STATE LOOKS ELSEWHERE TO DESTROY SEIZED DRUGS

SPOKANE - State officials are looking for ways to help police agencies
dispose of illegal street drugs that can no longer be burned in municipal
incinerators.

For years, tons of methamphetamine, heroin, cocaine and other illegal drugs
seized by law-enforcement agencies were routinely burned in municipal waste
incinerators.

But last year, a state Department of Ecology interpretation of federal Drug
Enforcement Administration rules on dangerous waste ended the practice. The
incinerators had permits to burn municipal waste, but not dangerous waste,
the Ecology Department concluded.

That left law-enforcement agencies across the state with no way to dispose
of seized contraband that is quickly overwhelming evidence rooms.

Ecology and law-enforcement agencies have scrambled to find other disposal
options. One being pursued is to ship the drugs to a waste- to-energy plant
near Salem, Ore., Ecology spokeswoman Caitlin Cormier said yesterday.

The Covanta Energy incinerator is capable of processing 550 tons a day of
solid waste and already processes about 90 tons a month of supplemental
waste, including nonhazardous medical waste.

Law-enforcement agencies have concerns about security and chain-of- custody
issues in sending their seized drugs out of state for destruction, Hall said.

Cormier called a possible contract with Covanta a short-term solution.

For the long term, Ecology is considering rulemaking that would exempt
controlled substances from dangerous-waste restrictions, allowing the drugs
to be burned in municipal incinerators, she said. The rule- making process
can take six months or longer.

Pierce County, which leads the state in numbers of illegal methamphetamine
lab busts, until October burned van-size loads of contraband drugs in a
local incinerator, said Lt. Dave Hall of the Pierce County Sheriff's
Department.

"The Department of Ecology has shut everybody down in the state," he said.
"We were fortunate that we had done a destruction in October just before
they shut it down, so we're in good shape."

Until the practice was discontinued in June, many state police agencies
sent their seized illegal drugs to the Spokane Regional Waste-to-Energy
incinerator, which is capable of burning 800 tons of waste a day.

The plant near Spokane International Airport burned drugs from Seattle, the
Tri-Cities and elsewhere, totaling about a minivan-load a month, said Damon
Taam, who administers contracts for the Spokane incinerator.