03-23-1992 Council Packet - Laserfiche WebLink

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i.. M km.:!.-''f:' ■■ •fe*. 'fe.^1 M|i«- ■i i star Tribune Established 1867 Roger Pnrkinson Pubisst^or ^nd Pfssideot Joel R. Kramer Exocui'vo Editor Tim J. McGuire Managing Ediior Robert J. White Ed ional Editor 12A Tuesday August 21/1990 Healthy skepticism on turning ash to asphalt Is it safe to pave local roads with incinerator ash? That question should matter to every person who drives Minnesota ’s highways or strolls its curb sides. And until the answer is plain, drivers and strollers should resist Hennepin County’s enthusi asm for turning ash from its downtown incinerator into asphalt. At this point, the plan to test the idea this year on a county road looks hasty and risky. The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA) should defer it ui til public doubts arc addrc'scd. meet federal lend limits, townspeople cite scientific views that those limits may not be sufficient to protect hcnltli. As the road yields to iralTic and harsh wcnihor. they fear, the asphalt could be ground into a toxic powder which could contami nate soils and waierxvays — and which playing children might swallow and inhale. At first glance, the ash-«o-asphalt deal looks like a neat way to make tons of incinerator waste disap pear. That bit of magic depends on a Georgia firm. Municipal Services Corp., that says it can change dangerous ash into innocuous pellets for use in road paving. To prove its ease, the company wants to test the ash-laced asphalt on a 1,000-foot strip of County Rd. 81 in Dayton. The two-year experi ment could be the first step toward paving other county roads — and ultimately, roads all over the Slate —- with ash pellets. The MPCA citizen board is scheduled to decide in late September whether to approve a permit for the project. The project ’s defenders insist that won’t happen, and that extensive tests will assure the experi ment’s safely. But several environmental groups have pointed to holes in the draft permit for the project; It prescribes no tests for measuring the amount and cifects of dust that may wear off the road. It lac a requirement, included in earlier drafts, that a sedimentation basin be built to monitor and contain runoff from the road. And the environmentalists criticize the experiments two->car time span too short a duration, they say, to determine whether the asphalt will hold up safely over time. Those concerns arc echoed by 32 state legislators, who have urged the MPCA to deny the permit until the flaws arc fixed. All of this has made some of the folks in Dayton frotful. and for good reason. They complain that the pellets slated for testing will include fly ash • ^ - ____I_______-..L’ Lsmokestack residue which often contains hazard ous amounts of lead, cadmium and other heavy metals. Though the asphalt itself is expected to ust County Commissioner Jeff Spartz shrugs off resis tance to the Dayton test as another ease of the ".N'lMBV” (not in my back yard) syndrome. But Daytonians arc right to insist that the test — in which (hey '-.,11 serve as guinea pigs — be both safe and thorough Until that demand is met, skepti cism about paving with ash is (he best policy.