Oregon regulators are letting a landfill operator two hours east of Portland send poisonous mercury into the air without the environmental controls that companies face in other states, a leading competitor alleges.
Chemical Waste Management’s landfill in Arlington accepts hazardous waste from oil refineries and heats it up in a process that reclaims oil, which can be resold. If not strictly controlled, processing oil waste can also release mercury, lead, arsenic and hydrochloric acid.
When the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality approved an air pollution permit for the oil operation in 2016, it contained no mention of mercury or limitations on how much the plant can process. Neither does a separate hazardous waste permit currently under review.
TD*X Associates of Texas says that’s an unfair advantage that will allow the Arlington landfill to take away customers and turn Oregon into a magnet for mercury-contaminated waste.
TD*X was fined by the U.S. EPA $788,000 in 2012 for operating in a manner similar to what Oregon is allowing in Arlington. The company installed additional pollution controls and must limit how much mercury-laden waste it takes in.
Now TD*X has launched an effort, including a 202-page research paper, to ensure the Arlington facility faces the same restrictions it does some 2,000 miles away on the Gulf Coast.
Jackie Lang, a Chemical Waste Management spokeswoman, said mercury is “not present in high concentrations in the waste we’re managing and recycling,” which comes from petroleum refinery storage tank bottoms.
Jennifer Flynt, an Oregon Department of Environmental Quality spokeswoman, said the Arlington landfill is in compliance with the law. In a written statement, she said her agency concluded the Arlington landfill wasn’t subject to the same rules as the Texas facility because they are “different in critical ways.” She did not explain how they are different.
Mercury is a poison that accumulates in fish and poses well-known threats to human health. The landfill in Arlington is 7 miles from the Columbia, at the center of land ceded by tribes to the United States in their 1855 treaties.
The state environmental agency has dealt lightly with mercury polluters in the past.
Nearly a decade ago, the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality came under intense scrutiny for going easy on an Eastern Oregon cement plant, allowing it to release poisonous mercury into the air with little oversight or restrictions.
At other hazardous waste oil recyclers in the country, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency cracked down during the Obama administration, levying huge fines to force compliance with federal hazardous waste laws and requiring strict pollution limits.
