SPOKANE, Wash.—A line of trucks gathers outside a building on the Washington State Department of Transportation’s Geiger Maintenance Facility. Barrels and tanks holding chemicals farmer don’t or can’t use any more sit in the truck beds.
Inside, workers put tape around the legs of their hazardous material suits, making sure to keep the cuffs outside their boots, so any chemicals don’t accidentally run down their legs into their footwear.
A tarp lies on the ground. Anyone on the tarp needs to wear a suit as he checks the chemicals being turned in to be destroyed.
The disposal program is designed for land-banned pesticides prohibited from use, said Joe Hoffman, waste pesticide program coordinator for the Washington State Department of Agriculture.
“There was nowhere you could take them,” he said. “They can’t go to a landfill and some of them can’t even go to hazardous waste landfills.”
Other materials aren’t used any more as cropping patterns change, and have been aging away in barns, or farmers have switched to organic and have no need for chemicals, Hoffman said.
A contractor disposes of the pesticides through thermal destruction, incinerating them at 2,200 degrees Fahrenheit in a rotary kiln. The materials are essentially broken down into their basic element forms, with leftover ash that meets standards going to a hazardous waste landfill or running through the kiln again until it does.
“Something like DDT, that in the environment is extremely persistent (and) doesn’t break down for years, its residence time in that rotary kiln is less than a second,” Hoffman said.
Customers sign a release that makes the department the owner of the material, releasing farmers from long-term liability with hazardous waste, Hoffman said.
“It’s a real asset for the public, not just the farmer,” said Fred Wilcox, who’s been farming since 1947 and now helps his son in the Cheney, Wash., and Medical Lake, Wash., area. “Most farmers are real environmentally-conscious and they don’t want to be tied up in something that’s going to go on to the next generation,” he said, noting that stockpiling chemicals on the farm becomes a liability for heirs.
Brandon Wagner, a warehouseman for Co-Ag, turned in old product that’s been sitting for several years, left over after the company purchased several sites.
“It would have cost us a lot of money to do this all by ourselves,” Wagner said. “Being able to dispose of it for free gets it out of our warehouses. It’s nice to have something like this.”
Sander Carren, production supervisor and safety manager with Wilbur-Ellis in Tekoa, Wash., delivered the program’s 3 millionth pound during the Spokane collection event.
“It’s nothing hazardous, but it needs to be disposed of properly,” Carren said. “This is a good opportunity to do that. We don’t want this kind of stuff building up at the plant.”
The Spokane event collected 24,984 pounds from 32 customers, Hoffman said. Eight percent of the weight is drum containers, he said.
Hoffman advises farmers to contact the department if they have materials to remove. The department will either put together a collection event in the area or do direct pick-ups in rural areas.
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