Making Fertilizer from What?

By MICHAEL D. LEMONICK

Two years ago Justin Suddeth, then 14, found a deformed, nine-legged frog at a pond near the Sequoyah Fuels plant in Gore, Okla. In 1981 an eyeless baby girl was born to parents living a few miles from the same plant. The National Cancer Institute has reported that the leukemia rate for white men in counties surrounding Sequoyah Fuels is five percentage points higher than the national average. Is there a connection? Local residents think so: Sequoyah Fuels processes uranium concentrate into ingredients for bombs and nuclear-power- plan t fuel. The factory has been cited in the past for safety lapses, including a 1986 leak that killed one worker and released toxic uranium hexafluoride gas into the environment. Moreover, it is owned by Kerr-McGee, the Oklahoma City-based company implicated in the radioactive contamination of 73 workers at another facility -- the case uncovered in 1974 by the late Karen Silkwood.

But if Kerr-McGee hoped its $1.38 million settlement with Silkwood's heirs had lifted the cloud of controversy from its operations, the furor that erupted last week dashed that hope. A spate of news reports revealed that Sequoyah has for more than a decade, with Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) approval, been converting radioactive wastewater, called raffinate, into fertilizer and spraying it over company-owned fields. Hay grown on the fields has then been sold as feed to farmers and ranchers. Nearby residents charge that the fertilizer may be contaminating the Arkansas River and the water table near the Oklahoma-Arkansas border. Local Veterinarian Gary Johnson is concerned that the "hay is getting into the food chain." Jessie Deer In Water, who chairs the local Native Americans for a Clean Environment, calls it the "ultimate in cheap waste disposal."

Nonsense, responds Kerr-McGee Spokesman Rick Pereles. "Our product is no more dangerous than normal fertilizer." Indeed, company tests show the substance to be no higher in radioactivity or most toxic heavy metals than many other fertilizers. Aberrations like the freak frog occur naturally, note company officials; no one has conclusively linked the product to environmental or health problems.

Sequoyah has been converting its wastewater into fertilizer since 1973 by chemically removing most of the uranium and heavy metals and adding potash and phosphate during application. The liquid was first tested on small plots of company land. In the early 1980s the NRC, finding "no adverse environmental impacts," authorized more widespread testing. That assessment was circulated to the Food and Drug Administration, the Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and each passed it with no comments.

It is just this seemingly lackadaisical review process that concerns critics. According to Oklahoma Congressman Mike Synar, who headed an investigation of the 1986 incident, the EPA and other agencies tend to defer to the NRC in matters involving radioactive materials. But the NRC, he says, "fixes almost exclusively on the radioactive, not chemical, hazards," which may be more to the point in this case. State efforts to regulate the spraying have meanwhile been stymied by jurisdictional questions, which were finally resolved last spring, when the Oklahoma water resources board asserted its right to address the possible threat to groundwater. Its decision on whether the spraying can continue is expected in the spring. "The question is whether raffinate is toxic," says Board Spokesman Brian Vance. "We don't know that yet."

Indeed, the only information available about the fertilizer comes from its manufacturer. According to Herschel Elliott, an agricultural engineer at Penn State University, data released so far inadequately address organic pollutants, in which case, he says, "we should look for mutagenic and carcinogenic effects." Elliott notes that the studies show near unsafe levels of molybdenum. Such heavy metals can cause birth defects.

Even if there are no such dangers, the public relations fallout for Kerr- McGee might be worrisome -- except that the company announced last week an agreement in principle to sell the Sequoyah operation to GA Technologies of San Diego. The agreement's scheduling, says Pereles, is "absolutely coincidental." But for Kerr-McGee, smarting from its earlier run-ins with an angry public, it may have come just in time.

With reporting by Barbara Dolan/Chicago