The News Journal from Wilmington, Delaware • Page 8

A8 Sunday Newt Journal, Wilmington, March 13, 1983 Dumping Professor: Mob UD's Block examines crime role involved in toxics, society i Vi" i 7 posed of at a downtown Wilmington address, and wondered where the hell this had been hidden." Block says he hadn't read anything about it in the newspapers or seen any evidence of an investigation. "So I called the Delaware attorney general's office. Those guys didn't seem to want to do anything. They told me they'd get back to me. Three weeks later when they didn't, I called the paper.

"I can't believe no one in Delaware read the House hearings at all," Block said. Block and fellow academic Frank Scarpitti, a sociology professor, are researching in preparation to writing "Poisoning For Profit," a book that will detail organized crime's involvement in the toxic industry and the activities of governmental agencies that are supposed to regulate that industry. In addition to his duties at the university, Block is the researcher for the New York Senate Committee on Crime. "The committee is very interested in toxics and I think the public will be surprised at the corporate and mob tie-ins that will be exposed in the coming months. People are going to get shocked when they see how much of the country is poisoned and how little we know about it," Block said.

Block has traveled to Denmark By JOE TRENTO Staff reporter Last month, Alan Block testified that America's toxic waste industry is a bastion of organized crime. He named names. As U.S. Sen. William V.

Roth gaveled a close to the hearings of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, Block was deluged with queries from the press. The 42-year-old University of Delaware associate professor looks back on the events with satisfaction: "It is nice being a social scientist and having someone else besides your colleagues interested in what you do." What Block does, in addition to teaching, is spend his days and nights interviewing politicians, law-enforcement officials, criminals, reporters and everyday people in an effort to learn how organized crime has infiltrated various segments of American life. He sifts through testimony from old hearings and obscure and yellowed court and criminal records to find new pieces of information. Block was reading the record of a 1980 House committee hearing on crime and toxic waste when the name Capital Recovery Inc. jumped out at him.

"I saw that 270.000 gallon of toxics had supposedly been Staff photo by Leo S. University of Delaware associate professor Alan Block. Del. chemical companies use licensed sites But in 1970, one disposal facility bent the rules rock disposes of the majority of its toxics on site and uses Rollins Environmental and other firms to dispose of some, according to Had-ley C. Bedbury, an environmental engineer with the firm's Pasadena, Texas, office.

Hercules, according to Douglas Keilman, manager of environmental affairs, disposes all its hazardous waste through large licensed contractors that include Rollins Environmental. An ICI Americas Inc. spokeswoman, Kathleen M. Tridente, said that firm's two Delaware facilities produce wastes that are "flammable, corrosive, reactive or toxic" and are disposed of by federally licensed contractors. "We store the wastes on site for short periods and then they are hauled away," she said.

Not all toxics end up in farmers' fields covered by phony manifests or get mixed in with other flammables for resale as home heating oil. Delaware's chemical companies use federally licensed toxic disposal facilities where according to the government hazardous wastes are safely burned, buried or stored. "The difficulty is that these facilities often are not always what they say they are," says University of Delaware criminologist and associate professor Alan Block. Late last month, an example of what Block is talking about surfaced in a federal court in New Orleans. In 1970, Rollins-Purle a Rollins Environmental subsidiary in Louisiana, secretly sold highly toxic and caustic wastes it con- Continued from Al fills, two of which were officially closed He says he was one of at least a dozen drivers working for Home Dell and does not think he was the only one told to dump at the Delaware sites.

He said he did the dumping unchallenged and in broad davlight. The driver is being used as a witness in ongoing investigations of Gromann and other suspected toxic dumpers in New Jersey. Evidence presented to a congressional committee in 1980 supports the driver's allegations. Delaware state records show that Capital Recovery was incorporated in 1978 and was automatically dissolved the following year when its state taxes were not paid. A House investigating committee more than two years ago established that the West 10th Street address was being used as a front to illegally dispose of vast quantities of chemical waste from New Jersey.

