It appears the Veolia Greentree Landfill in Elk County will not
receive any waste from the former Quehanna nuclear facility in
Karthaus after all.
On Monday, state Department of Environmental Protection
Community Relations Coordinator Freda Tarbell said the decision to
accept or deny the waste – comprised of demolition material from
the former nuclear facility – is at the discretion of the landfill;
officials there have already indicated they won’t accept the
material.
The DEP will now be forced to find another location for the
waste. That site has not been determined.
The subject of radioactive waste being shipped into Elk County
was brought up earlier this month after officials learned that DEP
had filed an amendment to the byproduct materials license it holds
at Quehanna with the Environmental Protection Agency. Contained in
that document was a request from the DEP to the EPA to allow an
exemption for the waste to be hauled to the landfill as long as it
didn’t endanger public health.
Tarbell said the Kness Landfill in McKean County, under the
operation of Rustick LLC, was never contacted about the
availability of using that facility to dump the material. Veolia is
operated by Veolia Environmental Services, a private company.
“It’s the landfill’s decision on whether to accept the waste or
not,” Tarbell said. “We (DEP) can’t force them to take to the
waste. That’s definitely the landfill’s decision.”
For DEP, it’s back to the drawing board on where to ship the
waste from the site, which is currently undergoing
decommissioning.
“Since the landfill has decided not to accept the waste, this is
an unresolved issue,” Tarbell said. “There will now be some
discussion about the best course of action.”
DEP, which began cleaning up the Quehanna site in 1998, had
indicated the radioactive material is low-level and includes
construction and demolition waste, specifically specially
corrugated steel sheets used for walls and ceilings and iron beams
contained in the various buildings that surround the operation.
“They (materials) were evaluated and tested and any portion of
the material where contamination existed was cut out,” Tarbell
said. “What was left doesn’t even fall into the category of
low-level radioactive waste, which is prohibited from
landfills.
“Anything that would come to Elk County would not be considered
low-level as the Nuclear Regulatory Commission defines it.”
Tarbell said since the clean-up began at Quehanna, “all kinds of
waste has been taken from the site,” including to locations that
deal specifically with radioactive material such as sites in Utah,
Nevada and South Carolina.
“Under NRC regulations, we (DEP) had to identify a single
landfill to take the material,” Tarbell said. “Due to logistics,
that’s how the Veolia landfill was decided on.”
Quehanna is actually owned by the state Department of
Conservation and Natural Resources and is located in the Quehanna
Wild Area of the Moshannon State Forest in Clearfield County. The
site is surrounded by state-owned forest and game lands, some of
which is also managed by the Pennsylvania Game Commission.
Most recently, PermaGrain Products Inc., rented the site from
DCNR until filing for bankruptcy in late December 2002. The site –
which consists of several buildings including a structure that
contained radioactive material handling cells – has since fallen
under the care of the state while decommissioning continues.
On Monday, officials with Veolia reiterated their vow to not
accept any waste from the Quehanna site.
Fox Township Supervisor Mike Keller remained leery of DEP’s
explanation.
“If it’s so safe, and in fact is not radioactive, why don’t they
(DEP) just recycle the material?” Keller wondered. “If this was
just demolition waste, then why did they apply for exemptions and
changes to the license?”
Keller said he, along with fellow supervisors Randy Gradizzi and
Jerry Zimmerman, asked the landfill operator to not take the waste,
which Veolia agreed to.
“We at the township are pleased with that decision,” Keller
said. “We let everybody know where we stood on the issue. We as
supervisors are concerned about the health and safety of our
residents.”
The supervisors also crafted an opposition letter to local state
lawmakers, including Senate President Pro Tempore Joe Scarnati,
R-Brockway, and Rep. Dan Surra, D-Kersey.
Earlier, Veolia’s Area Manager Donald Henrichs said the first
officials knew anything about the license amendment was when a
contractor called them about accepting the waste. When officials
found out it would be coming from Quehanna, they called DEP to ask
about it. They were then put in contact with the NRC and told it
was acceptable.
Elk County Recycling-Solid Waste Coordinator Bekki Titchner
indicated the state would save $1.2 million by sending the waste to
the landfill.
The Federal Register posted a notice about the waste on Oct. 11,
2006. Under the exemption granted to the landfill, any
low-contaminated demolition material from the facility and site
would, upon arriving at the landfill, no longer be subject to NRC
regulations.
