Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, April 2, 1993 TAG: 9304020263
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MIKE HUDSON STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: FINCASTLE LENGTH: Medium
BOTETOURT AIR ORDINANCE DISPUTED
Last year Botetourt County's supervisors were searching for a way to control a hazardous-waste incinerator that a private company wanted to build.So they took advantage of a state law that says its OK for local governments to write their own air-pollution ordinances - as long as they are at least as tough as the state's regulations.
All they needed was approval from the state Air Pollution Control Board.
The board's regional staff made suggestions for changes and then sent the ordinance on to Richmond with a recommendation that the board approve the ordinance.
That's when the problems started.
"Once it was in Richmond," County Attorney William "Buck" Heartwell says, `'the weather changed."
Heartwell charges that the air-pollution board came up with spurious technical objections to the ordinance simply as an excuse for turning it down.
Heartwell says the real reason behind the decision is that the board doesn't like the idea of local governments writing their own air-pollution ordinances - even though state law allows it.
State officials disagree. They say the air board rejected the ordinance because it was not as tough as the state's air-pollution regulations.
The county - which contends that its ordinance is actually tougher - has taken the case to court. It's trying to force the air board to reverse its decision. Circuit Judge George Honts III said Thursday that he will decide by April 15 whether to let Botetourt go forward with its appeal.
Thursday's hearing was the latest installment in the legal and political wrangling over a proposal by Roanoke Cement Co. to burn paint thinners and other chemicals in an incinerator at its cement plant near Haymakertown.
The cement company, which recently came under new ownership, says now that it no longer has interest in opening the incinerator. However, it has filed papers in Circuit Court that keep its options open. Opponents fear the company still may resurrect the plan.
The incinerator case provides a case study in the workings of Virginia's environmental protection programs, which some critics contend are among the nation's weakest.
The county's failed hazardous-waste burning ordinance would have been the first of its kind in Virginia.
At a Dec. 4 hearing, members of the state air-pollution board said they were worried that approving it would open the door for other local governments to seek their own air quality regulations.
That, board member Timothy E. Barrow said, could lead to a "nightmarish complexity" of regulations that differed from place to place across Virginia.
Heartwell said Thursday that it is not up to the air board to decide whether localities should have the right to pass their own regulations. The General Assembly has already said they do, he said, and the board's only job is to decide whether an ordinance is as tough as state regulations.
Mary Jo Leugers, an assistant state attorney general, said it was well within the board's authority to reject the ordinance. Board members must be able to use their expertise to decide whether a regulation is proper, she said.
Grass-roots opponents of the incinerator aren't necessarily upset by the air board's decision. They want the incinerator stopped, period, and say a local air-quality ordinance simply would set up "a right to burn."
The county has come up with one other method for confronting the incinerator issue.
Late last year - after the state board had thrown out the air-pollution ordinance - county supervisors approved a zoning change that would prevent the company from operating the incinerator at all.
But that measure's survival also is in question.
Roanoke Cement has challenged it with a lawsuit in Circuit Court. The company said it filed suit because the rezoning would prevent it from modernizing its cement operation - not because it still wants to open the incinerator.
County officials say the zoning change would do no such thing.
The lawsuit is in limbo because the company has yet to file the papers on the county. It has until early next year to start the legal process rolling.