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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (Aug. 19, 1981)
i lot ns tin has bet of infection Cram said, months tocoiii. rocess, t ive been con ist be placcdii >ntractionsmJ may be rt. <in contractsa bums, parfe nose an ult to gi problems" u! ie skin, them look It oumed,” Cnn lake them W ild before. abandoned sites overflowing with PCB’s key-like” uit for a 1 r recovery, e patients wk ig back to on. Maybe no out s from a bim 5 to 34 can® 80 percent! said. “Overtk is much low body suifc percent n» ■ patients atl 72 percent sii' id, comparedt ional ed oved the men said Mond)) t inequitable,' ie’s headqnii' n Little Rock e it as a based national inson i officials hart •ance Co. nil e Rock alien with a newly any. The men unced in Job not been re cansas’ oldesl iperatesinf Features i nt_ ljm i , «-vu. —. . WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 19, 1981 Old chemical dumps resurfacing making him shed. United Press International HOUSTON — Twenty miles from Houston’s glittering skyline, in a remote area near the San Jacinto River, two old chemical waste dumps filled with bypro ducts of the industry that fueled the city’s growth lie bubbling in the sun. The Environmental Protection Agency discovered French Li mited and Sikes Pit, hidden in wooded areas on either side of U.S, 90, during a search-and- inspect program begun in 1980 under the 1976 Resource Conser vation and Recovery Act. The EPA lists the sites as orphans, filled to overflowing with poisonous waste and abandoned. The EPA still has at least 636 che mical waste sites to reckon with in Texas and officials say more orphans likely will be found. The orphans are mistakes of a lengthy past, and the EPA’s five- year-old “cradle to grave’ hazar dous waste managment plan is in tended to provide for them. The two-pronged attack is aimed at cleaning up old, unsafe sites and controlling new wastes. But funds to pay for the esti mated $44 billion national clean up bill are barely trickling in. The federal clean-up “superfund, fi nanced by special taxes on indus try, amounts to a mere $1.6 bil lion. Moreover, citizens in many communities, including some supported by the petrochemical industry, are fighting the locating near them of purportedly safe waste disposal facilities designed to eliminate the problem forever. Many residents do not see the d waste dumps as a problem. Lee Hammond, his wife and six children have lived between Sikes Pit and French Limited, about a half mile from each, for 20 years. He said he remembered chemical tank trucks came to dump their light, but he never gave it much thought: “You kind of get used to the smell after a while. ” The former machinist for Brown & Root said his family drinks from a well in the front yard and they catfish caught in a nearby pond, but he said he would not know if the dumps affected his or his fami- s health because “I never have time to go to a doctor. ” The EPA stresses sound man agement and improved technolo gy to control the flow of hazardous wastes and has criticized industry for dragging its feet. “Although techniques exist for environmentally sound manage ment, they have not been widely used because of their higher cost and because there was no legal requirement for them,” a 1980 EPA information brochure re ported. But Shell Oil Co.’s environ mental safety chief, R. D. Mul- lineaux, said the economics of waste disposal actually have spur red the use of improved technolo gy in the last eight years. Mullineaux guesses new tech nology may reduce the amount of hazardous waste generated by 25 percent, eventually almost elimi nating the problem. “The economics have changed drastically since 1973, ’’ Mullineax said. “Oil prices have gone up by a factor of ten so the value of the good parts of the waste (the parts that can be recycled or otherwise used) has gone up dramatically and it pays to get the waste out of it.’’ Mullineaux said useful chemic als once thrown out as waste now can be removed by improved separation techniques and high- temperature incinerators virtually destroy potential hazards while providing a source of energy. Mullineaux said most of what used to be thrown out as waste can now be recycled, and inefficient Lee Hammond reme- bered when chemical tank trucks came to dump their loads at night, but he never gave it much thought: “You kind of get used to the smell after a while. ” waste handling is similar to throw ing away food. “If the toast cost you a penny and you burned it, you threw it in the wastebasket,” he said. “If it costs you a buck, you’re quite like ly to scrape the carbon off and eat the toast.” But bad management is no piece of toast. The EPA equates inefficiency with ecological disas ter. The number of potentially hazardous sites changes as some facilities are cleared and others are added, but the list is growing. Last December, the EPA listed 538 potentially hazardous sites in Texas. Two months later, there were 547 and by June, 1981 the number had grown to 636. In the same period, 41 Texas sites were cleared. French Limited, identified in August 1980, has fared better than other orphans. Funds were appropriated for its cleanup short ly after it was found, and work began in September 1980. “Everytime it rained, the pond would overflow its banks and the chemicals would run down to the river,” said Al Anderson, a Presents Sat. Aug. 22 PEOPLES CHOICE 9 p.m.-t a.m. Tickets 3 50 Draft Beer 250 Coming! Sept. 19 CHUCK BERRY j Technics Pioneer Marantz Rotel Sanyo V r PRICE (or less) 2 SPEAKER SALE ON Omega • ETR • Cerwin-Vega SA-C90 3.25 SSANYO FT-C5 Cassette Automatic music se lect system Locking fast forward & rewind Auto-reverse Automatic FM stereo/ Mono switching ^ SANYO SP-709 s 95 JENSEN SOUND LABORATORIES • 4 Way Speaker System • High and Mid Range Frequency Controls • Reg. S600.00, pr. ONLY * 1 99" ea Come in and check out our unadvertised daily specials! UY Visa Master Card WOODSTONE AUDIO 693-4423 OPEN 10-6 MON.-SAT. 10-9 THURS. 913 HARVEY (Hwy. 30) College Station ¥ n ft 2. 3 W <D All Seats $1.50 dent C.M. Wright said money ran out before the job was finished. The initial work — diking the pit and pumping and shoveling 2,100 cubic yards of PCB con taminated material back into it — cost $750,000 and took ten months, he said. Another $150,000 is needed to contain the rest of the contaminated material, Wright said. But the work at Sikes Pit, just across U.S. 90 from French Limited and a half mile closer to the San Jacinto River, cannot even begin until funds be come available. CINEMA l&ll F Skaggs shopping center/Across from A&M cleanup worker at the site. “We rebuilt the dike and put some of the contaminated stuff back into the pit.” EPA tests found polychlorin ated biphenyls, commonly known as PCBs, in alarming concentra tions outside the pit. PCBs are suspected carcinogens and then manufacture and use, except in sealed systems such as high- voltage electrical transformers, were banned by the federal gov ernment in 1979. Kut Rite Environmental Ser vices did the clean up job at French Pit, and company presi- PUTT Friday & Saturday Midnight Guaranteed haircuts. The professionals at both That Place locations guarantee you’ll get a pro fessional cut, one that will fit your personality and lifestyle, one you’ll love to live with. So come in and let us create for you. We guarantee our work! Sorry, no cash refunds. “FLESH GORDON is a broad, breasty, sexy spoof, camping it up with heroes, monsters, and Sci- Fi. .— Archer Winsten, N.Y. POST 696-6933 693-0607 A&M Travel Service, Inc The most professional, most experienced travel consultants in the area gives you hometown service with computerized speed. Let us plan your trips for business and for fun. A&M Travel Service became the largest travel consultants in Brazos County by giving the best service. Now we offer our clients SABRE, a space age computerized service which provides instant availabilities on 495 domestic and foreign airlines and instant space reservations. SABRE can confirm every detail of your trip. And has instant recall of your favorite departure times, seat preference, etc. There’s no need to call back or wait for a call to confirm your reservations. A&M Travel confirms your reservations as you request them. With the use of our computer terminal, you can get custom travel service every step of the way. A&M Travel has more travel consultants and more travel experience than any other agent in the area. We deliver, tickets to the campus (or elsewhere in the community) and we follow through on the details. For your next trip, call A&M Travel. We’ll book your reservations and confirm them. All in one call. A&M Travel Service, Inc. Owned by Keith Langford ’39 (Houston) and Diane Stribiing (President and Agency Manager) 111 University Drive (in the RepublicBank A&M Building) College Station / 846-8881 We support the Aggies with an annual donation for a 12th Man Scholarship