The Montana Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) said Wednesday it plans by Jan. 30 to request a 90-day extension to its rulemaking on management of technologically enhanced naturally occurring radioactive materials (TENORM) waste.
The request, which will be submitted to Montana Secretary of State Corey Stapleton, is intended to give DEQ additional time to consider input submitted during the public comment period that ended in November, according to department Public Policy Director Kristi Ponozzo.
The notice of the extended rulemaking from Stapleton’s office is expected to be posted by Feb. 9.
“Based upon the public input we have already received, DEQ will be revising the proposed TENORM rules and noticing the revisions during the spring of 2018,” Ponozzo stated by email. “Those revisions to the original proposed rules will undergo another public comment period and possibly another public hearing.”
The Department of Environmental Quality will respond to all “substantive comments” and aims by next fall to ready the final rule package for adoption by the secretary of state.
TENORM is naturally radioactive material that has come into contact with the environment or has been concentrated as a result of human activities, such as oil and natural gas production. This can include contaminated equipment, mineral scales within pipes, and sludges or sediments, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
Among the rules laid out in the original Montana draft document, a TENORM waste management system could not be built, expanded, or operated without a DEQ solid waste management system license; annual average TENORM concentration in a disposal unit could not exceed 50 picocuries per gram of radium-226 plus radium-228; any waste surpassing that level could not be accepted at a landfill; and any TENORM waste management plan must feature specific criteria on which wastes would be housed at a landfill, the on-site sampling and testing to be employed, and procedures for waste rejection, among other measures.
The Buckhorn Energy Oaks Disposal Services site in eastern Montana is the state’s sole operational TENORM waste disposal facility, receiving over 250,000 tons of radioactive waste as of late 2017 – primarily from oil and gas extraction operations in neighboring North Dakota.
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