EXHIBIT 2 EXPORTS OF HAZARDOUS WASTE FROM U.S. TO CANADA * (* to facilities in Sarnia, Ontario, and near Montreal, Quebec) In the United States, an estimated 270 million tonnes of hazardous waste was produced in 1990, less than 0.5% was exported. In 1990, 557 export notifications were received by U.S. EPA. with 86% of notices specifying Canada as the destination and 14% specifying other countries in Europe, Asia and South America. BUT Of the more than 2 million tonnes notified for export to Canada, only 143,000 tonnes were actually shipped and received. Waste movements are approved and administered under existing bilateral agreements. Canada shipped 137,000 tonnes to the U.S. during 1990. This makes Canada a net importer of 6,000 tonnes. Of all hazardous waste imported for treatment from the United States to Canada (143,000 tonnes in 1990), Laidlaw companies in Ontario and Québec received 19,600 tonnes, or 14%. May, 1991 *Notice by generators through U.S. EPA to Environmental Officials in receiving country of total quantity of waste that may possibly be exported by that generator from U.S.A. in 12 month period. PREPARED STATEMENT OF Jim ValleTTE I am grateful to have the opportunity to talk with you today about the international trade in toxic wastes. I speak here on behalf of more than five million members of Greenpeace worldwide, and more than a half million United States citizens who are petitioning our government to ban all U.S. waste exports and imports. This testimony is also endorsed by the Sierra Club and the U.S. Public Interest Research Groups. Our position on U.S. waste exports is also endorsed by the greater environmental community, as evidenced by the full support of the RCRA Coalition of environmental Organizations. A total ban on hazardous waste exports is the legislative expression of a commitment made by all countries, including the United States, attending the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm, Sweden in 1972. This conference adopted a Declaration on the Human Environment "to guide the peoples of the world," which says that "States have... the responsibility to ensure that activities within their jurisdiction or control do not cause damage to the environment of other States or of areas beyond the limits of national jurisdiction." The Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and Their Disposal represents a deliberate failure by heavily industrialized countries, including the United States, to match such rhetoric with real action. The Basel Convention sanctions environmental damage in one country to aid industrial interests in another country. THE POLITICS OF ILLUSION Basel simply establishes a global toxic waste trade notification system. It requires only the prior consent of the waste importing country, and the un-defined 'environmentally sound' disposal of, these wastes. It globalizes existing rules of waste trade in the United States and Europe. These laws are designed to-facilitate a free trade in-toxic wastes, and ignore the poisoning of air, water, soil and human health which inevitably accompanies the fate, of toxic waste. Government and industrial representatives are trying to create illusions that the Basel Convention effectively controls waste trade, that it will prevent U.S. wastes from poisoning other countries. This is exactly what the Basel Convention is based upon the politics, of illusion. Waste trade and waste disposal flourish when an illusion of "control" is generally believed; waste dumping end's when the public discovers destruction. Too often, such illusions are dispelled too late for the people who live near and work in the world's dumpsites. When the waste trading ship, the Khian Sea, arrived in Haiti carrying toxic incinerator ash from Philadelphia in 1988, the ship's operators claimed the ash was harmless, and would make a good fertilizer for Haitian farmers. The people of Haiti discovered too late that the ash was heavily contaminated with lead, cadmium, and dioxins. Over 3,000 tons of ash were dumped on a beach in Haiti, where the U.S. waste remains today. "ENVIRONMENTALLY SOUND DISPOSAL"? Proponents of the Basel Convention are not unlike the operators of the Khian Sea: they are trying to disguise the inherent dangers of waste trade with the illusion that it can be safe, if it is "controlled" globally and managed in an “environmentally sound manner." The Administration, for example, argues that enacting the Basel Convention would fulfill President George Bush's March 10, 1989, pledge to "ban all exports of hazardous waste except where we have an agreement with the receiving country providing for the safe handling and management of those wastes." 1 Waste trade is inherently unsafe, and environmentally destructive. Once hazardous waste is created, it is impossible to prevent the release of its poisonous properties at some future date and location. When hazardous wastes exit the U.S.'s borders, it is only a matter of time before these wastes will poison a foreign location. Greenpeace has tracked thousands of waste trade schemes, particularly those targeting less industrialized countries, but also waste exports to OECD countries. They are detailed in our 400-page book, The International Trade in Wastes: A Greenpeace Inventory,2 2 which catalogues waste trade policies and disasters around the world. One thing is common to all waste trade schemes: their proponents claim that the wastes will be handled in an environmentally sound manner (or some variation of those words). Far too often, these soothing words convince government officials and even people living near proposed dumpsites that such business is harmless. The ultimate fate of such "environmentally sound" waste trade is evident in the growing pollution scandal at the Stablex hazardous waste 'solidification' landfill |