Since 2012, the Department of Energy has been discussing a proposal to build a landfill for the waste from the demolition of buildings on Y-12, a site that contains low-level radiation from the Manhattan Project work being done there.
Federal officials selected a forested area in the Oak Ridge Preserve, not far from Y-12, at the headwaters of Bear Creek, which flows into the Clinch River.Environmental regulators in Tennessee have been reviewing plans and submitting comments for more than a decade.
While local environmental groups acknowledge that decades-old waste has to go somewhere, it is unclear in the 100-page proposal how the new landfill will protect people and the environment from radiation leaks.
“If you’re just transferring pollutants from buildings into the river, you may be taking it off DOE property, but not actually picking it up,” said Amanda Garcia of the Southern Environmental Law Center. “You’re distributing it more widely into the community.”
Environmentalists who spoke to Knox News aren’t entirely opposed to landfills, but they say details of the plan are hard to find.
The Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management is holding a public meeting in Oak Ridge to solicit public comments on its plans to build a 92-acre radioactive waste landfill in Bear Creek Valley.The conference will be held Tuesday at the Pollard Technology Conference Center at 210 Badger Ave, Oak Ridge, from 6-8 pm.
“The Department of Energy is opening a 30-day public comment period and holding a public meeting to provide details and answer,” DOE spokesman Ben Williams wrote in an email to Knox News. Community issues related to the subject areas covered in the fact sheet.”
Environmental regulators, retired Tennessee Department of Environmental Conservation staff and Oak Ridge residents said the landfill fact sheet did not address issues that have persisted since the project was first proposed around 2011.
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They fear that water will one day flood the landfill, which could then spill over and carry pollutants downstream.East Tennessee is raining — and more and more — the landfill is in a valley of steep ridges at the headwaters of a creek.
“They’re holding us back,” said Axel Ringer, conservation president of the Tennessee chapter of the Sierra Club.”We’ve been asking for more information to make an insightful comment, but they simply don’t.”
Ringer said the Department of Energy had failed to provide data on how groundwater would pass through the proposed landfill, the type and amount of waste that would be disposed of, and whether the landfill would harm Bear Creek, which is easily removed from a popular site. hiking trail.
The DOE did not respond to Knox News’ questions about community concerns.In public comments, however, the U.S. Department of Energy said it completely disagreed with criticism that existing landfills were poorly managed.They also disagree that the location of the new landfill has not been adequately studied.
“There are hundreds of wells in Bear Creek Valley with decades of data,” the DOE wrote. “As the design progresses, the design will be modified as needed to take into account new data.”
The new landfill is designed to expand processing capacity for low-level radioactive waste as part of the decades-old cleanup of nuclear facilities left over from the Manhattan Project and the Cold War.The U.S. Department of Energy currently uses another landfill, the Environmental Management Waste Management Facility, to dispose of low-level radioactive waste.The site is 80% full and is located west of Y-12.
“They talk about how it’s going to run without problems for 20 years,” Ringer said.”That’s not true. [The landfill] had a series of overflow events that basically dumped raw sewage into Bear Creek.”
A team of civil engineers at the University of Virginia found that leachate—the water that passes through current landfills—has more than twice the average allowable concentration of uranium in drinking water.This leachate is processed by DOE at a nearby facility.
Since about 2011, the Department of Energy, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Tennessee Department of Environment and Protection have been discussing a new landfill.The three agencies have repeatedly been stalled over the Energy Department’s plans, citing a lack of clarity and data.These disputes often touch officials in Washington, D.C.
“We have to remember that the goals and criteria that the EPA and TDEC have to determine is whether (landfills) protect human health and the environment,” Garcia said.”You left a huge hole in the information available to the EPA and TDEC, let alone the public.”
The latest draft of the proposed landfill plan continues to plague EPA and TDEC over clarity and regulatory issues.Specifically, whether the DOE program is in compliance with the Clean Water Act and Tennessee’s anti-degradation regulations.
Garcia said the updated fact sheets made available to the public did not address these persistent concerns.If the landfill is to be protective, the department needs to determine ahead of time the type and amount of waste, as well as water cleanliness limits, she said.
“Delaying a major assessment of whether the liner is protective and prevents contamination from entering groundwater is a big deal,” Garcia said.”It’s not an afterthought.”
This was the problem with the former landfill.A U.S. Department of Energy audit found that the current capacity of landfills is filled with non-hazardous waste that does not need to be disposed of there.A Tennessee audit determined that contractors responsible for current landfills were unaware of state mandates to limit mercury waste, and they were unable to provide information on what waste was disposed of during the audit.
Oak Ridge City Councilman Alan Smith wrote in public comments to the U.S. Department of Energy in 2018: “If space in existing landfills was used responsibly, the Department of Energy might not be so quick to find new landfills. Landfill. The fact that the DOE won doesn’t tell us what the waste acceptance criteria for this landfill is, and is a consideration that limits the public’s potential confidence in the DOE’s decision.”
Dale Rector, a former TDEC employee who worked at the Oak Ridge Conservation Area for 24 years, said the new site never received detailed waste acceptance criteria.This is critical for designing landfills to prevent groundwater infiltration and assessing risks to the environment and public health.
“If water gets into it, it has to come out of it,” Rector said.”Otherwise the waste will be saturated like a tea strainer.”
The principal had previously signed an open letter with other former TDEC employees outlining concerns about the lack of clarity on the details of the landfill project.In an email to Knox News, he said the new fact sheet issued by the DOE did not address those concerns.
“The decision record is usually a short document that says, ‘We’ve all accepted this,’” Rector said of the agencies involved in designing and overseeing the project.”No one agreed to anything and they gave us a record of the decision.”
Knox News asked if TDEC, EPA and DOE had reached a consensus.DOE spokesman Ben Williams said the agency had “cooperated and reached consensus” on the issues raised in the fact sheet.
TDEC spokesman Kim Schofinski wrote: “While high-level consensus has been reached on the issues addressed in the fact sheet, a full revision of the decision record (second draft) must be reviewed before TDEC is formally approved.”
In public comments, the DOE insisted that it would “meet all regulatory requirements related to mercury disposal” and that the waste acceptance criteria would be “derived from existing state and federal environmental regulations.”
The whole process was frustrating, said Virginia Dyer, an Oak Ridge resident, Oak Ridge Conservation Advocate member and former Oak Ridge National Laboratory ecologist.
Dyer said she did this so her children and grandchildren could live comfortably in Oak Ridge.She said she wanted transparency so the community could make informed decisions about landfills.She wants the Department of Energy to open after hearing public comments at the meeting.
“I don’t feel like I’m an activist,” Dyer said.”I’m a grandmother. … I hope Oak Ridge is touted as the name that does the right thing.”
Post time: May-17-2022
