Hudspeth County Herald and Dell Valley Review (Dell City, Tex.), Vol. 35, No. 41, Ed. 1 Friday, May 29, 1992 Page: 2 of 12
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New York City
March 22, 1992-EI Paso Times
0
00
(The following begins a series of articles on The Issue of Sludge Deposit On Land
Source: Dr. Don Lisk
THE ISSUE OF SLUDGE DEPOSIT ON LAND
Sludge Composition
Mudspeth County/(0
and DEU. VALLEY REVIEW C
(Next Week - LAND APPLICATION OF SLUDGE
Poll: Residents
fear nuke dump
200 surveyed by phone in West Texas
Toxic Chemicals Laboratory
Tower Road
Ithaca, N.Y. 14853-7401
Telephone: 607-255-4538
PAGE 2, HUDSPETH COUNTY HERALD-Dell Valley Review, MAY 29, 1992
Sludge company under investigation in
telling you that their sludge is
environmentally harmless and
yet they’re being investigated
for criminal activity in another
state, that affects their credibil-
ty."
Beginning in July, federal law
bans New York from dumping
its sludge in the ocean, as it has
been doing.
Cancer, radiation sickness, breath-
ing problems and birth defects were
other things survey respondents said
might affect people living near a
dump.
said. “It was a totally clean ne-
gotiation.”
He added that Merco passed a
rigorous background check to
screen it for links to organized
crime — a standard procedure
since Mafia connections have
been detected in recent years in
the East Coast’s lucrative waste
disposal industry.
The other waste companies
being investigated in New York
are alleged to have used the lob-
bying services of Democratic
National Chairman Ronald
Brown and Armand D’Amato,
brother of U.S. Sen. Alfonse
D’Amato. R-N.Y.
In Texas, Merco’s massive fer-
tilization plan has drawn criti-
cism from environmentalists,
who say the state's review of
sludge projects is too lax. The
controversy has prompted the
Texas Water Commission to
tighten up the permitting pro-
cess for future sludge projects.
That would have no effect on
Merco’s West Texas proposal.
Even processed sludges contain
minute amounts of such heavy
metals as cadmium and lead,
which are hazardous at higher
levels, commission experts say.
“I think Merco’s trying to
push this thing through too
fast,” said Bill Addington, with
the environmental group Save
Sierra Blanca. “They weren't
supposed to close on this land
purchase for weeks. And they’re
studying the impacts as they go
along.”
Officials in Hudspeth County,
where the ranch is located, said
they have hired an independent
consultant to examine the pro-
ject’s environmental effects.
Meanwhile, the Texas attor-
ney general’s office said it will
be looking into the legality of
Merco’s sludge plan.
“We’re mainly interested in
the environmental questions
here,” said Ron Dusek, spokes-
man for Attorney General Dan
Morales.
“But obviously, if you deter-
mine that a certain company is
.ALSO I’M MUCH
STRANGER THAN YOU!
Mary Louise Lynch ........
Susan Barker .........---------
C. Warren.......-....-.----.--..
Bernice M. Elder.............
Linda Polk..-........_^......
Sally Brown-.............—.
..........Editor Publisher
..........Assistant
.........CrowFlat Editor
..........Sierra Blanca Editor
..........FL Hancock Editor
..........Courthouse News
One can argue that organics in sludge are no more harmful than pesticides
which are applied to crops. However, pesticides are molecules of known
identity and up to seven years of intensive research, costing up to $15 million
has been spent on each, exhaustively studying their fate in plants, soils,
animals and aquatic species including metabolism, toxicity, carcinogenicity,
mutagenicity, birth defects, etc. By contrast, sludge is a complex mixture of
countless synthetic and natural compounds of mostly unknown structure,
properties, toxicity, or fate and effects in the environment, including man.
New York State College of Agriculture and Life Sciences
A Statutory College of the State University — Cornell University)
1988
Serving Dell City and Hudspeth County
290Trail West Park, P. O. Box 659, Dell City, Texas 79837
Second class postage paid in Dell City, Texas 79837
Subsidiary MARY-MARY, ING
SIERRA BLANCA, Texas —
MERCO Joint Ventures, a
consortium of five companies,
paid $4.5 million for the
130,000-acre Mile High Ranch.
The ranch was developed in
the 1970s as a resort communi-
ty but was never completed.
Kit Bramblett, an El Paso at-
torney with land in Hudspeth
County, said he will ask Hud-
speth county commissioners a
second time to stop the sludge
project.
“It’s the duty of government
to do for people what they can-
not do for themselves or what
they cannot do well for them-
selves,” Bramblett said.
He said that Attorney Gener-
al Dan Morales is ready to help
the county if it asks for help.
Inquiry focuses on
influence peddling
By Paul Salopek
El Paso Times
A company that’s buying 200
square miles of West Texas des-
ert for one of the nation’s big-
gest sewage sludge disposal pro-
jects is included in an
investigation of alleged influ-
ence peddling in New York City,
officials said Thursday.
New York authorities said
they are investigating whether
Merco Joint Venture — and
three other waste-handling firms
— used political contacts or
cash to influence bidding on
that city’s $1 billion, 10-year
sludge disposal contract.
Merco, based in Oklahoma
City, was to close the purchase
today on a 128,000-acre ranch
about 90 miles east of El Paso.
