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June 18, 2008

EPA to clear air on PCBs at public hearing

By David Ball

PORT ARTHUR — Port Arthur residents will get a chance to air their views on whether or not an environmental company should be allowed to incinerate Polychlorinated Biphenyls, PCBs at a public hearing Thursday.

The public hearing, which was scheduled by the Environmental Protection Agency, will be from 3:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m., Thursday, June 19 in the Port Arthur City Council Chamber at 444 Fourth St. There will be a break between the early and later sessions of the hearing to accommodate people who get off work at a later time.

The hearing is one of the steps in determining if Port Arthur’s Veolia Environmental Services’ plant on Texas 73 will be allowed to incinerate PCBs transported from Mexico.

Both Hilton Kelley, executive director of Community In-Power Development Association (CIDA) and Mitch Osborne, Veolia’s plant manager, said they have been contacted by national media in regard to the hearing.

Veolia, a France-based company, petitioned the EPA for an exemption that would allow Veolia’s facility to incinerate 20,000 tons of liquid PCBs from RIMSA, the company’s sister company in Monterey, Mexico. Veolia has been treating PCBs at its facility in Port Arthur since 1992.

Companies such as Veolia are permitted to dispose of the toxic substance contained in products manufactured before 1976, when the Toxic Substances Control Act became law. The act governs the management, clean-up and disposal of PCB wastes.

According to the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, or ATSDR Web site, PCBs are a mixture of individual chemicals which are no longer produced in the United States, but are still found in the environment. Health effects have been associated with exposure to PCBs include acne-like skin conditions in adults and neurobehavioral and immunological changes in children. PCBs are known to cause cancer in animals.

PCBs have been used as coolants and lubricants in transformers, capacitors and other electrical equipment because they don’t burn easily and are good insulators. The manufacture of PCBs was stopped in the U.S. in 1977 because of evidence they build up in the environment and can cause harmful health effects.

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