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Ongoing Enforcement Actions

Record $15.7

Million Sought in Complaint Against Tennessee Gas Pipeline

In the largest administrative penalty ever sought by the Agency, EPA has filed a $15.7 million complaint against Tennessee Gas Pipeline Company of Houston, Texas, for violations of the Toxic Substances Control Act. The company operates an interstate natural gas-transmission system that extends approximately 10,000 miles; the complaint alleges that it improperly used and disposed of PCBs at 26 gas compressor stations along the pipeline from 1980 to 1990. The stations are located in Alabama, Kentucky, Mississippi, Ohio, and Tennessee.

The company is working with EPA and the states to clean up its equipment and any soil or water contaminated by the chemical. Last year, Texas Eastern paid a $15 million penalty for similar

violations, and is now in the middle of a 10-year program to clean up PCBs at a cost of $750 million.

U.S. Sugar Guilty of Felonies; Will Pay Highest Fine Ever Under RCRA

United States Sugar Corporation has agreed to plead guilty to eight felony charges filed by the Department of Justice and to pay a criminal fine of $3,750,000. The crimes, which occurred at the company's Bryant plant in Palm Beach County, Florida, involve the illegal disposal and transportation of hazardous wastes. The fine is the largest penalty ever assessed under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act.

Three of the eight counts charge the company with illegal disposal of lead subacetate during harvests in the period 1986 through 1989. The chemical was used in the sugar mill laboratory; the used chemical, which is a hazardous waste, was then disposed of in two forms: Mixed with sugar cane juice, it was dumped on the company's property; as a contaminant in laboratory filter papers, it was dumped in a local landfill.

The next three counts charge the company with illegal disposal of two solvents,

tetrachloroethylene and methylene chloride, which it used to degrease mechanical parts. The used solvents, mixed with oil and grease, were dumped in earthen surface impoundments at the Bryant plant.

The last two counts charge the company with illegal transportation of a

solvent that was an ignitable hazardous waste. Used to degrease mechanical parts, and mixed with waste oil, the solvent was transported to a waste-oil recycler without a manifest. U.S. Sugar did not inform the recycler that an ignitable hazardous waste was mixed with the oil; the recycler did not have a permit to treat or to dispose of hazardous waste.

The charges derive from soil, water, and chemical samples taken by EPA personnel and FBI agents during a search of the Bryant plant.

Kennecott Utah
Copper Faces
Fines of More
Than $1.4 Million

EPA has asked for fines
against Kennecott Utah
Copper Corporation totaling
more than $1.4 million:
$1,129,000 for
mismanagement of PCBs,
and $291,850 for failure to
report the release of
hazardous materials to the
environment. The charges
stem from inspections of the
company's smelter, refinery,
Magna concentrator,
Bonneville Plant, and
Bingham Canyon mine.
They allege: 180 counts of
improper use of

transformers containing PCBs, 16 counts of improper disposal of PCBs, 20 counts of failure to maintain records of PCB equipment, and one count of failure to mark an area containing a PCB transformer. They further

allege that Kennecott was aware of the following releases of hazardous materials but failed to report them to authorities: approximately 21,000 pounds of corrosive wastes spilled on the ground; 17,000 pounds of sulfur dioxide discharged to the air from smelter wastewater in an open canal; and sulfur dioxide and sulfur trioxide discharged to the air because of equipment failures at a substation and stack.

The PCB mismanagement charges were brought under the Toxic Substances Control Act, the hazardous-material release charges under the Superfund law and the Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act-the former requires that hazardous material spills be reported to the National Response Center in Washington, the latter that local and state emergency response groups be notified as well.

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Toxic Emissions from Dry Cleaners To Be Reduced

A regulation proposed by EPA would reduce emissions of

perchloroethyline from large dry cleaning plants. The solvent, also known as PCE or PERC, is the most widely used cleaning agent in the industry and is one of 190 toxic air pollutants EPA must regulate within the next 10 years under the 1990 Clean Air Act.

The proposal is the first air toxics rule to be written under the Act. It was prepared with the help of the International Fabricare Institute, and reflects an effort by EPA to minimize costs to small businesses.

Of the approximately 25,200 cleaning plants in the United States, 9,700 currently have no controls and could be affected by the rule. However, the Clean Air Act allows EPA to be sensitive to economic impacts on small business, and the Agency has set a "consumption cutoff" that will exempt all but 3,700 plants from having to install controls. The cutoff is 220 gallons of PCE a year for cleaners with dry-to-dry machines those that wash and dry in the same unit; it is 300 gallons a year for cleaners with transfer machines-washing is done in one unit, drying in another. The cleaners that would be exempted under the rule account for only 1.4 percent of total PCE

Under the rule, operators would have to install a carbon adsorber, refrigerated condenser, or equivalent device to control vented PCE emissions. They would have to practice pollution prevention procedures, including good operation and maintenance, for both dry cleaning machines and auxiliary equipment, such as solvent tanks. And they would have to conduct a weekly inspection to prevent emissions from broken or improperly operating equipment and keep a record of such things as the amount of PCE used.

The rule would apply to both "industrial" and "commercial" dry cleaners. Industrial cleaners, the largest, typically supply rental uniforms and other such items to business and institutional customers. Commercial cleaners, the most common, include the small, independently operated neighborhood shops.

emissions, so the effect of the exemption on public health would be negligible.

The proposed rule would reduce the total emissions of PCE by 13 to 26 percent. The estimated capital cost for the cleaners that are now uncontrolled would be $63 million by 1996; the annualized cost in 1996 would be $9 million. The increased cost of dry cleaning for customers would be less than one percent.

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Steve Delaney photo.

All Four New Jersey produce brighter lighting

Utilities Join
Green Lights

New Jersey's four electric
utility companies have
joined EPA's Green Lights
program; the state is the
first to have all its electric
utilities join.

Public Service Electric and Gas, Rockland Electric, Jersey Control Power and Light, and Atlantic Electric have all agreed to survey their facilities and to install new lighting systems where energy and cost savings can be achieved. What's more, they will aid customers to do the same. All Green Lights members can access an EPA computer-based support system.

Twenty to 25 percent of electricity used in the United States each year goes to lighting. Half of that, 250 billion kilowatt hours, at a cost of $20 billion, could be saved if energy-efficient lighting were substituted, where feasible, for older systems. Efficient systems

with less energy, contribute to a more productive workplace, and create less heat, thereby reducing the demand for air conditioning.

EPA launched the Green Lights Program in 1991 as a voluntary, non-regulatory program to encourage U.S. corporations, utilities, states, and local governments to adopt energy-efficient lighting as a profitable means of pollution prevention. Several hundred Green Lights partners have joined in the program across the

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RACE, POVERTY, AND THE ENVIRONMENT

The Disadvantaged Face Greater Risks

by Paul Mohai and Bunyan Bryant

Am

mericans have tended to assume that pollution is a problem faced equally by everyone in our society. But awareness and concern about

inequities in the distribution of environmental hazards have been

steadily increasing. The first event to focus national attention on environmental injustice occurred in 1982 when officials decided to locate a PCB landfill in predominantly black Warren County, North Carolina. Protests very similar to those of the civil rights movement of the 1960s erupted. They led to an investigation the following year by the General Accounting Office (GAO) of the socioeconomic and racial composition of communities surrounding the four major hazardous waste landfills in the South. The GAO report found that three of the four were located in communities that were predominantly black.

The Warren County incident and the GAO report led the United Church of Christ's Commission for Racial Justice,

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