Merco plans to spread hundreds
of thousands of tons a year of
New York sludge on the ground
in a controversial attempt to dis-
pose of New York’s waste by us-
ing it to fertilize West Texas’ ar-
id rangeland.
Merco documents say about
100 tons a day ofthe sludge will
be transported by rail to the
Mile High Ranch, near the tiny
town of Sierra Blanca.
“All I can say is that (the in-
vestigation) is active and ongo-
ing,” said Gerald McKelvey, a
spokesman for the Manhattan
district attorney. The investiga-
tion is more than a month old,
he said.
New York Newsday reported
that Merco hired a lobbyist who
is a close friend of New York
Mayor David Dinkins to help it
obtain a $168 million contract to
ship the city’s sludge to Texas.
Merco lawyer Jon Masters
said in El Paso Thursday that
his company is innocent of
wrongdoing and will be vindi-
cated by the New York investi-
gation.
“We’ll be happy to raise our
shirts and let them look. We
have nothing to hide,” Masters
Municipal sludge will contain all of the waste products of industrial and
domestic users. Typically, well over 100 to 200 industries may flush waste
into a single treatment plant. Therefore, literally thousands of chemicals may
be present in a single sludge. In addition, numerous altered derivatives of
these compounds formed during sewage treatment and being either more or less
toxic than the parent compound can expectedly also be present. The final
hazard from sludge use, therefore, will be determined by the combined effects
of all of these. Municipal sludge in the United States may be among the worst
since the density and spectrum of industries (and therefore synthetic
pollutants) is among the greatest in the world. Only a tiny fraction of the
toxicants in sludge have been identified but these can include many toxic heavy
metals (arsenic, cadmium, copper, chromium, lead, mercury, nickel, zinc),
polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), pesticides, chlorinated solvents, flame
retardants, carcinogenic polynuclear aromatics and nitrosamines,, and a host of
other chlorinated organic compounds and petroleum oils. Asbestos and the
exceedingly toxic chlorinated dioxins have also recently been found in sludge.
Pathogens such as polio and hepatitis viruses have also been identified in
sludge. Furthermore, the composition of sludge varies greatly with time and
location as determined by the spectrum of industries served, changing work
schedules, plant expansion and relocation.
Currently, it has become common to judge the quality and safety of sludge
simply on the basis of its content of a few heavy metals and PCBs. Of most
concern is cadmium which is toxic and occurs commonly in sludge being
contributed from plating metals, battery manufacture and other industrial
sources. It is also relatively easy to analyze and is a toxic heavy metal in,
sludge. It is mobile, moving from soil to plants and depositing in foraging
animal tissues. Owing to the galaxy of other potential toxicants of unknown
composition and properties in sludge it is pointless to simply make
recommendations for sludge use based on its content of a few toxic constituents
that are easy to analyze. This is tantamount to judging the state of ones
health who may have leprosy and cancer by whether or not they have a sore
throat. These few toxicants are merely the tip of the iceberg when it comes to
possible toxicants in sludge. Even small town sludge with a few industries may
contain high concentrations of many toxicants since the number of domestic uses
(that would normally cause dilution of toxicants) is small.
Any erroneous reflection upon the character, standing or reputation
of any person, firm or corporation, which may occur in the columns
of the Hudspeth County Herald will be gladly corrected upon being
brought to the attention ofthe editor-publisher. The pubfisher is
not responsible for copy omissions or typographical errors which may
occur other than to correct them in the next issue after it is brought
to attention, and in no case does the publisher hold himself liable for
covering the error. The right is reserved to reject or edit all advertising
copy as well as editorial and news content.
PUBLISHED ON FRIDAY OF EACH WEEK for Hudspeth County,
Texas, third largest countv. Notices of church, entertainments where
a charge of admission is made, card of thanks, resolutions of respect,
and all matter not news, will be charged at the regular rates.
SUBSCRIPTIONS:
Required by the Post Office to be Paid in Advance
PUBLISHED ON FRIDAY OF EACH WEEK
For Hudspeth County, Texas
$12.00 in county $13.00 Out of county
Phone: 915-964-2426 915-964-2490 915-964-2467
By Vic Kolenc May 26, 1992
El Paso Herald-Post
A survey of 200 residents of Hud-
speth and Culberson counties found
most of them have fears about having
a nuclear-waste dump in their coun-
ties.
Sixty-three percent of residents sur-
veyed by telephone said they don’t
want a dump in their home county.
But even more — 74 percent — said
there was a great danger or some dan-
ger in living near a low-level radioac-
tive-waste dump. Twenty-four percent
said there was little danger.
The Texas Low-Level Radioactive
Waste Disposal Authority paid
$24,900 for the survey taken last Jan-
uary by K Associates of El Paso. The
Herald-Post received a copy of the
survey this week after requesting one
from the authority.
One hundred residents from each
county were asked 17 questions dur-
ing the phone survey. They were
picked from county voter-registration
lists.
Groundwater contamination from a
nuclear-waste dump was listed as a
very serious or serious risk by 75 per-
cent of those surveyed.
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Lynch, Mary Louise. Hudspeth County Herald and Dell Valley Review (Dell City, Tex.), Vol. 35, No. 41, Ed. 1 Friday, May 29, 1992, newspaper, May 29, 1992; Dell City, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth1602348/m1/2/: accessed July 10, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu.; .