A hazardous waste landfill in Wayne County is preparing to take 6,000 cubic yards of soil and concrete and 4,000 gallons of groundwater contaminated with elevated radiation from a site in New York where the Manhattan Project developed the atomic bomb during and just after World War II.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, working on remediation of the Niagara Falls Storage Site in Lewiston, New York, estimates that 25 semitrucks per week, into January 2025, will transport the elevated radioactive wastes along public roads and highways to the Wayne Disposal facility just off Interstate 94 in Van Buren Township.
The New York waste removal, its trucking to Michigan and disposal in Wayne County comply with all local, state and federal regulations for the handling of such materials, said Avery Schneider, deputy chief of public affairs for the Army Corps' Buffalo District.
"The first thing we look at in all of these projects is how we can do it safely — from the employees on-site who are working around the material, excavating it and preparing it for removal, to the communities around the site, to the folks who are going to transport it out to Belleville, Michigan, to where it can be safely stored," he said.
But that's a sore subject to many in southeast Michigan concerned about having among the nation's largest hazardous waste processing and landfilling facilities in their backyard. In February 2023, shipments to Wayne Disposal and other southeast Michigan facilities of hazardous waste from an East Palestine, Ohio, train derailment prompted a large outcry from the public, local officials and state and federal lawmakers. Government representatives demanded to know why locals were given no notice about the shipments in advance. Under pressure, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency officials stopped shipments of the Ohio train derailment wastes to Michigan .
But on a daily basis, Wayne Disposal and nearby companion hazardous waste processing facility Michigan Disposal take in a variety of hazardous wastes, often from other states.
More: How southeast Michigan became a dumping ground for America's most dangerous chemicals
More: After East Palestine, more in Michigan wonder what hazards roll by on trains
Michigan Rep. Reggie Miller, D-Van Buren Township, was informed by the Free Press of the upcoming shipments to Wayne Disposal of elevated radiation wastes from atomic bomb development in New York.
"I was not aware of this, nor was I alerted. That's frustrating," she said. "I'm not happy about that, to say the very least."
Miller said she's particularly concerned about the shipments as they roll on public roads.
"That's always been my issue — what happens if that semi overturns and it goes into water?" she said. "We have the largest lake in Wayne County (Belleville Lake) and that's always been a concern."
The legacy of Manhattan Project residue
During and after World War II, the Manhattan Engineering District contracted with processing facilities across the country to extract uranium from ore to create the uranium metal needed to develop atomic bombs. The unused ore material that remained after the extraction process, called residue, retained elevated radioactivity.
Created in February 1944 on the idled grounds of the former Lake Ontario Ordnance Works, the Niagara Falls Storage Site in Lewiston, New York, became a primary storage location for wastes and byproducts associated with uranium ore refining being carried out in Tonawanda, New York, in support of the Manhattan Project.
The Manhattan Engineer District became the Atomic Energy Commission in 1946, and shipments of radioactive waste continued to the Niagara site until 1952.
A nationwide cleanup effort for former atomic weapon and energy sites was undertaken beginning in 1974, the Formerly Utilized Sites Remedial Action Program, or FUSRAP. The U.S. Department of Energy handed the program over to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in the 1990s.
The Niagara site, in a cleanup expected to last until 2038, will leave the property in a condition suitable for industrial use, Schneider said.
The project is in its first phase, in which 6,000 cubic yards of soil and concrete will be excavated from the 191-acre site. A more concentrated, 10-acre area within the facility where higher-radiation waste is stored on-site will be dealt with later. Prep work for phase one excavation is underway now, Schneider said, with the actual digging starting "later this month and into September."
Republic Services, the Arizona-based owners of Wayne Disposal, responded to Free Press inquiries with an emailed statement from Melissa Quillard, senior manager of external communications.
"Environmental remediation projects require facilities that are equipped to manage the material responsibly," she stated. "Complex waste streams must go to the right site to ensure they are safely and compliantly managed, which means interstate shipments commonly occur."
Quillard noted that the Wayne Disposal landfill "is highly engineered with multiple safety measures in place, including frequent inspections and systems tests to ensure everything is operating as it should."
The elevated radiation materials coming from the Niagara Site "fall well within our permit guidelines," she stated.
Higher radiation waste won't come to Michigan
The Army Corps has committed that all materials shipped to Wayne Disposal from the Niagara site will be less than 50 picocuries per gram in radiation, said T.R. Wentworth II, manager of the Radiological Protection Section of the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy's Materials Management Division. One picocurie is roughly equivalent to background levels of radioactivity naturally occurring in the environment.
That's a stricter guideline than both federal and state environmental regulations would require, he said.
"As a regulator, the state doesn't have any concerns for this (Niagara site) material from a health and safety standpoint," Wentworth said.
A 2018 revision to Michigan environmental law placed additional monitoring requirements on landfills accepting wastes with elevated levels of radiation beyond natural ambient levels, known as Technologically Enhanced Naturally Occurring Radioactive Material.
No conventional landfills have chosen to amend their licenses to accept these wastes, Wentworth said, leaving hazardous waste landfills like Wayne Disposal remaining as the only facilities where such wastes currently go.
The higher-radiation wastes at the Niagara site slated for removal in the next phase of the New York cleanup won't be going to Wayne Disposal, Wentworth said. "That would be in violation of their license," he said.
Wayne Disposal has previously accepted FUSRAP cleanup site wastes from other sites in New York, Ohio, New Jersey and Missouri, Schneider said.
Contact Keith Matheny: kmatheny@freepress.com.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Thousands of tons of radioactive waste from atom bomb-making heading to Wayne County
Most Popular
Comments / 0