Shame on Waste Management

The Alliance For A Clean Environment

Shame on Waste Management

1. For playing hide and seek with its Eastern Expansion air pollution. Waste Management applied for two air pollution operating permit amendments WITHOUT INCLUDING ITS EASTERN EXPANSION AIR POLLUTION.

► Why would Waste Management try to hide its Eastern Expansion air pollution?

Health-based standards, called National Ambient Air Quality Standards, under the Clean Air Act, call for reductions in Severe Non-Attainment Areas such as ours, for the kinds of air pollution emitted from the Eastern Expansion.
Eastern Expansion air pollution should be a violation of these standards.

► Why would additional air pollution be a violation of these Clean Air Act standards?

We already breathe the top 10% of the most unhealthy and carcinogenic air in the nation. DEP should be requiring reductions for Pottstown Landfill’s air pollution.

2. For continuing to flare its Pottstown Landfill gas, when far safer non-burn technologies are available.

► Waste Management has an opportunity to provide the safest non-burn technology for its Eastern Expansion landfill gas, which will threaten the health of our community for decades.

Instead, Waste Management failed to deal with Eastern Expansion gas up front until over six months of severe odors required an emergency response.
Then Waste Management installed a pipeline and another flare to avoid the stench without a required plan approval or public comment.
Waste Management is asking for a Plan Approval (now including the Eastern Expansion) (after the fact) in hopes we wouldn’t notice that Eastern Expansion gas was being sneaked through the old system for the original landfill and not counted separately.

► What’s wrong with flaring Pottstown Landfill gas?

DEP admitted that flaring Pottstown Landfill gas is not the safest technology.
Burning Pottstown Landfill gas produces inevitable by-products of dioxins. Now 3 full time flares are producing dioxin by-products from burning massive amounts of Pottstown Landfill gas, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.
EPA confirms that dioxin is one of the most toxic carcinogens known to man and that people who live near sources of dioxin can be 10 times more at risk from dioxin’s health effects than the average population.
Dioxin can harm human health at parts per trillion. It stores in the body fat, and can be passed on to our children.
Dioxin exposure can cause cancer, hormone disruption, damage to the immune and nervous system, birth defects, miscarriages, infertility, low sperm count, endometriosis, chloracne, diabetes, learning disabilities, decreased IQ, ADD/ADHD, and short term memory loss.

3. For BUYING SCIENCE to twist and hide the truth about cancer statistics around the Pottstown Landfill, as well as what’s in Pottstown Landfill gas and its threat to the health of those exposed.

► Childhood Cancer rates around the Pottstown Landfill have skyrocketed from 30% higher the national average since the late 1980’s, to 92.5% higher than the national average in the late 1990’s. Childhood Cancer rates around the Pottstown Landfill are almost 100% higher than the tri county and even state averages. (PA Cancer Registry Statistics, 1995 to 1999, reported September, 2002.)

The cancer report paid for by Waste Management states that this childhood cancer rate was meaningless.
This is not only an insensitive insult, it is misleading.
The rates of 4 of the elevated childhood cancers are much higher than the national rates.

► ACE will have a complete analysis of Waste Management’s cancer report for our next newsletter. Initially, besides its misleading claim about childhood cancer statistics around the Pottstown Landfill, it appears Waste Management has failed to report on two cancers significantly higher than the national average around the Pottstown Landfill, and made an unsubstantiated claim about the cause of another.

► The claims of Waste Management’s paid expert that there are no off-site risks to the health of the community are unjustified. Pottstown Landfill is documented to emit extremely potent carcinogens, including radiation, vinyl chloride, benzene, and others, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.