CWM District Manager Cites Reasons for, Rebuts Arguments Against CWM Expansion

Michael Mahar District Manager Chemical Waste Management Chemical Services

In response to a letter to the editor from the September 23rd edition of The Reporter, "Youngstown Landfill Expansion Ought to Worry Canadians Too":

This letter and the opinion piece from the Toronto Star from which it quotes, are both factually inaccurate.

•To assert that CWM Chemical Services "is allowed to dilute the cancer-linked PCBs and other materials it collects and discharge into the Niagara River" is grossly misleading. CWM has a permit for discharging treated water into the Niagara River. The permit is known as a State Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (SPDES) permit. To learn more about SPDES Permits see: www.dec.ny.gov/permits/6054.html.

Water treated through CWM's Aqueous Treatment facility is held in a storage pond and tested by an independent laboratory to make certain that the water being discharged meets all limits in our SPDES permit. Not until the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (NYSDEC) reviews the test results and gives the okay, does the once-a-year batch discharge occur. See: www.dec.ny.gov/permits/6054.html

The discharge standards are very stringent, with most limits specified in the parts-per-billion.

• The local County Legislator's assertion that, "there is strong evidence that the landfill materials are leaking out beneath ground and beneath the depth that the onsite soil is monitored and headed directly into the Niagara River" is simply not true. No wastes are leaving the site through groundwater or soil. There is no evidence to suggest this. There are over 200 monitoring wells on the site that are continuously checked to make certain that nothing is leaking from the site.

•The earthquake scenario that the local County Legislator provides where particles would become airborne and be carried all the way to Toronto, is just a claim to alarm and incite people. This is not based on Science or any reality.

•To allude that the facility takes radioactive waste is a misrepresentation of the facts. Because CWM is located on part of the Lake Ontario Ordinance Works (LOOW) there is a history of radioactive materials associated with the LOOW site.

CWM is a Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) permitted facility with a landfill approved for hazardous waste. The site cannot take in radioactive wastes. The wastes that we take are strictly regulated. To have a better understanding of RCRA visit the EPA site: http://www.epa.gov/osw/laws-regs/rcrahistory.htm.

This opinion piece did not provide the public with an accurate view of the situation. What this commentary fails to address is the permitting process involved in this expansion, which is very technical and involved and the oversight of the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation. Nor does it take into consideration the need for a facility to safely dispose of hazardous wastes and the businesses and industry, as well as clean-up projects, that would be negatively impacted if an expansion is not permitted.