{"id":18713,"date":"2014-02-27T06:15:54","date_gmt":"2014-02-27T12:15:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/?p=18713"},"modified":"2014-02-26T22:36:48","modified_gmt":"2014-02-27T04:36:48","slug":"the-reason-toxic-releases-are-up-in-oklahoma-and-why-its-not-that-scary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/2014\/02\/27\/the-reason-toxic-releases-are-up-in-oklahoma-and-why-its-not-that-scary\/","title":{"rendered":"The Reason Toxic ‘Releases’ Are Up in Oklahoma, and Why It’s Not That Scary"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Toxic<\/p>\n

Joe Wertz \/ StateImpact Oklahoma<\/p>\n

Toxic waste from New York, New Jersey and Wisconsin is brought by rail to Oklahoma, where it's treated and stored at the Lone Mountain Landfill.<\/p>\n<\/div>

New data from the federal government<\/a> show a drop in the amount of toxic chemicals being released into the nation’s air, water and land. In Oklahoma, however, so-called toxic “releases” have soared.<\/p>

But it’s not as scary as it sounds.<\/p>

Major County is one of the sparsest, least populated counties in Oklahoma. But the county lives up to its name in other ways. Thirty-six million pounds of toxic chemicals were released here in 2012, data from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency show. That\u2019s more than every other waste-storing county in Oklahoma combined, and more than the totals of half the states in the nation.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

Joe Wertz \/ StateImpact Oklahoma<\/p>\n

The Lone Mountain landfill near Waynoka, Okla.<\/p>\n<\/div>

Those chemicals \u2014which include truckloads of contaminated soil and waste from factories, military installations and other industrial sites \u2014 go through a treatment regimen that includes mixing the waste with coal ash, kiln dust and other reagents to keep it from getting into the air or leeching into the soil, where it could pollute water supplies.<\/p>

\u201cBasically, it\u2019s cement,” says the landfill’s compliance officer Lee Grater, describing the state of the waste before it can be stored.<\/p>

The EPA’s Toxic Release Inventory<\/a> report \u2014 the so-called TRI report \u2014 shows a 12 percent decline in total toxic releases from 2011 to 2012, nationally. But Oklahoma’s total toxic releases increased 64 percent during the same time period.<\/p>

Federal and state environmental regulators keep a close eye on this kind of toxic waste. Even if the waste is treated and stored, properly, on top of layers of thick plastic and buried in the middle of the empty Oklahoma prairie, it still gets recorded as a \u201ctoxic release.\u201d<\/p>

That skews the numbers, says Monty Elder with the State Department of Environmental Quality.<\/p>\n

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