Nambe facility may be burning medical waste illegally
POJOAQUE — The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is looking into whether a medical waste incinerator in Nambe Pueblo is operating illegally because it hasn’t obtained a permit from the agency and might have surpassed a one-year grace period in which applicants can run their businesses while waiting for permit approval.
Monarch Waste Technologies LLC opened the 10,000-square-foot facility in May 2018 on leased property on the pueblo, which means it falls under the oversight of the federal agency rather than the New Mexico Environment Department.
The facility incinerates medical waste such as needles, blades, syringes, gloves, tubing,
pharmaceutical and nonhazardous medicines from several Southwestern states, including New Mexico and Texas, and other states such as North Dakota and Washington, Monarch co-founder Kevin Yearout said at an EPA permit hearing Thursday evening at Pojoaque Middle School.
The incinerator operated through November, Yearout said, and then shut down for several months for testing and to deal with “systems alterations and changes.”
Last month, it started up again. It is still awaiting approval from the EPA.
Cynthia Kaleri, a regional spokeswoman for the federal agency who attended the hearing, said the monthslong shutdown raises the question of whether Monarch is running the incinerator past the one-year time limit to operate without a permit.
“It’s fuzzy,” Kaleri said, adding she’s not sure if such a situation is covered under EPA rules. Fewer than 10 members of the public attended Thursday’s meeting, and several expressed concern that the EPA had not adequately publicized the event.
Kaleri said the agency is only required to send out email notifications and post information on its website and Facebook page, which it did. The EPA is not required to hold public hearings about permit applications, she said, but it did in the Monarch case as a favor to Nambe Pueblo Gov. Phillip A. Perez.
A 30-day public comment period on Monarch’s permit application will open Tuesday, when documents on the project will be available on the EPA’s website, Kaleri said.
If the EPA receives no public comments or objections to the project, it could issue a permit to Monarch as soon as Dec. 29. Anyone with concerns or objections can request a public hearing; Kaleri said the EPA already has set aside a day in December for the meeting.
Perez, who also attended Thursday’s hearing, said the issue is complicated by the fact that Monarch is subleasing the facility for the incinerator — on property behind the Nambé Falls Travel Center on U.S. 84/285 — from the Nambe Pueblo Development Center, which has leased the site from the pueblo. Monarch signed a five-year lease for the property in early 2017.
The pueblo is still trying to determine its role in considering public concerns about the operation, and “how do we handle those concerns through regulation?” Perez said.
According to Yearout, Monarch shreds the medical waste it collects through pyrolysis, which uses steam-generated high temperatures to decompose the material, and then disposes of the remaining matter in a landfill in Rio Rancho — “not in local or tribal landfills.”
Monarch has the right to store waste for up to 30 days, Yearout said, but the facility generally disposes of its waste “within a week or two because of space limitations.”
The company does not process “body parts, body limbs, organs, anything like that,” he added.
He also said the operation is meeting air-quality standards set by the federal government.