Jeremy L. Dillon
RW Monitor
10/31/2014
U.S. Ecology has withdrawn a request to the state of Michigan that would have enabled its hazardous waste landfill outside Detroit to increase its radiation limits by 10 times the current limit. The Wayne Disposal landfill has been at the center of local outcry against the importation of radioactive fracking waste from outside the state. Michigan’s Republican Governor Rick Snyder created a panel of experts to look at the issue of fracking waste disposal in greater depth, and U.S. Ecology felt it was appropriate to pull the request while the panel conducts its work. “U.S. Ecology withdrew our application for an increase in activity levels at Wayne Disposal,” U.S. Ecology spokesman Dave Crumrine said late last week. “We felt it made sense to pull the request while the Governor’s panel assesses activity level limits for disposal in the state.”
Snyder has ordered the state’s Department of Environmental Quality to create a panel of experts to review the state’s low-level radioactive waste disposal policy. Snyder wants to make sure Michigan’s regulations of the Technologically-Enhanced Naturally-Occurring Radioactive Materials (TENORM) disposal are sufficiently protective of the public and environment. Public concern also prompted U.S. Ecology to stop shipments of the TENORM waste to its RCRA landfill outside Detroit, which it acquired in its acquisition of The Environmental Quality Company earlier this year.
West Virginia State Senator Fights In-State NORM Disposal
Meanwhile, a state senator from West Virginia introduced legislation last week that would stop the disposal on TENORM waste in the state’s landfills. Senate Majority Leader John Unger (D) vowed to protect the state’s drinking water from contamination of groundwater by fracking waste. “Allowing radioactive drill cuttings into landfills in karst regions is unacceptable,” Unger said in a statement. “As lawmakers, we have a duty to protect our citizens and guarantee that they have access to clean drinking water.” The bill would tighten regulations in regions of the state with karst topography, a landscape formed from the dissolution of soluble rocks that become porous and susceptible to leakage.
In the past decade, increased activity in oil and gas exploration, especially in the Marcellus Shale and Bakkan Shale formations, has increased volumes of Naturally-Occurring Radioactive Materials (NORM) waste in states where that type of waste did not regularly occur. This increase has resulted in states shipping the waste out-of-state for disposal in landfills with higher thresholds for volumes and concentrations, drawing the ire of local citizens. Michigan and New York have introduced similar legislation in its state legislature, while Pennsylvania and North Dakota are conducting studies on how much NORM waste can be disposed within local landfills.
