Just one month after the Mendocino County Board of Supervisors denied SNAG a hearing on illegal toxic activities at Retech and the organization responded by sponsoring its own public forum, the citizen's group has filed a lawsuit against the county's Air Quality Management District.
The suit alleges failure on the part of the local agency to enforce California's Environmental Quality Act when it recently permitted two Retech incinerators for toxics testing. Permits were issued for the plasma arc centrifugal treatment incinerator known as the PACT 8 and the plasma arc melter known as the PAM 6 on February 25, 1997 without development review, negative declarations or any notice to the public of CEQA exemptions. According to SNAG's research, since at least 1994, numerous permits for incinerator operations at Retech have been issued illegally by the air district. The lawsuit is being handled for SNAG by attorney Luke Cole of the California Rural Legal Assistance Foundation in San Francisco. According to Jane Williams, executive director of California Communities Against Toxics (CCAT) and lead speaker at SNAG's public forum, Cole, who is also affiliated with the Center on Race, Poverty and the Environment, is among the best CEQA attorneys currently working in the field of environmental justice.
Besides the SNAG CEQA suit, Retech and its parent company, Lockheed-Martin, face several other legal actions. The Mendocino District Attorney's office is active on two fronts. In April, it filed a criminal misdemeanor suit (with the potential to upgrade to felony) against Lockheed-Martin and other corporate interests based on the identification by CAL-OSHA's Department of Industrial Relations of a number of labor and safety code violations related to the death of a Retech worker in a metal powder explosion at the plant in 1996. The D.A.'s office is also building a civil case against Retech/Lockheed incorporating hazardous waste violations recently identified by the state's Department of Toxic Substances Control with numerous violations related to building and planning codes, air quality, and environmental health concerns. This past spring, the family of Ed Hensley, the Retech worker who died of burns suffered in the explosion, filed a $10 million lawsuit against divisions of Lockheed-Martin and corporate cohorts alleging negligence, product liability and willful misconduct.
Although the lawsuit should shed some light on the shady activities between our local regulatory agencies and their corporate friends, SNAG sponsored a forum on July 30 in attempt to educate the public about illegal practices involving toxics at Retech. The forum, Toxics at Retech/Lockheed, brought together a panel of experts, observers from both the Federal and CAL-EPA, and an audience of 160 to discuss the incineration of toxics at the Retech plant just south of Ukiah.
Retech builds and tests experimental incinerators designed to process hazardous and radioactive waste by converting it into a "non-leachable" slag. Testing of this equipment has involved Retech bringing in and burning such materials as PVC pipe, surrogate chemical warfare weapons, military wastes, pharmaceutical sludges, medical ash and soils contaminated with mixed wastes. This incineration produces emissions which are sporadically monitored and about which there is no data concerning dioxins and radioactivity, among other dangerous products.
The three-hour forum, co-sponsored by the MEC, featured three toxics experts who discussed some of the ramifications of Retech's activities: Jane Williams, executive director of California Communities Against Toxics; Ernie Goitein, nuclear engineer; and Dr. Marion Moses, president of the Pesticide Education Center in San Francisco. Also in attendance were John McCarroll of the Federal EPA and Ted Rauh and Charlene Williams of CAL-EPA's Department of Toxic Substances Control. Noticeably absent were all of Mendocino County's Board of Supervisors and county department heads and staff. Sixteen county representatives had been personally invited by SNAG to attend.
Jane Williams addressed the subject of experimental incineration and its health implications. She noted that Retech's neighbors and Ukiahans in general are the only community in the country to be located next to incinerators engaged in this sort of experimentation. She also made the point that this is being done without the consent of those who may be affected by the toxics at Retech.
Ernie Goitein studied data on radioactivity in substances processed at Retech. He found that combining numbers from Retech's own data on the processing of contaminated soil by incineration, the amount of radioactivity in the slag end-product was less than what would be expected from the amount originally introduced into the incinerator. This raises the important question: where did the rest of the radioactivity go?
Dr. Marion Moses spoke on the subject of pesticides-a number of which are also processed in Retech's incinerators. She discussed the fact that combining pesticides can change the effect these substances have on us-a phenomenon known as aggregate or cumulative exposures. The EPA is only just beginning to acknowledge and study this problem which is implicated in damage to human hormonal systems. We don't yet know what effect the emissions of the combination of toxics at Retech may have.
Written reports by the three panelists and several other scientists and toxics experts are available to you through the Mendocino Environmental Center. Call or stop by to pick up a copy of the packet assembled by SNAG for Toxics at Retech/Lockheed. If you would like to help defray the cost of this litigation, SNAG invites you to contribute by sending a check to SNAG at P.O. Box 340, Hopland, CA 95449.
Copyright Mendocino Environmental Center 1997
Permission granted to excerpt or use this article if source is cited