Amnesty Day for Hazardous Waste This Saturday

by Despina Williams

Star Staff Writer

A pardon for paint cans everywhere is not what the Gulf County Public Works Department had in mind when it declared this Saturday Amnesty Day for Hazardous Waste.

From 9 a.m. until 3 p.m. in front of the courthouse, gallons of paint, pesticides and used oil will be collected as part of the county's efforts to encourage the environmentally friendly disposal of hazardous waste.

Joe Danford, director of solid waste and mosquito control for Gulf county, called the amnesty day, now in its eleventh year, "a chance for people to clean out their garages and under the sinks."

Hazardous waste is defined as anything corrosive or toxic with the potential to catch fire, react, or explode under certain conditions.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimates that the average U.S. household generates more than 20 pounds of hazardous household waste each year.

The procedure for disposing of the hazardous waste is simple, said Danford. Just show up at the courthouse and let him and his colleagues handle the rest.

"They pull in, bring in their nasty stuff to us, we unload it, give them a smile and send them on their way," Danford said.

The hazardous waste is transported by Jim Reese to Okaloosa County, where the still usable chemicals are taken to a sharing program and distributed.

On the rare occasions when reactive chemicals are deposited, the hazardous waste is taken to the bomb squad in Tallahassee and exploded.

Such was the case a few years ago, said Danford, when a "happily ignorant" girl brought in a can of ether, which when crystallized, is, according to Danford, nearly as reactive as nitro.

"She threw the can of ether in the back of her truck and drove 10 or 12 miles with it bouncing in the back," remembered Danford of the potentially explosive situation.

The amnesty day usually draws a crowd of 115-120 people, and Danford said the most commonly deposited items are cans of oil-based paint, gardening chemicals such as fertilizers and rooting hormones, concrete cleaners and automotive parts cleaners.

"Every now and then we get something interesting," Danford said, like the can of ether that once belonged to the girl's late grandfather, a builder of remote-controlled airplanes.

Danford traces the origins of amnesty days to the 1970s, when people "started realizing that you can't dump what you want to" in bodies of water and back yards.

Today, Danford cringes when he sees people pouring used oil out onto the ground.

"It only takes one quart of oil to contaminate 100,000 gallons of groundwater and make it undrinkable," cautioned Danford, who welcomed those with household hazardous waste to Saturday's event.

"It's better to get rid of chemicals in an environmentally responsible way."