Published: September 22, 2007 06:17 pm      

DEC issues landfill rebuke

State says cleanup is federal government’s responsibility

The state has issued a stinging rebuttal to the plan proposed by the federal agency overseeing cleanup of the Town of Tonawanda Landfill.

But for now, the Army Corps of Engineers is resolved to not specifically address the state Department of Environmental Conservation’s report, issued on Monday.

In a letter to the Army Corps, the DEC blasts the Corps’ plan under the Formerly Utilized Sites Remedial Action Program that the radioactive materials found in the landfill not be removed because it does not pose a significant enough risk. The public comment period on the plan has been extended numerous times, with the latest deadline being Oct. 15, meaning the public will have had around 200 days to provide input.

In the meantime, the DEC’s acting director of the Bureau of Hazardous Waste & Radiation Management is offering plenty of feedback.

Robert Phaneuf writes in the letter that his department “strongly disagrees with the denials being made by the Corps of Engineers.” Further, he writes, “it is now evident that most of the uranium ore processing wastes in the landfill will have to be moved,” and that the Corps “failed to account for the needed waste relocation scenario.”

Phaneuf also says that the safe handling and ultimate disposal of the radioactive material in the landfill “are all the responsibility of the federal government and must not be passed on to the town” before proper closure of the landfill can continue.

The Corps contends that the soils containing uranium, radium and thorium don’t pose a significant risk in their current state. City of Tonawanda Councilman Rick Davis said Wednesday that the Corps’ estimate that 1 in 1,000 people who live near the landfill could contract cancer because of the radioactive materials is simply unacceptable, especially with Riverview Elementary School’s proximity to the site.

Davis, who is also a co-chair of the grassroots organization Clean Up Riverview’s Environment, plans to start an intensive letter-writing campaign, and hopes the result yields the positive outcome achieved through the letter campaign that helped save the Niagara Falls Air Reserve Station a few years ago.

In 1992, the federal Department of Energy stated that the radioactive waste originated on the Linde site from the Manhattan Project site needed to be cleaned up. Five years later, the DOE’s FUSRAP was transferred to the Army Corps of Engineers. The Army Corps’ standards are different from those used by the DOE, hence the Corps’ decision that the radioactive materials’ risk level is within U.S. Environmental Protection Agency guidelines and, therefore, can remain in their current condition, Davis said.

Meanwhile, the Corps says it will not specifically address the DEC’s response until the public comment period closes.

“We’re going to treat (the DEC’s) comments in the same way as we treat comments from elected officials and members of the general public,” said Bruce Sanders, public affairs officer for the Corps’ Buffalo District. “We don’t want to address comments piecemeal,” Sanders said, adding that the corps plans to issue its final remedy for the landfill next summer.

As for why it took DEC six months from the time the Army Corps released its proposed plan to offer the rebuke, DEC spokeswoman Lori O’Connell said in an e-mail: “In May and June, the Department performed radiation surveys in properties bordering the landfill, in response to residents’ concerns that radioactive material from the landfill might have been spread or placed outside the landfill. DEC issued the final report in August and waited until that was done to comment on the Corps’ plan.

Contact reporter David J. Hill at 693-1000, ext. 115.