THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, March 4, 1996 TAG: 9603040040
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY SCOTT HARPER, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 103 lines
One is on loan to a university. The other sits in a state storage lot, its high-tech equipment stripped and sent elsewhere.
Two mobile toxics laboratories, purchased by a wealthy state government soon after signing a landmark agreement to clean up the Chesapeake Bay, were hailed in the late 1980s as the future of environmental analysis in Virginia.
Now they're just white elephants.
The $130,000-plus vehicles were outfitted with high-tech instruments to detect toxic contamination in the Elizabeth River and other polluted waterways. From place to place they rolled, sometimes parking for days at the edge of industrial sites - and providing state regulators with detailed information about waste discharges and their effect on water and marine life.
But in 1993, facing tough financial times, then-Gov. L. Douglas Wilder cut funding for the labs. One was parked indefinitely in Richmond, where it sits today; the other was loaned last fall to Virginia Commonwealth University.
``We heard through the grapevine that because of downsizing, some equipment was available,'' said Greg Garman, director of VCU's Center for Environmental Studies, which is using the lab as a mobile classroom. ``I never dreamed they would include something like this trailer.''
This year, environmentalists and some state lawmakers have asked the General Assembly for money to restore toxics monitoring on the Elizabeth River, and both houses of the legislature have approved money for it.
One of the most polluted rivers on the East Coast, the Elizabeth was targeted - along with Baltimore Harbor and the Anacostia River, in Washington - by the landmark 1987 Chesapeake Bay Agreements for special attention to reducing toxics.
By about 1990, the mobile-lab program was deemed a success and was to be spread statewide. The trailer used in Hampton Roads was moved to Richmond, and a second, larger vehicle thatresembles a Winnebago was purchased and outfitted for service.
Annual maintenance costs eclipsed $20,000 a year, however, and Wilder decided to cut the labs in his final get-tough budget. They remained surplus property until the Allen administration offered the labs and other environmental equipment to schools and colleges, officials said.
Pressed by the Elizabeth River Project and the Chesapeake Bay Partnership Council, environmentalists first requested $600,000 for toxics monitoring - including funds to revive the two mobile labs.
``A particular area noted by the ERP as lacking is that of toxics monitoring,'' wrote state Del. Robert S. Bloxom, an Eastern Shore Republican who chairs Virginia's team on the Bay partnership council.
``It recommends that the funding of the . . . mobile toxins analysis lab, which has been garaged for two years, should be restored in order to fill this void in water quality monitoring,'' Bloxom wrote in a Jan. 12 letter.
After a month of negotiations in Richmond, the House late last month approved a $200,000 stipend over the next two years, while the Senate endorsed a $300,000 program for the Elizabeth. The precise amount will be worked out in committee hearings before the legislature recesses.
But neither chamber mentioned the labs, instead asking state environmental officials to devise a comprehensive toxics program.
The administration of Gov. George F. Allen, which has downsized state government since coming to power in 1994, including numerous changes to environmental agencies, will not oppose the funding request.
``We're not fighting it, we're not supporting it,'' said Michael McKenna, director of policy and planning for the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality, which would devise a new toxics program. ``If they want to give us more money for toxics, that's fine.''
Few state environmental officials knew where the mobile labs are these days. McKenna said they ``sounded like a really good idea at first'' but proved ``not very useful.''
``There was no practical advantage to them,'' he said.
McKenna added that, as far as he understood, the vehicles were hard to drive and didn't give results that were significantly better than basic sampling procedures.
But John W. Daniel, the Virginia secretary of natural resources from 1986 to 1989, when the labs were purchased, said the vehicles were ``very effective'' and were just one tool in a concerted effort to better manage toxics.
``They came on board when the toxics program was really rolling,'' said Daniel, now an environmental lawyer in Richmond. ``But the economic times were significantly different, and there was a lot more enthusiasm for environmental spending back then in the legislature.''
The labs were especially adept at pinpointing sources and concentrations of toxics, Daniel said. He noted that several industries along the Elizabeth River were forced to undertake toxic reduction programs or face stricter pollution permits because of test results from the mobile labs.
Industries were not fans of the labs. For one, the vehicles would park ominously on the edge of their properties for days at a time. And more importantly, problems that went undetected under old sampling techniques were discovered through more sophisticated testing, officials said.
No matter what happens to the labs, VCU's Garman said he was glad his students have been able to use the equipment. He looked through a warehouse of equipment before selecting the mobile lab.
``We were tickled pink to get it,'' he said. ``We're putting it to good use, but if the state wants to get that toxics management program up and moving, I'd be very supportive of that.'' ILLUSTRATION: Two mobile labs once kept an eye on toxic waste levels in the
polluted Elizabeth and other rivers. A tight state budget put the
labs out of commission, but a movement is afoot to bring them back
and revive the monitoring system.
by CNB