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The town that haunts Al Gore | page 1, 2, 3, 4 After Gore became vice president he pledged that WTI couldn't even begin its test burn until the General Accounting Office investigated the permit process. But then something happened. Inside the walls of the Clinton-Gore White House, WTI became more of an annoyance than a cause. On Jan. 8, 1993, in the waning days of the Bush presidency, EPA head Bill Riley told WTI to go ahead and conduct its test-burn -- even without the analysis by the GAO. Gore immediately began blaming the whole thing on Bush. "We know the problem's there, but our hands are tied," said Gore spokeswoman Marla Romash in early 1993.
But Swearingen says Riley told her a story that contradicts Gore's claim that this is all a problem caused by Bush-Quayle. In the early days of the Clinton administration, the story goes, before Clinton's newly appointed EPA administrator, Carol Browner, had been confirmed, Riley had asked Katie McGinty, a top Gore environmental advisor, what the new administration wanted done regarding the WTI permit process. Swearingen says that Riley claimed he was instructed by McGinty to go ahead and grant WTI its permit to conduct its test burn. Asked about the story, McGinty says, "I don't remember any such conversation." Riley, meanwhile, refused comment on it to Salon. If the story is true, it flies in the face of Gore's repeated explanation that this was all the dirty work of the previous administration. But with one participant claiming amnesia and the other keeping quiet, such a story carries only so much weight. Still, Gore's hands were not as tied as he pretended then or now. If Clinton and Gore felt WTI was safe, that would be one thing; but they feigned helplessness. They were not so helpless when, around the same time, they supported a federal court ruling requiring the National Science Foundation to further study the environmental impact of two incinerators about to be built at the South Pole. Or when Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt nullified a last-minute decision by Bush Interior Secretary Manuel Lujan to sell 1,000 acres of federal land in California to San Bernardino County for a nuclear waste dump. More to the point, as soon as Gore swore to uphold the duties of his office, there were any number of instances when the White House could have stepped up and halted WTI's permit process. But when it came to WTI, Gore and his staff seemed less than fully engaged, at least in the process. On Jan. 22, Gore spokeswoman Romash said the GAO investigation had begun. But the GAO's assistant director for hazardous waste issues reported on Feb. 1 that wasn't the case. They could have at least tried to insist that WTI not begin burning until GAO came forward with its report, which it did in 1994, or until the EPA offered its risk assessment, which didn't come out until 1997. And they certainly could have spoken up in March 1993, when WTI failed its test burn. Twice, during its March '93 test burn, the incinerator didn't meet the standard with regard to carbon tetrachloride, achieving worse than the 99.99 percent "destruction and removal" efficiency as required by law. (Carbon tetrachloride is highly toxic to the liver and can cause liver cancer.) During that test, the incinerator didn't meet the "expected efficiency" when it came to removing mercury -- indeed, it emitted almost five times more mercury than permitted. (Mercury is a neurotoxin, meaning it causes damage to the central nervous system.) The incinerator also exceeded the expected levels for emissions of dioxins, specifically polychlorinated dibenzodioxins and dibenzofurans -- on average at levels 2.8 times higher than expected. Polychlorinated dibenzodioxins are the specific contaminant used in Agent Orange. It is, according to Dr. Richard Clapp of Boston University's School of Public Health, "one of the most severely toxic chemicals ever created by humans, causing birth defects, cancer, immunological suppression and cardiovascular problems." Recently, an Air Force study postulated that polychlorinated dibenzodioxins can cause diabetes. Polychlorinated dibenzofurans "are not as widely studied," Clapp says, "but they're probably capable of doing the same thing." And then -- bang, zoom -- WTI supposedly fixed the problems. On April 6, 1993, the EPA approved WTI's commercial operation. Thus, WTI became the first hazardous-waste incinerator in history to be allowed to run despite having failed a test burn. The public, however, was kept in the dark about WTI's various emission problems in March until after the EPA approved its commercial operation. It wasn't until April 12 that the public learned WTI had failed its test burn, and it wasn't until April 26 that the public learned WTI had released more than four times its permitted amount of mercury. The GAO later faulted the EPA for "not always giv[ing] the public an opportunity to comment." In March 1993, Greenpeace and others successfully sued WTI and government regulators to prohibit commercial operation of the incinerator at least until the EPA issued its risk assessment, because it could substantially harm the health of locals. During the trial -- which they won, though the ruling was overturned by an appeals court that judged the U.S. District Court judge had ruled outside of her jurisdiction -- the Clinton-Gore administration sided with WTI, and members of the EPA and the Department of Justice testified on WTI's behalf. Asked how Gore could claim that he'd done everything he could to stop WTI when his administration was officially siding in court on behalf of WTI, a Gore campaign spokesman referred me to the vice president's office. The office referred me to the EPA. EPA spokesman Tim Fields, assistant administrator for solid waste and emergency response, says he didn't work for the EPA at the time, so he couldn't comment. When asked for someone who could comment, the EPA never called me back. In 1994, the GAO report came out, acknowledging imperfections in the WTI permit process but recommending that the incinerator stay open. By the end of 1995, the EPA published its draft risk assessment for the facility, deeming the risks "acceptable." Its final risk assessment, issued in 1997, concurred. Thus, despite Gore's pre-election promise, the Clinton-Gore administration did everything it could "to stand up for" multimillion-dollar WTI, which by the mid-'90s was servicing the government by burning its hazardous waste. Not exactly "a change." So why did the administration -- and, specifically, Gore -- change its position? "The bottom line is the vice president has been 100 percent consistent on this issue," McGinty says. McGinty, at one point Gore's representative on the Council on Environmental Quality, says Gore "pushed the letter of the law to the maximum extent that federal law allows the vice president to insist on these things." But others who were involved at the time -- and who still support Gore -- disagree. Says a knowledgeable source who worked at the Clinton-Gore White House at the time, who asked not to be identified, "I couldn't understand [the reversal], either." "To this day I don't know why the 180," says a former Gore Senate staffer, who also requested anonymity. "It leaves a sour taste in my mouth. And you've got to feel bad for the community." But on-the-record Gore supporters argue that nothing has changed. Former Ohio Sen. Howard Metzenbaum, a liberal Democrat and ardent supporter of Gore, was once a very vocal critic of WTI. "I think it was an impediment to the health of the community," says Metzenbaum, now chairman of Consumer Federation of America. But when I ask him about Gore's turnaround on the issue, he demurs and asks for me to call him back after he's had time to look into the matter. When I reach him, a few weeks later and back in D.C., he's back on the program. "You can't expect a national administration to be involved in every local controversy," he says. (Which may be the first time ever that Metzenbaum didn't advocate a federal solution to a problem.) "It doesn't indicate any lack of support for the underlying concerns of the people," the former senator says, "it just indicates that we live in a big country and the White House can't be involved in every local battle." Even if it promises to be. Gore allies' cries to the contrary, the administration unquestionably changed its tune, and there is rampant speculation as to why. One recurring theory: simple incompetence. In early 1993, McGinty called a meeting of Democratic Senate staffers active on the WTI issue -- according to one who was present at the meeting, held in Gore's Senate office -- to "try to figure out what the issue was. Clinton and Gore had wanted to win Ohio, so Gore opened up his mouth on the issue. His staff was playing catch-up on what to do." Additionally, this staffer, a Gore supporter, reports that White House staffers were encountering tremendous resistance from career EPA staffers on numerous issues. "Career folks in the EPA were defending the Bush administration's position, the White House was trying to establish a relationship with the agencies, very few political appointees were in place," the staffer says. New EPA appointee Browner recused herself from the issue, since she had connections to anti-WTI activists, so she left the matter in the hands of career bureaucrats. The timing was bad, the staffer says. Gore's heart had been in the right place, the staffer continues, but "it was a campaign promise made without strategy; I'm certain of that. As with gays in the military, it was not something they were able to come into office and accomplish immediately. There was too much money and power on the other side."
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