The former chief lawyer for the Alabama Department of Environmental Management has accused state officials of disregarding federal laws that keep hazardous waste out of landfills designed for household garbage.

In addition, the lawyer argues, the agency's recent actions mean hazardous waste could end up being dumped in any of the 31 municipal landfills scattered around the state.

A petition filed at EPA headquarters in Washington by ex-ADEM attorney David Ludder on behalf of two environmental groups suggests the agency so bungled its handling of waste from McIntosh's Olin Corp. chlorine factory -- allowing 23,000 tons of mercury-laden material to be placed in the Timberlands Sanitary Landfill in Escambia County -- that it should lose all authority to supervise hazardous waste disposal.

 The Press-Register has previously reported that those same wastes served as an ongoing source of mercury contamination around the south Washington County town of McIntosh. Reporters found evidence of the wastes on public roads, in parks, on baseball fields and even in the McIntosh mayor's front yard.

ADEM officials insisted in interviews that the agency enforces federal hazardous waste laws appropriately and that EPA officials in the regional office in Atlanta concurred with the decision to send the Olin wastes to a municipal landfill in February of this year.

ADEM officials said this week that they cannot address specific issues set forth in the petition because it is a pending legal matter.

EPA officials in Atlanta did not reply to requests for comment Monday or Tuesday. Nor did EPA respond to requests for comment regarding these wastes in September.

Ludder said the primary goal of the petition was to get officials at EPA headquarters to review the decisions made by ADEM and the Atlanta office of EPA.

The petition alleges that ADEM violated federal law when the agency decided the dump-truck loads of Olin wastes did not qualify as "hazardous" under federal law. ADEM officials have previously indicated they decided the hazardous label would not apply because the material had been sitting in heaps at Olin for years before modern hazardous waste laws were created.

It would have cost Olin a great deal more money to dispose of the material, had ADEM declared it hazardous.

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