Toxic-fertilizer rules criticized at EPA hearings.

Sara Jean Green / Seattle Times 30nov01

Banning the use of recycled hazardous waste in fertilizer is the only way to make it safe for human health and the health of the country's farmland.

That was the overwhelming message delivered yesterday to Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) officials at two public hearings in Seattle — the only such hearings in the nation — on a proposed rule limiting amounts of cadmium, lead, dioxin and other toxic chemicals in zinc fertilizer made from hazardous waste. The rule also would eliminate loopholes that put no such limits on material drawn from steel mills.

The proposed rule is part of an agreement struck with the Washington Toxics Coalition after it and the Sierra Club sued the EPA in 1998 for failing to regulate hazardous waste in fertilizer as aggressively as it does hazardous waste in landfills. The lawsuit came after a Seattle Times investigation showing how manufacturing industries dispose of some hazardous waste by turning it into fertilizer.

According to David Fagan, an EPA official from the agency's headquarters in Washington, D.C., the EPA has authority to regulate only "a small sliver" of the fertilizer industry because states determine rules for all fertilizers except those made with recycled hazardous materials.

Washington and Texas are the only states that limit toxic chemicals in fertilizer; California is set to implement similar rules in January.

Extracting zinc, a plant micro-nutrient, from industrial byproducts — such as dust from steel mills, brass foundries and tire-recycling plants — keeps the heavy metal out of landfills and reduces the need to mine more of it, Fagan said.

He said the agency is committed to punishing industries that practice "sham recycling" in an effort to get rid of hazardous wastes by dumping them into fertilizer.

"I'm suggesting here that this (hazardous-waste recycling) can be a good practice if it's done right," Fagan told a crowd of about 80 who gathered for the evening forum at Seattle's Town Hall on Eighth Avenue. About 80 others attended an afternoon forum.

A majority of last night's audience responded with titters and angry declarations of skepticism. "Industry should take their own garbage," one woman yelled. In a booming voice, a man asked: "Why recycle known poisons?" Another woman said: "Why do it at all? Is it your job to protect industry?"

Fagan responded that "industry doesn't like what we're doing" and pointed to several lawsuits filed against the agency that question the EPA's authority "to regulate this at all."

Laurie Valeriano, a spokeswoman for the Washington Toxics Coalition, said zinc fertilizer is only the tip of the iceberg and the "EPA is doing a completely inadequate job" of tracking the use of other hazardous and solid wastes in fertilizer.