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Firm seeks to ramp up open burning at Grant Parish facility

KATE ARCHER KENT

A permit application to expand open burning of hazardous waste in Grant Parish is being denounced by a group that fought this practice at Camp Minden in north Louisiana.

Clean Harbors Colfax LLC is asking the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality to increase its open burning capacity to more than 2 million pounds of hazardous waste a year.

The permit would allow the facility to go from destroying about 400 pounds of chemicals per hour to 1,600 pounds per hour, according to Phillip Retallick, senior vice president for compliance and regulatory affairs at Massachusetts-based Clean Harbors Environmental Services.

Retallick says this facility, which has operated in Grant Parish for nearly three decades, would be fully compliant with state and federal environmental regulations.

“The capacity improvements there are well within air emissions limits prescribed under rule and regulation by the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality. We have done evaluations and air modeling to show that even at that capacity that we want to increase to it would still be well below air toxics emission standards set by LDEQ and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency,” Retallick said.

A contained burn chamber system is slated to start destroying the M6 stockpiles at Camp Minden in February. But some other unstable explosives – tritonal and nitrocellulose -- went to Clean Harbors for emergency disposal.

LSU Shreveport chemistry professor Brian Salvatore worked with the group Concerned Citizens of the Camp Minden Explosives Open Burn to find an alternative destruction method for the 16 million pounds of M6 abandoned at Camp Minden.

“Companies like Clean Harbors, I think, are trying to get away with it [open burning] because these things still occur on military installations. We have to just stop it everywhere -- in the corporate world and in the military -- because we know there are so many good alternatives now that exist,” Salvatore said, who added the U.S. Army’s Fort Polk operates an open burn/open detonation facility in Vernon Parish.

Clean Harbors operates an incinerator in El Dorado, Ark., which is where the nitrocellulose from Camp Minden was destroyed, according to Retallick. But he says the tritonal, containing aluminum powder, couldn’t be destroyed in this method. That’s why it was taken to Colfax.

He says the company’s thermal destruction facility in Colfax is one-of-a-kind. It destroys a wide range of explosives on the 700-acre site, like gun powder, flares and fireworks.

“That’s what makes the Colfax facility so unique. It is capable of handling very energetic materials in a safe and effective way,” Retallick said.

Salvatore believes the Louisiana Legislature will address open burning in the state next year. He says there’s legislation afoot to stop it.

“Economics and the cheapest cost should not be the only thing these companies are looking for to dispose of these materials,” Salvatore said.

Retallick would welcome an open forum so Clean Harbors could talk about the plan with Grant Parish residents.

“We’ve been sampling soil down wind of all the open pit/open detonation burn pad areas for decades, and there has been no substantial increase in the background levels of heavy metals, organics and other inorganic materials in the soil,” Retallick said, adding the Colfax facility would likely hire two more employees increasing its staff to 15 if the permit is approved.

The deadline for the public to comment to LDEQ on the application is Jan. 5.

Chuck Smith brings more than 30 years' broadcast and media experience to Red River Radio. He began his career as a radio news reporter and transitioned to television journalism and newsmagazine production. Chuck studied mass communications at Southern Arkansas University in Magnolia and motion picture / television production at the University of California at Los Angeles. He has also taught writing for television at York Technical College in Rock Hill, South Carolina and video / film production at Centenary College of Louisiana, Shreveport.
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