Jeremy L. Dillon
RW Monitor
10/17/2014
Sen. Robert Casey (D-Pa.) last week called on the Army Corps of Engineers to publicly release the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) that would allow the remediation of the Shallow Land Disposal Area (SLDA) site in Armstrong County, Pa. to continue. The MOU is needed to clarify the roles of the Corps, the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management, the National Nuclear Security Administration, and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission at the site after different, more radioactive material was discovered. “We can agree that the most important priority is ensuring the health and safety of the residents and the surrounding community,” Casey said in a letter to Jo-Ellen Darcy, the Assistant Secretary of the Army for Civil Works. “In addition, allowing the community the opportunity to understand the role of the federal agencies can provide a sense of transparency and ease as we move closer towards the removal of the nuclear material. The residents of Armstrong County have waited long enough for the clean-up to resume. I urge you to release the MOU quickly and devote sufficient resources to the remediation of the SLDA.”
According to Corps spokesman Candice Walters, the MOU is completed and has already been executed, but it remains off-limits to the public. “The MOU is complete. It was executed on June 13, 2014,” Walters said. “The MOU is marked ‘For Official Use Only’ and as such, we cannot release it or comment upon any of its contents. The Assistant Secretary of the Army (Civil Works) has received a letter from Senator Casey and we are preparing a response to him.”
Senator Has Pushed for Faster Cleanup of SLDA Site
Casey has been applying pressure to speed up the cleanup process, especially after a report earlier this year from the NRC Inspector General concluded that that the Corps’ remediation plan for the SLDA site “grossly underestimates” how much radioactive material remains on site while a lack of documents inhibits the government’s ability to know exactly what is buried on site. Casey, who publicly released the IG report, has been seeking answers about the government’s management of the site after the abrupt halt of the SLDA cleanup weeks after active remediation began in 2011. As reason for the suspension, the Corps said that the on-site contractor deviated from the Corps’ material-handling procedures and that a large amount of unanticipated complex material was found on site.
The SLDA site is one of the larger Formerly Utilized Sites Remedial Action Program projects. Through 2014, approximately $78 million has already been allocated for the cleanup, and in the Corps’ Fiscal Year 2015 budget request, FUSRAP asked for an additional $20 million. FUSRAP estimates that an additional $324 million is needed to complete the cleanup. The Corps anticipate issuing a Request for Proposal for remediation at the site in 2015, but a Record of Decision amendment is needed before it can move forward. “The Corps of Engineers is moving forward with finalizing the Record of Decision amendment and then holding a public meeting with a public comment period,” Walters said. “When that process is complete, the Corps plans to release a request for proposal for the site remediation activities.”