Rep. Albert Gore said the investigation "uncovered evidence that major industrial companies certified that over 270,000 gallons of chemical waste were delivered to a facility in Wilmington, named Capital Recovery. "From all the available evidence, Capital Recovery is nothing more than a paper corporation. It has no offices or any site in Wilmington. There is no phone listing, no city or state real estate tax or business tax information; no annual report has been filed.

Information generated in the congressional investigation was forwarded to New Jersey and Delaware for follow-up action, but Delaware never attempted to charge or prosecute any company or individual. Letters supplied by the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection show that Kenneth R. Weiss who was then acting as Delaware's solid waste chief pending the appointment of a new director sent Capital Recovery a single letter, which was returned unopened. He also instructed William Lawrence, an investigator for the Delaware solid waste enforcement office, to investigate Capital Recovery in December 1980. Lawrence told the News-Journal papers that his investigation showed the company "had no cars or office" and therefore "couldn't be doing any illegal dumping." Weiss' present supervisor, Robert J.

Touhey, manager of water resources, said, "I can't say why we did not do more. We checked into it and found no company really existed." New Jersey officials, however, had supplied Delaware with copies of dozens of manifests listing Capital Recovery as a licensed toxic disposal site. The New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection manifests were all signed by a James Boyce as having received the toxics for Capital Recovery and listed Gromann's Home Dell Construction as the hauler. The driver told the News-Journal papers that the Boyce signature had to be added after dumping took place because no one met him in Delaware to receive the toxics and the manifests were unsigned when he turned them over to Gromann after making runs. He said he knows of no James Boyce.

The former driver says Gromann ordered him to take toxic wastes and dump them at the Tybouts Corner, Pigeon Point and Llangollen landfills a total of four times between 1978 and 1980. Another firm listed as a hauler to Capital Recovery was Material Resources of Little Ferry, N.J. The president of that firm, Daniel Jackson, denies ever having been involved in the Capital Recovery fraud and claims that Gromann "used my company name on manifests without my permission." Jackson acknowledged that he once did business with Gromann but insisted the connection was severed in early 1978. Records from a Public Service Electric Gas Co. generating station in Jersey City show that Jackson hired Gromann's Home Dell Construction Co.

as a subcontractor to carry out toxic disposal on Oct. 12 and 13, 1978. A spokesman said the waste acids destined for the phony Delaware facility were never delivered and were illegally dumped. University of Delaware associate professor Alan Block, reviewing testimony from the 1980 congressional hearing for a book he is writing on. toxic waste, said he called the Delaware attorney general's office in early January and asked what action the state had taken or was planning to take regarding Capital Recovery.

"They said they didn't know anything, but would find out," Block -said. "After a month of not hearing anything, I called the News Journal. The state just doesn't seem to give a damn." But Attorney General Charles Oberly III said budget considerations and higher priority concerns dictated the "back burner" status of toxic waste dumping. "We have to give toxics a higher priority," Oberly said, "but right now I don't have an investigator I can put on it. We don't have the budget to do what we need to do on this." researching American ties to prostitution and narcotics, and to Sicily researching the heroin trail to the United States.

The results have been three published books. "What people don't understand are the ties between crime and intelligence and the government and crime. Incidents like the CIA going to the Mafia to kill Castro are not without precedent. The government has had a long and sometimes bizarre partnership with organized crime and toxic wastes is just the most recent chapter." Block said he has found that corporate America and organized crime sometimes need and use one another: "They do the same things and they are structured in the same way. As I said at that hearing, the so-called legitimate corporations turn to organized crime to fill needs, like getting rid of toxic wastes." Block, born in Brooklyn, said he first got interested in crime while working as a reporter for Radio Pacifica in Los Angeles.

