of the environmental group Peoria Families Against Toxic Waste have requested a public hearing on a move by Peoria Disposal Co. to delist residues from the treatment of electric arc furnace dust created by steel mills.
The dust is a hazardous waste from Keystone Steel & Wire Co. at Bartonville and other companies that PDC landfills at its hazardous waste facility, 4349 Southport Rd on southwest edge of Peoria.
If the Illinois Pollution Control Board approves the delisting, the waste would no longer be considered hazardous, and could be disposed of in a municipal landfill. PDC also owns municipal landfills, including one in nearby Tazewell Count at Hopedale.
The move would allow PDC to free up space in its hazardous waste landfill for other substances, and therefore extend the life of that landfill, now almost full.
The Families group has fought against PDC’s efforts to expand the landfill, with rulings now pending in court.
In a letter to the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency seeking that agency’s support against the delisting, activist Cara Rosson states “This is a highly unusual measure that they propose.”
Rosson believes it would set a legal precedent, as delistings elsewhere have involved single companies with specific treatments and landfilling on company property.
But PDC accepts the dust from several sources. Landfilling the dust in municipal landfills would expose the dust to various compounds that end up in those landfills, she writes, “from Kool Aid and battery acid to orange juice and bleach, the list is endless.”
Testing for these variables is impossible, she says. “The chemical reaction possibilities appear to be endless, or at least would seem to increase exponentially, once dumped in with the millions of items found in municipal landfills.”
The state of Illinois has not delisted any such chemical for over 15 years, she writes. “I ask that you at the very least undertake an in-depth review of what PDC is proposing before recommending any course of action. My hope is that you will see the myriad dangers of what they suggest and disapprove of such a universally untried and untested process.”
The letter continues, “We are also concerned that the IEPA itself has worked with PDC to craft this delisting proposal. There is language in the proposal itself that suggests as such. We do not know to what extent PDC consulted with IEPA staff in preparing the document, and certainly do not suggest that there has been any impropriety on the part of the IEPA – we simply ask that any consideration PDC has given the IEPA in asking the advice of staff members towards the preparation of their current proposal not be given any special consideration by the IEPA. I trust that any consultation by PDC of any IEPA staffers will not replace a thorough examination and review of PDC's delisting proposal Case # AS 08-10.”
The dust contains heavy metals such as hexovalent chromium, lead and zinc. These remain unchanged by treatment processes which stabilize them with cement.
She writes, “Fewer and fewer states and countries continue to landfill heavy metals. All 26 member nations in the European Union have banned entirely the landfilling of heavy metals like lead, mercury, zinc and hexovalent chromium. Companies that sell their products in the EU have since discontinued using heavy metals in their products. The effect was virtually immediate and caused little economic burden.
“The State of California is moving towards such a standard as well. It is feasible that PDC and the State of Illinois could become the dumping ground for heavy metals as more and more states and municipalities move towards this same, increasingly popular standard. I doubt anyone in Illinois, and I know for sure hundreds of us in Peoria, do not want this to come to pass.”
This dust can be recycled at a Calumet facility and other places, she said. “Landfilling EAF dust is increasingly unnecessary and simply wasteful. In this age where recycling is not only encouraged, but necessary in the fight for a sustainable lifestyle and the battle for the health of our planet – recycling – not landfilling – is our present and future.
“Landfilling is rapidly becoming our past, the dinosaur of the waste industry,” and it should not be encouraged by government policy, she states.
-- Elaine Hopkins
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