🚀 go-pugleaf

In article x evan@telly.on.ca (Evan Leibovitch) writes:
>In article x lorrilee@yunccn.UUCP (Lorrilee McGregor) writes:
>>The Attikamek-Montagnais have joined in the growing campaign " to
>>prevent Quebec from storing PCB's at a power-generating station near
>>Prime Minister Brian Mulroney's home town of Baie Comeau."
>
>>'"Our position is categoric - we will not accept them," Ghislain Picard,
>>vice-president of the 11,000 member Attikamek-Montagnais band said yesterday. 
>
>OK - who SHOULD accept them? The Welsh, who had nothing to do with their
>creation?

You make it sound like the receivers at the British dock were going to
distribute soupcans of PCB's door to door in Swansea. What bullshit. The 
Quebec government had a contract with a disposal plant in Wales to properly
incinerate the PCB's. This is currently the best way to handle PCB-laden oil.
Some dock workers with more fear than sense refused to unload the cargo, so it
wended its way back to Baie Comeau. What's the best thing to do with them now
that the PCB's are here? Incinerate them in a PCB disposal plant. Storing them
is no good, neither is burying them, nor dumping at sea.

I guess the question is, what difference does it make where the incineration
takes place? If a facility exists to completely dispose of a certain class of
waste, then it should be used for that purpose. The owners of the facility
should be paid for this service, of course.

It is a mistake to think that somehow hazardous waste disposal is impossibly
dangerous, and should not be performed at all. There is a class of wastes
that require special effort to clean up, and the people who produce such wastes
should be required to use that service and pay its bills. The alternative is
permanent storage, which is not acceptable.

The punch line is that plants should be built that will handle all of the 
hazardous waste disposal needs of the world. Building large plants will mean
that waste disposal is efficient, effective and inexpensive, which means that
more people will use them instead of hiding wastes in some warehouse. A few
large plants are better than many small plants because economies of scale
will reduce overall disposal costs.

This also means that transportation of wastes to these plants should not be
hindered. Ignorant blockades of this nature simply costs money, just like
throwing rocks through shop windows. On the other hand, waste transport should
be regulated to maximize public safety.

>Maybe this is overly simplistic, but why isn't the company which used the
>PCBs soley responsible for their disposal? Perhaps if the companies
>which use hazardous materials had to factor in the cost of using (and
>disposing) such materials without leaning on the public purse, perhaps
>hazardous materials would just become too expensive to use.

This is the best course of action, although it need not necessarily be the
case that hazardous wastes render the costs to be too high.

I would reject utterly the notion that the company making the wastes should
build its own little waste disposal plant. This is stupid, since the costs
of building a small plant will be so high that no corporation would do it
right, which would mean that we're no further ahead.

>The obvious government knee-jerk reaction is to slap a tax on hazardous
>goods. I don't think this is needed - just make users of such materials
>*totally* responsible for their after-effects.

I contend that paying for incineration at some plant, either here or in another
country makes no difference as long as all costs are paid. Moreover, such a
plan IS totally responsible disposal if the corporation who made the wastes
pays the bill. 

>  Evan Leibovitch, SA, Telly Online, located in beautiful Brampton, Ontario

-- 
Chris Shaw    cdshaw@alberta.UUCP 
University of Alberta
CatchPhrase: Bogus as HELL !