PORT ARTHUR — Veolia Environmental Services has put a halt on a three-year-old request to import hazardous materials from Mexico for disposal in Port Arthur.

Mitch Osborne, general manager of the company’s Technical Solutions’ Port Arthur facility, said Veolia is asking the Environmental Protection Agency to temporarily suspend a petition filed in November 2006. The company originally asked for a one-year exemption to import polychlorinated byphenyls from Mexico for disposal in the Port Arthur facility.

“However, due to the current economic climate and an uncertainty regarding the receipt of these materials from Mexico at this time, we are asking the EPA to temporarily suspend the petition process,” Osborne said in a press release. “We fully intend to reactivate our request for a one-year exemption when we can predict a more definite timetable for receipt of the PCBs. At present, we do not wish to take up the EPA’s valuable resources by processing an exemption that may not be fully utilized.”

Osborne said a 12-month exemption without a clear forecast on how much material will be moved and the uncertainty of the timing is the crux of the issue.

Dave Bary, spokesperson with the Region 6 EPA office in Dallas, confirmed that Veolia and the Washington, D.C., agency have been in discussion on the topic.

Importing PCBs from Mexico is not illegal, he said via phone, as the language in U.S. laws allow for companies such as Veolia to apply for variance or exception.

Mexico, like the U.S., has seen a downturn in waste production.

“The normal workload is up and down,” he said. “One month it may be slow along the Gulf Coast be it due to plant closures or slow downs. But during this time we have also picked up new contracts. We seem to be the lagging indicator of the economy.”

Some customers are shipping more actively than they were six months ago while others remain flat or below production, he added.

But even without the proposed business with Mexico, Veolia continues to operate as usual.

“We’re destroying PCB waste from U.S. generators as we speak,” he said. “This (suspension of petition process) is not an issue of us not believing it’s safe or the right thing to do. We believe it’s safe and we are destroying PCBs now.”

Veolia receives waste for disposal from universities, pharmaceuticals, bulk chemicals, waste byproducts and solids from tank cleanups from refineries, he said.

“We continue to support the importation of these materials for proper disposal, based on over 16 years of experience in safely managing PCB wastes at our Port Arthur facility,” he said in a press release. “Our incinerator is 10 times more effective in destroying PCBs than what is required by the EPA, and our facility has an excellent track record for the safe and effective handling and destruction of hazardous wastes.”

In February Veolia completed a headline making contract to incinerate more than 1 million gallons of a caustic wastewater of the former nerve agent VX.

mmeaux@panews.com