The Boeing Company, [see previous WFP Boeing coverage] in familiar fashion, has helped to kill a significant environmental reform that it originally agreed to back.

In April, Boeing lobbyists worked successfully to defeat legislation intended to ensure that any hazardous waste incinerator built in the state of Washington actually is needed . Lobbyists in Olympia worked behind the scenes to help kill the bill in the Senate; they did not speak against the legislation in public, said House Environmental Affairs Committee chair Nancy Rust, the bill's sponsor.

At least two large hazardous waste incinerators are planned for Eastern Washington - one in Grant County by a partnership of the Swiss Von Roll Corp. and a Rabanco Inc. subsidiary, and the other at the Hanford Reservation by a subsidiary of Waste Management Inc. A new incinerator would take some of the heat off of Boeing, which, along with other polluting industries, is running out of waste-disposal options.

Merely sending its waste to an incinerator, Boeing watchers say, would be simpler for the company than updating its industrial practices so that less waste is created in the first place. Boeing's opposition to Rust's legislation, therefore, was no surprise.

The bill that Boeing helped defeat was one of six originating in the House that would have codified the recommendations of a state advisory board created to formulate new hazardous waste policies. In June 1992, Boeing, as a member of a subcommittee of the State Solid Waste Advisory Committee, agreed to a package of recommendations that ultimately was sent to the Legislature.

One of the proposals called for giving the state Department of Ecology both the power to limit the size of a new incinerator based on the state's actual need for waste disposal, and the authority to block an unneeded incinerator. As part of WDOE's needs assessment, advances in pollution prevention and other technologies would be taken into account - ostensibly chipping away some of the need to build an incinerator.

What sounded like a good idea to Boeing officials last summer, however, became anathema by the time the Legislature convened this winter.

Boeing lobbyist Rob Makin told Rep. Rust and two other House leaders that the company opposed the incinerator needs-assessment bill, said Betty Tabbutt, public policy director for the Washington Environmental Council. Tabbutt said she was in the room when the conversation took place.

What sounded like a good idea to Boeing officials last summer became anathema by the time the Legislature convened this winter.

"I am disappointed," said Tabbutt, who chaired the state advisory committee that came up with the original recommendation. "They absolutely bought off on the recommendation (last year)."

The needs assessment bill passed the House but died in the Senate Ecology and Parks Committee, chaired by Rep. Karen Fraser. Tabbutt said she believes Fraser still supports the legislation, even though she refused to hold a hearing on the bill. "Hopefully the issue is not dead," Tabbutt said.

Also dying either in Fraser's committee or in the House were bills intended to give WDOE more power to shut down an offending incinerator, ban an incinerator from being built within two miles of agricultural land, collect fees on incinerator-bound waste to pay for environmental damage and give local government agencies more power to demand concessions from an incinerator developer. Rust said that the longer these bills remain stalled, the longer incinerator developers can plan their facilities under weaker state laws.

Boeing lobbyists did not return telephone calls to discuss their positions on these other bills.

The entire hazardous waste incinerator issue has gotten the attention of environmentalists, industry leaders and government officials throughout the state. With the Northwest running out of usable landfill space and government regulations tightening on waste handlers, pressure from industry to build an incinerator has grown in recent years.

Contrary to industry arguments, the Washington Toxics Coalition and other groups that have closely studied waste disposal issues say that a combination of improved recycling, at-the-source waste reduction and changes in industrial practices would obviate the need for a large waste-burning facility. And when factoring in all related costs, environmentalists argue, waste incineration is more expensive than other less-polluting disposal methods.

Perhaps most importantly, skeptics question whether even the latest technology can guarantee health protection for people living near an incinerator.

- Diana Schiefelbein

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Contents on this page were published in the May, 1993 edition of the Washington Free Press.
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