Block got his doctorate at the University of California at Los Angeles. He worked as a researcher for David Wolper, the documentary film producer. Block, his wife Marcia, and their four children came to Delaware in 1974 and live in Brookside. the wastes with crude oil, then pumped it into storage tanks in Mississippi, court records show. The contaminated oil eventually ended up at the Ashland Oil Co.

refinery in Catlettsburg, where on April 18, 1971, the pipeline holding the wastes blew up. Robert R. Bonczek, Du Pont's director of safety health and environmental affairs, said through a public affairs spokesman that despite that incident Du Pont still believes Rollins is "a competent and environmentally sound contractor and we still use them." Bonczek said most of Du Pont's toxic wastes are treated in facilities on plant sites. Some materials chemical companies also dumped at the landfill, but EPA says its data show the problem lies with Stauffer. "Other companies wouldn't have generated the type of contaminants that we found as causing the problem," said Janet A.

Luffy, EPA press officer in Philadelphia. She didn't rule out the possibility that other companies might be implicated after further study, however. Stauffer is seeking records from five chemical companies to try to show it is not solely responsible for the problems. The companies are Diamond Shamrock ICI Americas, FMC Amatek (Haveg) and Kennecott. EPA and the county have wrangled over how to clean up the landfill, and the disagreements have led to suits and countersuits.

EPA filed suit in 1980 against the county, Stauffer and Ward, the property owner. Ward filed against the county in 1981. Wagner, the owner of the polluted well, filed against the county, Ward and Stauffer in 1982. There is no end in sight to the litigation. The recollections of White, Ward and Karins that are recounted in this story are taken from their sworn statements for the EPA suit against the county, Ward and Stauffer.

"When lawyers get involved, what otherwise might be a normal and unremarkable process without stalemate and delay, becomes a mess," said David S. Swayze, the lawyer representing the county. Not only lawyers are involved, but bureaucrats, as well bureaucrats who are currently enmeshed in the EPA crisis in Washington. Swayze says he's been surprised to read about allegations of sweetheart deals with polluters and conflicts of interest. "I have been amused by all the accusations of slapdash enforcement," he said.

"If there is anything that characterizes EPA enforcement in Delaware, it has been vigorous, asking no quarter and giving none, and in my judgment, essentially unfair to the governmental and industrial defendants." Local EPA officials say their work at Tybouts Corner hasn't been disturbed. "The work goes on whether or not there's controversy in Washington," Luffy said. Tybouts Corner dump shut, but danger still lurks below jiiiaiuiin jumwtwww Wilmington Pigeon Pt. Landfill are burned, and some are shipped to federally licensed facilities, he said. Stauffer Chemical named by the Environmental Protection Agency in the suit over the cleanup of the Tybouts Corner landfill, now buries its wastes in federally licensed toxic landfills in upstate New York and South Carolina, according to Rick Ullrich, an environmental engineering supervisor for Stauffer in Delaware.

Ullrich said that the firm recycles much of its toxic waste and that "only about 10 percent of the total is toxic or hazardous by EPA standards." Like Du Pont, Diamond Sham But the charges that EPA haS played politics with the $1.6 billion Superfund, earmarked for cleaning up the worst hazardous waste sites, touch on some of the county's fears. Swayze said he can't figure out why Tybouts Corner is ranked so high. There are no homes sitting on the site, no recent fires or explosions, no evidence of rusting drums with leaking chemicals, he said. But EPA stands by its assessment, which its officials say is DELAWARE Newark Tybouts Corner Lanm jDelawareX jt Mem. Br- NEW JERSEY traded to treat for a Du Pont Co.

plant in La Plante, court records show. Rollins-Purle had been hired by Du Pont to incinerate quantities of dichlorobutene, a volatile byproduct of the synthetic rubber-making process, and was warned of the dan-' gers. The material was so caustic it disabled Rollins-Purle's incinerators. Rollins-Purle, court records show, then entered into an agreement with a third company to get rid of the wastes, stipulating that it never be revealed that the wastes originated with Du Pont. The third company agreed, mixed complaints.

Dutcher, who was Delaware's Engineer of the Year in 1973, died in 1974. Karins said the county did what it could. "In 1969, there was very little technology available to do anything else with refuse except the landfill," he said. "I think we realized that there was no way to dispose of refuse in a completely foolproof environment. Whether you burn it, whether you compressed it or make building blocks out of it, refuse is still refuse, whether you burn it in a sanitary landfill.

