Perma-Fix Northwest accepted a $23,275 fine for its failure in 2013-2014 to ensure it had sufficient third-party liability coverage for its Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) radioactive waste facility in Richland, Wash., the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said Tuesday.
Representatives for the federal agency and the company signed a consent agreement on Aug. 12.
The 35-acre Perma-Fix Northwest facility provides treatment and management of low-level and mixed-low-level radioactive wastes. Much of that involves mixed waste from the Department of Energy’s nearby Hanford Site, the most complex and expensive of the agency’s nuclear cleanup projects, the EPA said.
Perma-Fix Northwest’s RCRA permit, issued by the Washington state Department of Ecology, directed that the facility have third-party bodily injury and property damage “liability coverage of at least one million dollars per occurrence with an annual aggregate of at least two million dollars, exclusive of legal defense costs,” according to the consent agreement.
The EPA said it determined that Perma-Fix Northwest did not meet that requirement between Sept. 1, 2013, and Sept. 1, 2014. That could have led to a $37,500 daily fine from the EPA for breach of the RCRA mandate, the agreement says.
In the settlement, Perma-Fix Northwest neither admitted nor denied the EPA claim. But it agreed to pay the fine within 30 days of the final order, dated Aug. 13.
Perma-Fix Environmental Services, based in Atlanta, acquired the Richland facility in 2007 from Pacific EcoSolutions. The company declined to discuss the EPA agreement.
