Salvaging key leads

[Farrell]

Today, when a mortgage is taken out to purchase a commercial property, the lending institution assumes liability for the environmental integrity of the property. The lending institution will commonly require that an environmental assessment of the property be conducted to evaluate the environmental condition of the property. Five years ago, when I was last involved in this type of work, the industry was moving toward these requirements on residential properties as well. In fact, I had done some projects on residential properties when there was some obvious evidence that there was a use of regulated substances on the site. The bottom line: If you contaminate a property (soil/groundwater) with lead, even if you are not caught at the time, when you go to sell it, you may well be found out.

An uncontrolled release/disposal of a hazardous substance such as lead to the environment is illegal everywhere in the US, and can be felonious. I'll volunteer one bit of advice regarding burning keys with lead in them: Don't do it. 

The only safe way to burn a key (from an environmental liability standpoint) would be to get all the required permits to do that (which would never happen). File plans, etc. on how you would go about doing it. Get plans approved. Install necessary environmental safeguards for the process. Get registered as a Hazardous Waste Generator (you could likely get by with the Small Quantity Generator classification). And then pay big buck to have your hazardous waste residue hauled off to the "secure" landfill. Then you can look forward to being sued 30 years from now when it is discovered that the landfill leaks and you are listed as a contributor because you put your haz waste into it.

The best thing to do with keys is pop the lead out and send it off to a recycle facility.

If you don't care much about Mother Earth, just pop them in your trash and you won't likely be caught.

But please, recycle them.

BTW: A coffee can full of old lead (cover top with epoxy to keep any dust from coming out and to hold the lead in place) is an even better weight than a can full of old tuning pins!

Terry Farrell
  
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Robert Goodale" <rrg@unlv.edu>
To: <cedel@supernet.com>; "Pianotech" <pianotech@ptg.org>
Sent: Thursday, November 21, 2002 6:20 AM
Subject: Re: Salvaging key leads


> Oh man, there's a good joke in here somewhere if I could just think of it.
> Is burning the keys, felt, ivory, (or plastic), in a fire and melting down
> the lead at the same time better than burying and returning it to the earth
> where it came from?  This is reminiscent to the PETA freaks who have no clue
> that the piano in which they are playing their new age music on contains
> buckskin, felt, and hide glue.
> 
> Rob Goodale, RPT
> Las Vegas, NV
> 
> 
> 
> 
> > I wish I had thought of this before sending two old uprights to their
> > graves.  Do the rest of you do this, too?  How important is it to the
> > future health of the planet?  Rather than tapping them out, would it be
> > easier for those of us who have trash barrels to just burn the keys and
> > then gather up the remaining leads?
> >
> > Regards,
> > Clyde
> 
> 
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