Contractors Forced to Store Waste

Private contracting firms have stored tons of asbestos in their warehouses over the last six months since New England dumps began refusing to accept asbestos waste, a spokesman for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) said yesterday.

"The contractors can only wait until a site opens up," Paul Hefernon, regional asbestos coordinator for the EPA, said.

Hefernon said airbound asbestos causes two deadly lung diseases, asbestosis and lung cancer. He added that EPA regulations require "an acceptable disposal site," such as a landfill area in a municipal dump.

Asbestos presents no danger once buried, Hefernon said. He added that cities and towns have been overreacting to media publicity surrounding the disposal of many types of hazardous materials.

Harvard contracts large scale removals of asbestos from its sites, mostly in the form of ceiling tile and pipe insulation, to several different firms, Louis DiBerardinis, industrial hygenist for University Health Services, said yesterday.

DiBerardinis said Harvard used to handle its smaller removals but now must store some asbestos in sealed containers in rooms off the steam tunnels until a site opens up.

Harvard is looking for additional temporary storage sites within the steam tunnels, DiBerardinis added. He said he thinks that adequate storage space will be found.

Matthew L. Alexander, one of Harvard's private contractors, said yesterday he knows of one site in western Massachusetts that accepts asbestos, but he refused to name it, "because I don't want other contractors calling this place--they might close it too."

However, Alexander added that the fees this dump charges to accept asbestos waste are now four times the rate for ordinary garbage.

Deadly

As a result, Coating Collaborative, Alexander's employer, is researching the possibility of shipping asbestos on barges to Canada.

Recycling industries, a Harvard-contracted disposal firm is now shipping its asbestos waste, along with other chemical wastes, to Niagara Falls, N.Y., and Williamsburg, Ohio, James Purrington, the firm's environmental engineer, said yesterday.