All methods were acceptable except that each one 'Everyone thought if you put it toxic wastes in the ground and covered it with dirt, it was OK' had its own risks." The risks that were taken are obvious now, 12 years after the landfill was closed. Sara M. Wagner, who owns land along U.S. 13 across from the landfill, has a contaminated well, which she believes was polluted by chemicals carried from the landfill by underground water. Other residents haven't had hazardous materials turn up in their drinking water yet, but they still feel betrayed by the county.

"They needed a new hole for the garbage. There was very little thought of what would happen later, and now we're paying for it," said Richard B. Weldon, a former civic association president who has lived in Tybouts Corner for 27 years. Nobody has figured out how to clean it up. In fact, nobody is really sure what's in there.

EPA has done extensive sampling, but a definitive analysis won't even be started until later this spring. EPA believes the bulk of the contamination comes from 15,100 tons of chemical waste from Stauffer Chemical which operated a plant at Delaware City until 1981. Stauffer made polyvinyl chloride, or PVC, a plastic. The wastes are harmful to humans. Stauffer and the county claim that five of Delaware's major Continued from Al ren.

Indescribable odors occasionally waft through the air. There are assorted old tires and rusting drums. Shoe prints and dog tracks cross the property, often with spent shotgun shells lying nearby. It doesn't look dangerous, but the EPA says there are chemicals in there that cause cancer, mutated genes, malformed fetuses, and damage to the liver, kidneys and nervous system. "It's a time bomb in terms of the environment," said Dr.

Robert D. Varrin, a water resources expert at the University of Delaware. The landfill wasn't supposed to be dangerous. Ward, the property owner, claims the county promised him the landfill would be used for household refuse only. Local residents were promised that industrial waste would be monitored by state officials, and potential pollutants wouldn't be allowed there.

But the county needed a landfill fast. The old one at Llangollen was full. That landfill, three miles north of Tybouts Corner, now is ranked 11th on the EPA's list of the worst hazardous waste sites. Industrial waste had to be dumped someplace. Fourteen years ago, no one knew how dangerous it could be.

"This was even before Earth Day," Varrin said. "Times were a little different then. We were worried about the air and the water, but we hadn't had a Love Canal yet. We were more concerned about how household garbage causes pollution." "Everyone thought if you put it in the ground and covered it with dirt, it was OK," said Joseph J. Farnan a former county attorney and now the U.S.

attorney for Delaware. The dumping regulations, which were supposed to be strict, turned out to be lax. White, the landfill supervisor, said nothing was ever turned away. there would be fires "pretty In color," White said. "It was Oranges and whites and blues and just like a rainbow." There were fires about once a month, usually started after a bulldozer blade struck one of the chemical drums, he said.

White said his supervisors at the county Uldis Karins and George W. Dutcher didn't listen to his Scientist says chemicals cause 95 of cancers based on a calculation that weighs the danger to surface water, underground water and air and not on politics. "It's been reviewed. It's been gone over," Luffy said. But it hasn't been cleaned up.

"We want it solved," said New Castle County Councilman Joseph F. Toner, the local representative who opposed the landfill from the beginning. "Those people live in a constant fear their wells will be contaminated. That landfill is a constant reminder to them." The National Foundation for Cancer is a center for gathering and analyzing conclusions from cancer data generated by experimental groups around the world. 1 "It is an enormous task to find and evaluate this information," says Lowdin, founder and head of the University of Florida's Quantum Theory Project and director of the International Quantum Theory Symposium here for the past 23 years.

The symposium was organized by Lowdin to "stimulate creative new lines of research." Quantum biology will be the topic covered in the third part of the symposium, Monday through Wednesday, Associated Press PALM COAST, Fla. If U.S. statistics are correct, almost 95 percent of all cancers are caused by chemicals in the environment, a University of Florida researcher says. 'Five percent are caused by physical means such as radiation, and less than 1 percent are caused by external viruses," said Per-Olov Lowdin, who is working on a National Foundation for Cancer Research grant to investigate the origins of cancer. Under the foundation grant, Low-din will coordinate a worldwide exchange of cancer information..