An amended record of decision published this week by the Department of Energy officially withdrew an earlier designation of Waste Control Specialists as a storage site for elemental mercury.
The long-telegraphed move was part of a legal settlement DOE reached in 2020 with gold mining concerns, themselves domestic generators of elemental mercury, who sued DOE over the selection of Waste Control Specialists (WCS) of Andrews, Texas, as the storage provider.
Under the August 2020 settlement, DOE agreed both to undo its selection of WCS and accept title to and store 112 metric tons of elemental mercury in temporary storage at gold mine facilities owned by Nevada Gold Mines, the joint venture between Barrick and Newmont that sued DOE, according to this week’s notice. The mines said DOE planned to overcharge for storage.
“As part of the settlement agreement we basically are starting over,” on mercury storage, Doug Tonkay, DOE’s acting assistant secretary for waste and materials management, said during a Thursday session at the Waste Management Symposia in Phoenix. “Everything moves slower when you have a lot of lawyers helping you.”
With much larger quantities excluded for now from WCS, DOE is looking for someone to take care of the smaller tranche of mercury owned by Nevada Gold Mines.
On Feb. 4, the agency issued a request for task-order proposals seeking potential bidders to provide ancillary services for the management and storage of up to 120 metric tons of elemental mercury, under the Mercury Export Ban Act of 2008.
Meanwhile, the department said it “did not store mercury at WCS as a result of the AROD [amended record of decision] and is not currently storing any mercury at the WCS site,” according to the amended record of decision.
A previous record of decision from December 2019, undone by this week’s amended decision, selected WCS for the management and storage of up to 6,800 metric tons (7,480 tons) of mercury.
Nevada Gold Mines argued among other things that the fee the agency planned to charge — and let its contractor collect — for long-term storage was far too high and DOE failed to properly document the price.
William (Ike) White, the DOE’s senior adviser for the Office of Environmental Management, authorized publication of the Federal Register notice on March 1.
In 2011, DOE studied more than a half-dozen potential sites, both government and privately-held, for long-term mercury storage.
The Mercury Export Ban Act of 2008 called upon DOE to set up a long-term storage site for domestic mercury by 2013, according to an environmental impact statement from 2011. The exact amount that will need to be stored there is uncertain and could be affected by factors like declining U.S. gold mining. The DOE has a large tranche now held at the Y-12 National Security Complex at Oak Ridge, Tenn.
