Anniston Star
June 19, 2003

EPA leader questioned over PCBs agreement

By Sara Clemence
Star Staff Writer
06-19-2003

A national watchdog group and a local activist group are calling on the head of the Environmental Protection Agency to explain why an "unusual" change was made to the Anniston PCBs cleanup agreement just days after she was briefed on the site.

"Despite our best effort, the genesis of the Anniston consent decree remains unclear - and troubling," says a letter sent Wednesday to EPA administrator Christine Todd Whitman, who is due to leave office next week.

The letter is signed by David Baker, executive director of Anniston's Community Against Pollution, and Kenneth A. Cook, president of the Washington, D.C.-based Environmental Working Group.

An EPA document released by the Environmental Working Group shows that about two weeks after an Alabama jury found Solutia, Monsanto and Pharmacia liable for PCB pollution in Anniston, Whitman had a 45-minute briefing on the site.

Several days later, the agreement, still being hashed out between the agency and the companies, was changed to put the EPA in charge of all of the Anniston contamination, rather than leave the former Monsanto plant and waterways to the state.

Opponents accuse the EPA of using the agreement to protect Monsanto, its spinoff, Solutia, and the company that bought it, Pharamacia, from an expensive court-ordered cleanup. They say high-level EPA officials have ties to Monsanto. The state court cleanup order was being mapped out when the consent decree was made public in March 2002.

From the 1930s to the 1970s, Monsanto made polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, at its plant in western Anniston. The chemicals were widely used to insulate electrical equipment.

Congress banned PCBs in 1977. The chemicals are suspected carcinogens, and have been found in the blood of some local residents.

Regional EPA officials repeatedly have said they did not take direction from the top, and that they always had the interests of the community in mind.

"The decision-making on this was made at the regional level," said Stanley Meiburg, deputy administrator for EPA Region IV.

He said the change in the agreement was the result of regional officials deciding that a comprehensive approach would be "the most rapid and cost-effective cleanup for the entire site."

Cook said there may be a perfectly reasonable explanation for what transpired, but there are holes in the public record.

The EPA has refused to reveal exactly what was discussed at the briefing.

"We're reading between the lines because there's so much space between the lines," Cook said, noting that large portions of EPA documents referring to Anniston had been blacked out or excluded. "I would think they'd want to make (the situation) clear if they feel, as they've said, that this is such a great deal for Anniston."

Meiburg, who was at the briefing, said that details were withheld to protect the attorney-client privilege of Whitman and the agency. He said that the meeting was a review of "the status of our actions at the time."

Asked whether the state court proceedings affected the change in the decree, he said, "Not in the least. Certainly not in my mind."

While the court-ordered cleanup is on hold indefinitely, the jury in the state case has awarded tens of millions of dollars in cleanup costs to property owners.

After an extended public comment period last year, the EPA revised the proposed agreement and asked a federal judge to approve it. That approval has been pending for several months.

The agreement calls for an extensive study of contamination here before a decision is made on how to clean it up.

Baker said the revised agreement is better than the original, and "addresses the needs of the community to a certain degree."

But, he said, it should contain specific requirements, such as removing the old Monsanto landfill on Alabama Highway 202.

And, he said, he cannot accept anything without having all the facts behind it.

"The questions need to be answered," Baker said. "I think that's the most important thing ... I think we deserve to have some types of answers from the top."