Jeremy L. Dillon
RW Monitor
7/24/2015
The Michigan Sierra Club this week endorsed calls for a referendum during the November 2016 state election that could ban the state’s acceptance of Technologically Enhanced, Naturally Occurring Radioactive Material (TENORM) from fracking. The environmental group is calling for a vote to end the disposal of TENORM material in Michigan landfills due to the potential harm to the state’s natural resources. “If the ban fracking proposal is placed on the ballot, voters in Michigan who overwhelmingly say they want to protect our state’s waters, land and communities will have the opportunity to overcome the oil industry’s grip on Lansing and protect our state,” said David Holtz, chair of Sierra Club Michigan Executive Committee, in a statement. “Michigan shouldn’t be the dumping grounds for other states’ radioactive and chemical fracking wastes and we shouldn’t be putting our public health and our waters at risk.”
Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder (R) last year suspended the disposal of TENORM waste in the state’s landfills after public outcry emerged following the public disclosure of TENORM imports from West Virginia and Pennsylvania to U.S. Ecology’s disposal site outside of Detroit. A state panel charged with looking at the state’s TENORM regulations, though, later found that the current 50 picocurie per gram disposal limit sufficiently safeguards public health, enabling resumption of disposal in the state.
The panel determined the design of the state’s hazardous waste landfills was adequate to protect the public and workers over the waste’s decay period, and it even suggested the landfills could accept higher levels of radiation. While the landfill design meets safety standards, the report recommended new regulations aimed at reducing radiation exposure, including the capping of waste a landfill could accept in a year and restricting its placement in the landfill, to ensure a higher level of safety at the sites. Environmental groups, though, saw the panel as a backroom deal meant to superficially qualm any public outrage.
The push for a referendum on the waste was initiated by the Committee to Ban Fracking in Michigan. U.S. Ecology, meanwhile, said in a response statement this week, “US Ecology supports Michigan’s TENORM advisory panel’s findings which are based on sound science.”
In the past decade, increased oil and gas exploration, particularly in the Marcellus Shale and Bakken Shale formations, has increased volumes of TENORM waste in states where that type of waste did not regularly occur. This increase has resulted in state governments shipping the waste to other states such as Michigan for disposal in landfills with higher thresholds for volumes and concentrations. This, in some cases, has drawn the ire of local citizens.
