Executive Report

The Environmental Consensus Forum tackles hazardous waste

AT THE University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign, a group of people have been spending a considerable amount of time this year sitting around a table talking with each other. The issue they are discussing is hazardous waste, and they are well-versed in the subject. Many of them have lobbied the Assembly, testified before the state regulatory agencies and fought court battles over hazardous waste as well as clean air, clean water and other environmental problems. Often, they have been adversaries in these proceedings, and they are not without battle scars. They represent: The Illinois Manufacturers Association, the Illinois State Chamber of Commerce, the Chemical Industries Council, the electrical utilities, a steel company, Citizens for a Better Environment, the Illinois Environmental Council, the League of Women Voters of Illinois and the Great Lakes (Illinois) Chapter of the Sierra Club.

As members of a "hazardous waste consensus team," they are seeking to reach a consensus or to define areas of agreement or disagreement on hazardous waste management policy. Specifically, they are discussing Public Act 82-572, signed into law in September 1981, which states that after January 1987 no hazardous waste can be landfield in a permitted site without specific agency authorization. The law also requires generators of hazardous waste to prove there are no "technologically feasible" nor "economically reasonable" alternatives to burying the waste in a landfill — such as recycling, incinerating or rendering it nonhazardous through biological, chemical or physical means. Agency regulations have not been drawn up yet, nor have the key terms "technologically feasible" and "economically reasonable" been defined.

Passage of P.A. 82-572, which could effectively prohibit hazardous waste landfills in Illinois, was a coup for environmentalists and local governments. But legislative coups are often followed by "repealers," and business regarded the law as unimplementable.

"Industry wants a law they can live with and not disadvantage Illinois business in comparison with adjacent states or throughout the nation. Environmentalists want a law that protects people against toxic wastes," says Philip Marcus, director of the Environmental Consensus Forum. Neither party wants to refight the whole issue all over again in the General Assembly, an expensive and time-consuming process.

There are also some areas where the two sides could conceivably pool their resources. Environmentalists want technologies developed that will minimize hazardous waste and provide alternatives to landfills. Businesses are the ones who develop the technologies, manufacture the equipment and do the work. "At some point in the long term, these alternatives to landfills will provide economic benefits," says Ray Bodnar, manager of environmental affairs for the Illinois State Chamber of Commerce (ISCC), and member of the consensus team. John Kirkwood, who is executive director of the Chicago Lung Association and one of the co-founders of the forum, sees the long lead time before the effective date of the P.A. 82-572 as an opportunity for building a consensus. "Industrial people want ways of disposing toxic waste. There will be more waste, and it will be more exotic. But there is time to deal with it."

There are, of course, important differences regarding the expense and time schedule of shifting to different ways of managing waste — and the effect on firms of agency regulations. Tom Reid, a member of the Illinois Manufacturers Association (IMA) environmental committee, is particularly concerned about the effects of government regulation which he says are creating a virtual monopoly in the landfill field. "Smaller firms can't deal with things like performance bonds. . . . In the water and pollution control field, small companies can't get in on this except on a small scale, like modeling and testing or supplying equipment."

But the IMA has agreed not to attempt a repeal of P.A. 82-572 while the consensus team is still at work. "We hope the group [consensus team] can reach agreement on some issues and put those issues out of controversy," he says. "There has been too much acrimony in the debate. . . . All are trying to reach goals that are worthy, though we disagree on when and how much they should cost."

The consensus team hopes to finish its work on hazardous waste in the spring of 1983. According to Marcus, the aim is "to maximize agreement for providing a framework which allows P.A. 82-572 to be implemented or to arrive at a mutually acceptable process to address the problems which 82-572 is meant to resolve." Team members have been reporting back to their constituencies, who must then ratify any agreement reached. At this point both environmental and business organizations seem confident that their constituents will give serious attention to whatever agreements the team is able to reach.

The Consensus Forum is also keeping the final policymakers informed — the General Assembly and the state's environmental agencies, says ISCC's Executive Vice President David Baker (who, with Kirkwood's help, prodded and cajoled the forum into existence). Forum members feel that agreements reached by so many groups will be listened to by the government agencies.

