Scott Simon, Host:

California has some of the strictest environmental regulations in the country. But an investigation by NPR and nonprofit news outlet CalMatters found that states circumvent their own laws by routinely exporting hazardous waste. Robert Lewis has a story.

Robert Lewis, Byline: A five-hour drive east of Los Angeles leaves the Golden State…

DAVID HARPER: This is Arizona open arms.

Lewis: …where California sends toxic waste.

Harper: Right here.

Lewis: David Harper is a member of the Colorado River Indian Tribe, whose reservation is nearby. He stands outside a landfill in La Paz County where California has hauled more than 160,000 tons of his soil over the past five years, which the state has labeled hazardous waste. This is a California soil worker digging up an old industrial or military site that had been contaminated with lead, his DDT, etc.

So where do you book?

Harper: About five to ten miles east of here from this area.

Lewis: California law stipulates that this waste is highly toxic if dumped in the state and should go to a hazardous waste disposal facility with extra liners and other protective measures. I have. But California regulations stay at the border. So for decades, those overseeing cleanup sites have brought toxic soil to states with weaker environmental laws to dump it in cheaper regular landfills. David Harper doesn’t think they should be able to get away with it.

Harper: Why didn’t California keep it themselves? What did we do to create this problem of needing to bring toxins into our traditional homeland? Why? is that fair?

Meredith Williams: Frankly, it’s beyond our power to tell them how to manage that waste.

Lewis: Meredith Williams is the director of the California Department of Toxic Substances Control. She says her agency can’t really stop private companies from taking waste out of state, but her Williams’ own division is one of the biggest dumpers out of state. is. Officials routinely haul contaminated soil and truck it to Arizona. And records show that many other California government agencies are doing the same.

Williams: It’s not possible to make a comprehensive statement about its safety as everything is highly situational.

Lewis: I asked Williams if she thought it was safe to dump waste her state considers hazardous into a regular landfill.

Williams: So what is a hazard and why is it classified as a hazardous waste? And how well are its out-of-state landfills managed?

Lewis: And that’s a lot of waste. Shipping records show that over the past five years, he has transported more than 660,000 tons of toxic soil from cleanup sites in California to landfills in Arizona and about 1 million tons to Utah. Currently, a landfill in Utah, Great He is seeking permission to dispose of contaminated soil in California on the shores of the Salt Lake. Again, California regulator Meredith Williams.

Williams: I have my hands full. We are not in a position to go out of state and evaluate out of state landfills.

Lewis: Arizona and Utah regulators declined interview requests, but responded to written questions. Their state says it does not consider contaminated soil dangerous and is inspecting contaminated landfills. A few years ago, Arizona regulators actually labeled one landfill as an imminent threat because of groundwater concerns, but the problem there has finally been fixed.

Morton Burraz: It doesn’t matter what you put in the landfill. The question is what will come out.

Lewis: Morton Burruss, an engineering professor at North Carolina State University, says modern landfills are well designed.

Burruss: Yeah, the concept of putting highly contaminated soil in a landfill and whatever is there reaching the groundwater doesn’t really happen.

Lewis: But David Harper took me on a tour of the reservation. He points to mountains that are part of Mojave’s creation story. One is called Old Woman.

Harper: The Creator has made her the eternal overseer of our land. And these realms are sacred. But for others, it’s just a rock. It’s just a road. It just…

Lewis: It’s just garbage.

Harper: It’s just a dump.

Lewis: But it’s also his hometown.

This is Robert Lewis from NPR News.

SIMON: The story comes from NPR’s California Newsroom and CalMatters.

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