Wall Street Journal runs an hysterical editorial blasting Senator Al Gore:

Ohio’s State EPA issues permit for test burn at incinerator.

JANUARY 8, 1993:

Wall Street Journal runs yet another editorial blasting Senator Al Gore.
“Von Roll, the builder, has spent $160 million and 13 years to get this far. Then Greenpeace seems to have visited Al Gore in a dream, and now the Veep-elect vows to torpedo the project...Fixing on bogus legalisms, the group [Greenpeace] is painting Von Roll as a fly-by-night outfit. Mr. Gore has lent credibility to this cynical nonsense by ordering up a GAO ‘investigation’ into the plant’s ownership and licensing...Now, based on something he saw out the campaign bus window, he may sink hundreds of anti-pollution jobs in a state that just voted for his boss. Who’s steering this environmental czar?” pg A14, “Gore on a Von Roll.”

JANUARY 8, 1993:

Symbolic of the Reagan/Bush 12-year era of environmental plunder the U.S. EPA issues permit for test burn.

The EPA “in apparent defiance of the coming Clinton Administration, will allow a controversial hazardous waste incinerator to move one step closer to commercial operation...The incinerator...is owned by Waste Technologies Industries, a unit of the Swiss company Von Roll Ltd...A test burn is a seven-day test conducted to determine whether an incinerator meets federal pollution standards...Under the terms granted by the EPA’s regional office in Chicago, the incinerator may not begin commercial operation until it can demonstrate that it has met certain criteria concerning its emissions. That process is expected to take at least a week, virtually guaranteeing that approval for full operation won’t come before Bill Clinton assumes office...Terri Swearingen, a community activist who lives near and has fought against the plant, termed the approval ‘the final act of an arrogant Reagan and Bush EPA’...” Wall Street Journal, 1-11-93, pg A-4.

JANUARY 12, 1993:

Greenpeace and local citizens file a Temporary Restraining Order to stop the test burn. The Government Accountability Project of Washington, DC, are their attorneys. They have had three days to prepare their case --Saturday, Sunday and Monday (January 9, 10, 11, 1993).

VON ROLL’s December 15, 1992, FULL PAGE AD
ran in the New York Times, Washington Post, and papers in East Liverpool, Ohio, and Little Rock, Arkansas (at the same time Bill Clinton was holding his 2-day conference). The ad read: “PLEASE MR. PRESIDENT-ELECT, GIVE OUR TOWN HOPE. On Monday, December 7th, according to press accounts, the Vice President-elect pledged that the Clinton Administration would block a hazardous waste incinerator in Ohio from starting operation. That incinerator - Waste Technologies Industries (WTI) - is located in our town, East Liverpool, Ohio. It is our hope for industrial rebirth. Through ten years, it has received the most thorough legal and regulatory scrutiny of any industrial facility in the nation...On behalf of the overwhelming majority of East Liverpool’s citizens, we ask you to let WTI open on schedule...WTI is the first major industrial investment in town in 20 years. It has produced 500 union construction jobs, jobs that will continue when expansion begins immediately after the plant opens. It is creating 125 permanent jobs plus (according to economists) two ‘ripple effect jobs’ for each of these 625 construction and operating jobs. Its $1.7 million in local taxes and $3.5 million payroll will enable the town to improve its schools and services. The plant’s $600,000 additional tipping fees are dedicated to rebuilding our downtown and creating new jobs there. The city hospital will receive a dollar for every one of the 60,000 tons of industrial waste it processes a year, a big boon [indeed!] to local health care. And since it is European-owned, WTI is an international advertisement that new industry is welcome here in the Ohio Valley...You said you wanted to create jobs by encouraging environmental technology. That’s WTI. Its business is cleaning up the environment. You said that you would not let special interest groups run your White House. Opposition to WTI has been organized by a special interest group - the radical environmental lobbyists of Greenpeace...We bet Greenpeace didn’t tell your staffers that the fanatical battles it has waged using Hollywood celebrities, big dollars and harassment have driven WTI to a difficult situation with its bankers. Another delay - as Mr. Gore specifically proposed - could mean the plant never opens...Finally, we bet Greenpeace forgot to say that WTI is so clean that, if closing it sets a new standard for all the nation’s industrial plants, no new factories will open or expand in the U.S. for years to come. It is cleaner than any steel mill, auto factory, computer chip manufacturer, chemical plant, large farm or any other major facility in the nation. Close it and you are setting a standard that will ship millions of jobs overseas - a bad way to start your defense of America’s economic security...Mr. President-elect, you have said that you believe in a place called Hope. To us, WTI means jobs and a cleaner environment. Like you, it stands for hope. Please, Mr. President-elect, keep our hope alive. WTI must open on schedule.” New York Times, page A19, 12-15-92. The ad was signed: East Liverpool Chamber of Commerce; Columbiana County Progress Council; Tri-State EDGE (Economic Development Growth & Exchange); People for Progress; Employees of WTI; and, Von Roll.

*** Blake Marshall is the President of ***
Waste Technologies Incorporated (WTI); Von Roll America, Inc.; Von Roll Inc.;

Von Roll (Ohio), Inc.; Environmental Elements Ohio (Inc.); and, Energy Technology Company.

Before Blake Marshall joined Von Roll he was the Project Director for the
Swan Hills, Alberta, Canada, hazardous waste incinerator that uses Von Roll kilns.

According to a 5-14-90 “Personal History Disclosure Form,” Blake Marshall stated: “Beginning 1983 I was appointed the Project Director for Chem-Security Ltd. of Calgary to design, construct, and start up a hazardous waste treatment facility at Swan Hills, Alberta, Canada.” Marshall stated on 5-14-90 that he was with Chem-Security Ltd. from March 1983 to February 1986; and from March 1986 to present, he was President of Von Roll, Inc. The Swan Hills hazardous waste incinerator went on line 9-11-87 and uses Von Roll kilns. Chem-Security Ltd. acts as Supervisor, Operator and Manager of the incinerator. In 1991 three workers at the Swan Hills incinerator were found to have excessive levels of PCBs in their blood, ranging between 30 and 50 parts per billion. In February 1990, monitoring close to the Swan Hills plant found PCBs in vole tissues in all 10 sites sampled with levels ranging from 1.5 to 160 parts per million in fat tissue. According to a 1990 report from John McInnis, a member of the Alberta, Canada, Legislative Assembly: “There are major problems with the technology employed at Swan Hills. The big problem is two rocking kilns designed by a Swiss engineering firm called Von Roll. These kilns wee designed in Switzerland and constructed in Calgary. The technology employed is in operation nowhere else in the world. The rocking kilns have not been able to perform the function for which they were designed, i.e. the combustion of liquid and solid waste. The solid organic wastes must be agitated in such a way that every surface is exposed to the flame. The rocking design not only has failed to achieve that, but the kilns themselves have been damaged in the attempt to do so. Substantial maintenance and other work is being done on Von Roll kilns in order to make them function...” -See Waste Not # 159