Compounder wins emissions suit.

In what may prove to be a landmark case in determining a processing plant's pollution potential, a Connecticut custom compounder has won a year-long court battle with that state's Department of Environmental Protection, which tried to close the plant following a dispute over its emissions testing methods.

Connecticut Superior Court Judge Martin Nigro issued a temporary injunction on April 20 barring DEP Commissioner Timothy R.E. Keeney from requiring Polymer Resources of Farmington to monitor vapor emissions at the extruder die head before the emissions could pass through the plant's air-pollution control equipment.

"The court is persuaded that precontrol testing is unreasonable, would produce no information of use in ascertaining what is being emitted from the stack, and is beyond the statutory and regulatory authority of the Commissioner," Nigro wrote in his 46-page decision.

However, the judge also ruled that Polymer Resources will have to perform more smokestack testing to ensure there are no public health risks. The DEP had asked that the smokestack testing look for traces of 324 separate volatile and semi-volatile organic compounds and the plant be shut down while the test results are evaluated. Nigro said the additional testing was within the DEP's jurisdiction but ordered the department to look only for substances normally produced during regular operations of the plant and to clearly identify compounds of concern for which tests should be performed. Also, he said, Polymer Resources will be allowed to remain open during the evaluations.

"They not only put my company at risk," said Polymer Resources chairman Leslie M. Klein, "but they put every other plastics compounder in the country at risk as well." Klein estimates he spent almost $2 million on this case to hire lawyers, environmental consultants and independent testing services. He said that if he had been required to test at the die head, he would have had to spend millions more.

"Basically, they wanted me out of business," he charged. "If I had not had deep pockets that allowed me to fight this thing, I would have had to close up long ago."

NEIGHBORS COMPLAINED

The legal wrangling between Polymer Resources and the DEP began April 9, 1992 when Keeney issued a cease-and-desist order, claiming the compounder was releasing one or more of eight toxic gases into the surrounding air. The order, Keeney claimed, was a result of several residents near the plant reporting headaches and irritation of their throats and noses. Also, the order said neighboring residents with chronic diseases such as asthma and heart troubles complained of increased problems. Doctors said all of the health problems could be a result of chemicals the Polymer Resources plant was known to be processing.

But, during the 33-day trial that led to Nigro's ruling, a pair of doctors who treated the pollution victims testified they could not say for sure whether their patients, symptoms were the result of the plant's emissions or derived from some other source.

Polymer Resources eventually complied with Keeney's order, temporarily closing the plant in late April last year. Meanwhile, the company agreed to develop an intricate plan for smokestack testing and to install an improved pollution-control system. The DEP agreed this was an acceptable solution. The April closing along with another DEP-ordered shutdown two months later after a foul odor was detected at the plant stopped work there for a total of 42 days. After additional pollution-control devices were installed, Polymer Resources, smokestack emissions were found to be below the allowable limits set in Connecticut's Maximum Allowable Stack Concentration law. Independent agencies that performed detailed smokestack testing at the Polymer Resources plant testified at the trial that their evaluations of the stack emissions did not detect six of the eight compounds identified in the original cease-and-desist order.

EXTRUDER EMISSIONS RESEARCH

In order to help answer questions that arise ever more frequently about volatile emissions from plastics-processing equipment, GE Plastics, Pittsfield, Mass., designed a unique research facility, which has been set up at the Health and Environmental Chemistry Center at Battelle Laboratories in Columbus, Ohio. It consists of a plastics extruder, elaborate fume-handling equipment to capture any volatiles emitted during processing, and animal exposure chambers to test for toxicity. A paper describing the facility was presented at last year's SPE ANTEC meeting in Detroit. GE expects to have collected and analyzed initial data in the next few months.