Soon after withdrawing its designation of Texas-based Waste Control Specialists as its long-term storage site for elemental mercury, the Department of Energy is seeking information about other potentially suitable sites.
Responses are due by 5 p.m. Eastern Time on Nov. 4 to DOE’s request for information (RFI) for a leased facility and services related to the long-term management and storage of elemental mercury waste.
Waste Control Specialists (WCS) could still be selected, DOE has said. “WCS is evaluating the possibility,” of participating in the planned solicitation, the company’s president, David Carlson, said Wednesday in a statement emailed through a spokesman.
The department’s Office of Environmental Management issued the RFI Oct. 14. The potential acquisition would support DOE’s efforts to implement the requirements of the Mercury Export Ban Act of 2008. Among other things, the law is designed to reduce availability of elemental or metallic mercury in the United States and internationally. It also instructed DOE to set up a site for long-term storage of the domestic supply of elemental mercury waste.
A potential contractor could “provide both a facility to be leased to DOE and the management and storage services” at the company’s facility. Alternatively, the potential contractor could provide either the leased facility, or provide the management and storage services at a DOE-leased or owned facility.
The chief contact on the market research is DOE’s contracting officer, Jose E. Ortiz, [email protected]. Capability statements and questions should be sent by the deadline to [email protected].
The DOE said Oct. 6 in the Federal Register it was withdrawing Waste Control Specialists’ earlier designation as the long-term storage site. The action came after the agency reached a federal court settlement with Nevada Gold Mines and other generators of mercury that would end up at the facility.
The plaintiffs had filed suit in December 2019, saying among other things the $37,000 per metric ton fee the Department of Energy planned to charge them to store the mercury at the Andrews County, Texas site was too high.
The plaintiffs in the suit also argued that DOE did not provide adequate notice-and-comment for the fee and its plans to use privately-owned Waste Control Specialists to store the mercury for the federal government.
In a supplemental analysis published in June 2019 by the DOE Office of Environmental Management, federal officials concluded that WCS is a logical choice because it could store the mercury long-term without constructing new buildings.
This marks the second time in a little more than two years that DOE has issued an RFI on mercury storage.
