EPA given time to answer PEER Freedom of Information suit over Oak Ridge landfill

A federal judge in Washington, D.C. has given the U.S. government until this Friday, Dec. 15, to answer a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit by an environmental group over documents concerning a low-level radioactive waste landfill at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge Site in Tennessee.

U.S. District Court Judge Ana Reyes agreed to the extension late last month in the case brought against the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) by the Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), a group based in Silver Spring, Md., near Washington and which represents whistleblowers at public agencies, according to its website. The prior deadline for the government response brief was Nov. 29.

PEER accused EPA of wrongly withholding certain documents connected with approval of the 2.2-million cubic yard Environmental Management Disposal Facility at Oak Ridge. DOE and environmental prime United Cleanup Oak Ridge broke ground on the landfill earlier this year.

U.S. Rep. Chuck Fleischmann (R-Tenn.), who chairs the House Appropriations Committee’s Energy and Water Development subcommittee, has called the project important to future cleanup of mercury-contaminated structures at the Y-12 National Security Complex and the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. The current landfill is nearly full, with debris from cleanup of the former K-25 gaseous diffusion plant area at Oak Ridge.