The Times Herald from Port Huron, Michigan • Page 8

8A THE TIMES HERALD PORT HURON, MICH. Thursdoy Morch 11, 1982 Do-it-yourself pastor crusades for tax breaks i i i i ,1 jiiigiBitiiiffihiiiiii Him i im tl i fyyjf; LI. L.fS I' fi v- BURIAL GROUND Toxic wastes buried on this Earth-line Corp. property, Wilsonville, 111., have seeped that experts said wouldn't be reached for more than 500 through the ground during the past 28 months to a point years. Town baffles toxic wasfe danger By Gannett News Service The Internal Revenue Service is on guard for those who would sneak by with an inappropriate deduction or two.

Enough people try it in enough sophisticated ways that the IRS relies on mammoth computers to try to catch them. So whoever first flagged Patrick A. Heller's 1974 tax return must have done a doubletake. Then an accountant in Pontiac, he reported his income that year on a plain sheet of paper. No 1040 form.

No W-2s. Just a plain piece of paper with the following declaration of income: $6,607 in salary, $174 in interest income, $6 in commissions from the part-time sale of matches and $1 in gambling winnings. He sought deductions for $4,285, all of which he said he donated in cash and property to the Church of Eternal Life and Liberty. The church, of which he was founder and sole minister, boasted six members. He started it earlier in 1974, after his ordination by the Church of Tolerants, an organization that makes laymen into clergymen via the U.S.

mails. The only other figure on the makeshift tax form was the amount he claimed as his refund. The IRS examiner needed no computer for this. It was a return that said, "Audit me." The IRS did, and ruled the deductions invalid. The Rev.

Patrick A. Heller persisted, however, and the matter landed in Tax Court. The court was similarly skeptical, noting for one thing that the church had not held a single service in its place of worship. That place of worship was his home. Heller argued that he had represented the church at four meetings of the Ann Arbor Libertarian League, a group devoted to the study of rational existence.

The court was unswayed. In its ruling, the court found "so far as we can discern, the principal purpose of the church was to provide the petitioner with a means of claiming deductions for charitable contributions which he immediately withdrew to pay his personal living expenses." Handed down in 1978, the ruling stands as a landmark decision on tax schemes. It also was the final word on Heller's 1974 tax status. Yet he went on to report his income the same way in 1975, 1976, 1977 and 1978. And since the decision, he has continued on that course.

"I have an audit of 1976 to 1980 in progress, and it's the same issue," Heller said from his current business, the Liberty Coin Shop in Lansing. Furthermore, he said, the IRS is auditing the Church of Eternal Life and Liberty. He conceded the church has a minimal quantity of members, but said it is not a tax-evasion vehicle. The church now has two ministers, including him. It operates, he said, in Lansing, Oak Park and San Francisco.

The Oak Park address is listed as Heller's home, but he said he lives there only about three days a month. The church, according to Heller, has two main ideological principles: It advocates the search through science and technology for eternal life, and it "promotes individual self responsibility." Thus, he said, an individual is not responsible for the actions and well being of others, and therefore is not bound to contribute his earnings to the government. That doctrine notwithstanding, he said, his reckoning of his tax status is based on what he considers to be legitimate deductions to a legitimate church. Among other projects, the church several times a year publishes "Live and Let Live," a two-page newsletter. The Sept.

30, 1981 issue put members up to date with: Heller's move from Oak Park to Lansing. The church's battle with the IRS. The revival of the Cryonics Institute, an Oak Park organization devoted to the study of freezing human beings for later thawing and treatment. wastes removed. Chemicals are still leaking from the landfill.

They include nighly toxic ethanes, used in industrial paint solvents. Earthline is a case of government regulators relying on a regulated industry's word without challenging its basic assumptions, said Gwen Molinar, 57, who led the town's fight against the landfill. What started the fight was disclosure in the spring of 1977 that dirt contaminated with poly-chlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, a flame retardant and known cancer-causing agent, was shipped from Missouri to Earthline. "When they told us there were PCBs there, we said, 'So what are Molinar said. "When we found out, we got riled." SCA contends in papers filed Feb.

19 with the Illinois Supreme Court that leaks resulted from an isolated engineering flaw, caused by an unpredicted, continuous layer of easily permeated sand. The company said a plastic-like wall 2,000 feet long and 50 feet deep could plug leaks. The company also said there's no need to unearth thousands of 55-gallon drums of liquid waste or tons of powder and contaminated steel "We don't think it'll work," Rick Verticchio, Wilsonville's attorney, said of the proposed wall. A layer of sand doesn't explain leaks and a plastic wall won't stop them, Richard Cosby, first assistant Illinois attorney general, said. Cosby has helped direct the five-year legal fight against Earthline.

Henry L. Mason III, an lawyer for SCA, declined to comment on the company's proposal to contain the leaks. The state Supreme Court in May unanimously upheld Russell's order. But removal of wastes and contaminated dirt has been delayed by SCA's intention later this month to ask the U.S. Supreme Court to hear the case.

had worked in the deep-shaft mine from its opening in 1917 until it closed in 1954. They knew its tunnels, held open by rotting wooden beams, could collapse, causing the earth to heave and shift. But Earthline, its Boston-based parent, SCA Services and the state of Illinois and U.S. Environmental Protection agencies thought otherwise. They said geologic studies showed a 10-foot-thick wall of clay would keep wastes from leaking out of landfill trenches.

Earthline "is a well-designed, secure disposal site," the EPA told Circuit Judge John Russell, Macoupin County, in 1978, during the trial on the town's suit. Arguments about Earthline "boil down to emotionalism on one side, and the scientific state of the art on the other," manufacturers who store waste at the site said in a letter a month after Russell on Aug. 14, 1978, closed the site and ordered its toxic 1 WILSONVILLE, 111. (AP) -Stan Katich remembers when, as a child, he rode his bike to Vassi Spring, which bubbles to the surface a mile south of this tiny southern Illinois town. Its water was cold and clean, good to drink.

That was before thousands of gallons of toxic chemical wastes were buried in a landfill above an abandoned coal mine between the town and the spring. Then the chemicals began leaking, moved by subterranean water from trenches where people were told the wastes would be safe for 500 years or more. The 130-acre Earthline Corp. landfill, its gate at the end of the town's five-block main street, has frightened the 700 residents of this town 25 miles northeast of St. Louis.

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