New EPA Rules Expected to Shut Smaller Dumps : Environment: Safety costs favor landfills run by giant corporations.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is about to issue regulations that will dramatically change what America does with its trash--rules that will intensify the pressure to build huge regional landfills, run by giant corporations, to replace the local dump.

Backed by an unusual alliance of environmentalists and big waste-management companies, the long-awaited rules--the first nationwide standards for municipal landfills--are expected to shut down thousands of older dumps across the country.

And for areas where big regional dumps may be located--few states are immune to the prospect--they heighten the specter of a future of burying other peoples’ garbage.

The uproar is already intense, particularly in places such as “Garbage Alley,” the mine-scarred Pennsylvania countryside on either side of Interstate 80, the main drag out of New York and New Jersey.

Ten years ago in the hardscrabble coal country, bumper stickers advised: “If you’re hungry and out of work, eat an environmentalist.” Today, the strip-mine battles of the 1980s have given way to the fight over trash. Pennsylvania conservationists, trying to shield their state from truckloads of East Coast garbage, are facing off against the backers of regional landfills.

“It’s close to a war out here,” growls Hillary Bida, a Pennsylvania farmer and Sierra Club activist.

In the past two years, major waste-management companies have built or proposed 33 waste sites--landfills, garbage incinerators, auto-upholstery dumps and hazardous waste disposal facilities--in a 50-mile radius of the tiny town of Clearfield, according to local environmentalists.

“Coal owners who stripped the coal now feel the land isn’t worth anything,” says Pam Emigh, president of Concerned Citizens of Graham Township, one of six home-grown environmental groups in Clearfield County. “Now they just want to bring in the landfills.”

The new federal standards will only encourage that trend.

Environmental experts in landfill and ground-water safety have long campaigned to extract the rules from the EPA, where they have been in revision since proposed rules were announced three years ago. During that period, several states and cities began building new landfills to the proposed standards.

“The process has already begun,” says Allen Moore, president of the National Solid Waste Management Assn.

The EPA expects the regulations to force closure during the next four years of half the nation’s 6,000 landfills--particularly smaller, “open” public facilities. Such dumps often create uncontrolled, explosive methane gas and leach hazardous fluids into surface and ground water. Perhaps half of all U.S. wells are still being contaminated by poor waste-management practices, environmentalists say.

To bring the remaining landfills up to the new standards could cost $1 billion, according to the EPA. With costs so huge, the big winners under national rules will be the large waste companies, since only they can afford the more expensive new landfill technology.

Economies of scale and the expense of finding sites where the natives are friendly also encourage these companies to gather garbage on a regional basis. Some experts say that over time, only the sparsely populated Rocky Mountain states will probably continue building local city dumps.

Modern landfills--with their liners and gas and liquid drainage systems--cost $400,000 to $700,000 an acre, not counting the land itself.

“With the cost of construction, you need a pretty decent-sized volume to offset your fixed costs,” says Kevin J. Sullivan of Waste Management of North America. “And you’d rather have one site instead of 10 or 20--it’s just easier to manage, and to site.”

Although they are wary of their waste-management bedfellows, many national environmental leaders say the firms’ heightened role is a price worth paying for better ground-water protection. “The nearest danger is the greatest danger,” says Allen Hershkowitz, solid-waste policy analyst for the Natural Resources Defense Council.

“We can’t be asking for very strict, environmentally protective, design features at landfills or incinerators or recycling facilities, without expecting big money to have to be involved,” he says. “And big money is usually accompanied by big companies.

“I’m not saying I’m necessarily pleased with this,” Hershkowitz concedes, “but the record right now is that the larger facilities tend to be better operated, in large part because they are run by better-capitalized companies that are more vulnerable to regulatory enforcement. The smaller facilities tend to be operated by municipalities, or less well-capitalized companies.”

Environmentalists part company with the large landfill companies, however, in the long haul. They argue that strict recycling and waste-reduction programs ultimately could render many regional landfills unnecessary, since a drastic cut in volume would make local dumps practical again.

“If a community can do its own, it’s better,” says Doris Cellarius, chair of the Sierra Club’s Hazardous Materials Committee. “If a landfill is under the control of people who must live with it for many years, they’re willing to bear the costs of managing it safely.”

Local control also creates an incentive, she says, to build strong recycling and conservation programs, thereby making the landfill last--an incentive not shared by private landfill companies.

Beyond safety, the basic economics of all waste treatment--particularly recycling--depend on uniform national landfill regulations, say environmentalists and waste-management executives.

If it costs $100 a ton to dump garbage in a landfill, for example, recycling a portion of it at $130 a ton actually costs only $30 more than burying it. The recycling system might even break even, because recycling saves expensive landfill space.

But at traditional dumping fees of $10 a ton or less, the same recycling system becomes a $120-a-ton option--one politically much more difficult for public agencies to adopt.

For their part, landfill companies favor national regulations over a hodgepodge of state standards.

“Federal standards provide a protection against pollution havens,” says Ed Skernolis, director of government affairs for Waste Management Inc. “We don’t want to be competing against substandard facilities.”

In Washington, however, the proposed standards--required under Subtitle D of the federal Resource Conservation and Recovery Act--have been stalled for a year in the White House Office of Management and Budget. OMB reportedly opposes EPA’s rules on both cost-benefit and philosophical grounds.

Many environmentalists believe that the Bush Administration is resisting the EPA standards because they require landfills that cost too much in relation to their impact on public health--for instance, in preventing diseases caused by contaminated ground water. Environmentalists also worry that OMB’s wringer could leave the new rules weaker than those already adopted by some states.

Spokesman Troy Hillier said it is OMB policy not to comment on such discussions.

Others close to the negotiations say OMB objects most strenuously to forcing cities and towns--whether they can afford it or not--to pay now to avoid the costs of cleaning up ground water later. The questions: What if it turns out to be cheaper to leave contaminated ground water alone and simply replace it from other sources? What if future generations would rather filter drinking water at the tap?

OMB also, reportedly, argues that the federal government should not be involved in regulating landfills at all. States and cities, the free market-oriented office contends, have incentives to build good landfills on their own--avoiding excessive “federalism,” an Administration epithet. If anything, goes the argument, federal guidelines--not mandatory standards--should be issued.

Unenforceable guidelines, however, probably would be contested--hotly--by both environmentalists and the industry.

In the end, though, what environmentalists want most is that the regulations be issued soon.

The Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund sued the EPA in May to force release of the standards, whatever they may be. William K. Reilly, EPA administrator, could release the regulations any day now; at a minimum, the EPA is scheduled to announce a date to issue them and possibly describe their scope in a Washington federal court on Thursday.

Back in Pennsylvania, the issues are far less highfalutin.

“These guys are coming in and buying up land and not telling anyone,” Bida of the Sierra Club says. “We don’t think we should be the dumping ground for the whole East Coast. Other states ought to be taking care of as much as they can themselves.”

Landfill Proposals

Some of the standards proposed for the nation’s municipal landfills by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

* Groundwater cleanup and monitoring to prevent further contamination.

* Landfill liners and leak-prevention systems.

* Exposed garbage to be covered, preferably with 6 inches of earth, at least once a day.

* Monitoring of explosive methane gas buildup.

* Random inspections of garbage haulers to exclude illegal hazardous waste dumping.

* Maintenance, groundwater and air monitoring for up to 30 years after closing; monitoring after that.