Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, April 10, 1990 TAG: 9004100008
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A3 EDITION: STATE
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: DURHAM, N.C. LENGTH: Medium
"The South not only has become the nation's biggest waste dump," said Bob Hall, research director for the non-profit research group based in Durham. "The numbers show the region also has a disproportionate share of hazardous jobs, contaminated water, homes lacking complete plumbing and industries spewing cancer-causing chemicals into the air."
Figures from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency indicate that two-thirds of the nation's hazardous waste was treated, incinerated, buried in landfills or otherwise disposed of in the 13-state region. The region includes Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia and West Virginia.
Georgia, West Virginia, Virginia and Louisiana hosted 6,500 to 12,500 pounds of such waste per person, compared with a national average of 2,000 pounds. The average in the South is 4,300 pounds per person.
The institute's report examined 35 indicators of pollution, public health, work place safety and environmental policy and then ranked the 50 states on a per capita or other basis to minimize differences in population size. It is part of a larger study of more than 100 indicators due out this spring.
The 10 states with the best total scores for the 35 indicators are Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Vermont, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Oregon and Hawaii. The only non-Southern state in the bottom 10 is Indiana.
The Northeast and Great Lake states fared poorly on the institute's poison index, which includes such standard measures as pollution, air quality and per capita number of Super Fund sites.
But Hall said many of these states have taken aggressive action to address their problems, so their high scores for policies, public health and workplace safety initiative boost their overall rankings.
Most mountain states "score poorly in all areas related to government initiative, holding fast to the frontier belief that the less regulation, the better," said the report, which focused on the South.
"Fortunately for them, they don't have the pollution levels of other regions, although their increasing economic reliance on minerals and natural resource exploitation promises escalating problems," the report added.
North Carolina ranked 41st in radioactive waste stored inside its borders, homes without complete plumbing and the percentage of its people lacking health insurance. It ranks 42nd in the per capita number of cancer-threatening factories, 44th in the overall rate of premature deaths, 45th in state spending on environmental programs and 46th in laws protecting worker safety.
Preliminary data on the institute's "green index" show that the South has six of the 10 states with the largest per capita toxic chemical discharge, five of the 10 states with the most radioactive waste, 92 of the 149 industrial facilities posing the greatest risk of cancer to their neighbors and 30 of the top 100 industrial sources of ozone-depleting chemicals.
The region also has seven of the 10 states with the lowest rates of health insurance protection and nine of the 10 with the highest rates of premature death. Eleven of the region's 13 states have occupational death rates above the U.S. average, and 10 of the 13 have cancer incidence rates above the national norm.
Instead of adopting aggressive policies to address such problems, the report says, Southern lawmakers "maintain a backward resistance to positive solutions in the face of extraordinary levels of poisons."
Ten of the 13 states devote a smaller than average portion of their budgets to programs that protect environmental and natural resources, Hall said. The region's legislatures are less likely to adopt measures to restrict development, encourage recycling, prevent ground water contamination, promote work place safety, or provide public health services.
Nationally, the South's congressional delegations are also among the least likely to support environmental legislation. Five of the 10 states receiving the lowest scores from the League of Conservation Voters are Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi, Texas and Kentucky. The same group, with Georgia replacing Louisiana, got five of the worst scores on votes related to nuclear power.
by CNB