Consensus-finding has been tried on the national level to reach agreement on environmental issues, an example being the National Coal Policy Project (which many environmentalists see as a failure). Groups in other states have tended to work on local conflicts, such as power plant siting in the Northeast. Baker says, "As we go into the second year, we will continue to seek a better understanding of the negotiation process; there may be an increasing focus on more local issues, site-specific questions; more like environmental mediation."

An example of a local issue that almost made it to the forum is the Rice Lake controversy. Promising to rehabilitate the area, Freeman United Coal wants to drain the lake, part of a state-owned conservation area along the Illinois River, and mine the coal. The proposal is strongly opposed by local organizations. One ground rule of the forum is there can be no negotiations unless all parties are willing, and so far, not all the local groups involved in the Rice Lake conflict have agreed to sit down and talk.

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Meanwhile, Consensus Forum director Marcus is helping the Illinois Environmental Council (IEC) with its "Common Ground" project, an effort funded by The Joyce Foundation to increase cooperation between environmentalists and agricultural groups. Marcus is acting as a neutral facilitator in meetings between the various organizations. The goal of Common Ground is to have some agreements — and some legislative proposals — by spring.

Other conflicts in which the forum might help parties reach agreement involve coal mining and agricultural lands, water rights and, perhaps at a later date, acid rain, according to Linda Bruce, public policy assistant to Marcus.

Illinois South is one organization that took part in the initial talks to develop the Consensus Forum but is not now participating in its activities. Regarding mining issues, Mike Sehechtman, staff member of Illinois South, says, "We wouldn't trust the forum. . . . [The coal] industry has more to gain in Washington, D.C., than in the forum where county board officials and agricultural people want things more demanding than in the federal reclamation law." Sehechtman sees a danger when groups come to the table with unequal resources: "It is a priori a co-opting model." According to Sehechtman, New England groups at a recent conference on the environmental consensus process were saying, "Don't participate unless funds are provided to give staff support to get information."

Daniel Swartzman, an IEC board member, who is serving on the issues council and the consensus team, disagrees. "Once responsible members of the business community talk to us, we may end up co-opting them," he says, noting strong public and congressional support for a clean environment.

Says Kenneth A. Alderson of the Illinois Muncipal League, a member of the forum's issues council, "Municipalities end up between a rock and a hard place [in hazardous waste conflicts]. We want the economic development, but we need to protect the citizens — and the businesses too." One of the problems, Alderson says, is that both Reports sides in a consensus process are in doubt as to whether the other side is telling the truth. "That's one of the reasons the University of Illinois was chosen as a site. We've had good cooperation from the university."

"It is a risky business," says Kirkwood, "but it is an alternative to the adversary process.

How the Environmental Consensus Forum was founded is a story in itself. Indirectly, it grew out of more than a decade of battles in Illinois between special interest groups over environmental issues. More directly, it grew out of Illinois 2000, a long-range planning project started by the ISCC in 1977 and headed by Baker. Both Illinois 2000 and the concurrent legislative Task Force on the Future of Illinois brought people from diverse groups together. In 1979, Baker and Kirkwood began holding informal meetings with environmental and business groups on the possibility of discussing their conflicts in a neutral setting. Michael Holland, legislative counsel for District 12 of the United Mine Workers of America asked to be included. The union had for the first time been engaged in environmental litigation during the dispute over Commonwealth Edison's 1979 decision to use western coal at its Powerton plant. "With that event," Holland says, "it became important for us to get involved in environmental issues." Holland was instrumental in getting representatives from the steelworkers and the AFL/CIO to participate.

It took one-and-a-half years of discussion for the groups to commit themselves to the idea of a forum. The Institute of Government and Public Affairs at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign was picked to house the forum because of its objectivity on environmental issues and its long-standing work on public policy. UI is able to give technical assistance to the forum, and its central location emphasizes the forum's interest in problems throughout the state. The Environmental Consensus Forum is funded as a pilot project by The Joyce Foundation and the Woods Charitable Trust and by contributions from participating organizations. No government money is involved. At the end of three years, if successful, the forum will break away from UI and become entirely independent.

Forum members have hopes but few illusions. "Even if we come to agreement on only two out of 10 issues, that would be better than none," says IMA's Reid. "The important thing," says IEC's Swartzman, "is for the Consensus Forum to find roles it can play. . . . it ought to try everything."

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