Anniston Star
January 18, 2003

PCBs arrive in state

By Sara Clemence
Star Staff Writer
01-18-2003

A military cargo plane carrying 54,000 pounds of PCB-contaminated equipment landed at Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery Friday, en route from Japan to a disposal facility in Pell City.

The obsolete electrical transformers and oil were used at U.S. military installations in Japan. They are a fraction of the tons of PCB waste the military says it must remove from Japan over the next several years.

When the shipment arrived, workers found that a few ounces of oil had leaked from one piece of equipment. It didn't escape from the packaging, and did not pose any threat to humans, said Jack Hooper, spokesman for the Defense Logistics Agency.

The leaked oil contained very low levels of polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, he said.
PCBs are insulating and lubricating chemicals banned in the United States in 1977. When PCBs accumulate in the body, they are thought to cause a range of health problems, from learning disorders to cancer.

Plans to ship the waste to Pell City have been in the works for months, but the Defense Department did not contact elected officials until The Star began investigating last week. Tuesday night, Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Tuscaloosa, wrote a letter to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.

"The emerging perception in the region is that the Department of Defense has been trying to hide this activity," he wrote.

Several days ago, the military told Shelby that the shipment would arrive later than Friday, staffers said.

"The Defense Department initially said it would be two or three weeks," said Andrea Andrews, Shelby's spokeswoman. "This unexpectedly quick shipment is one more reason for him to be concerned."

Hooper said that the military had "never changed the shipment date for this cargo," and had kept legislators informed about its status.

"The [military] has had a dialogue with the Alabama delegation," he said.

By Friday evening, the shipment was still at the Montgomery base, being prepared for shipment to Trans-Cycle Inc. in Pell City.

Under its contract, TCI will dismantle the equipment and clean and sell any recyclable metals. It will send PCB fluids to incineration facilities and bury remaining solids in a hazardous waste landfill in Emelle.

The company, which has operated in Pell City for 12 years, has a record of safely handling PCBs, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.

Hooper said the government had met all legal notification requirements by sending out news releases and publishing legal advertisements in local newspapers in December.

Neither the news release nor the ad said that equipment would be shipped to Alabama.