WAYNE COUNTY, MI \u2014 The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is sending lightly irradiated waste from upstate New York to Texas instead of Michigan after backlash from surrounding communities sparked a lawsuit against the landfill operator.<\/p>\n
The Army Corps said it began shipping 6,000 cubic yards of material from a Manhattan Project leftover waste site in Lewiston, N.Y. to a landfill in Texas earlier this month.<\/p>\n
Initial plans to dump the material at the Wayne Disposal Landfill in Van Buren Township near Belleville sparked outraged backlash<\/a> among surrounding communities last summer.<\/p>\n The Army Corps said the lightly radioactive soil and rubble from the Niagara Falls Storage Site, a uranium ore waste facility undergoing a remediation project, is just slightly above natural background radiation levels that people experience daily.<\/p>\n But Wayne County residents reacted strongly<\/a> to the idea of living near waste leftover from the World War II atomic bomb program. Municipalities sued landfill owner Republic Services and won a temporary restraining order<\/a> in state court last fall.<\/p>\n The larger lawsuit remains pending.<\/p>\n Republic Services spokesperson James Richardson said the Wayne landfill has not received any of the waste in question since last September and referred further questions to the Army Corps.<\/p>\n Wayne County Executive Warren Evans expressed relief about the redirected shipments in a statement this week.<\/p>\n \u201cAlthough I certainly do not envy the community that will receive this waste, it was my job to fight for the people of Wayne County and that\u2019s what I did to the best of my ability,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n The Army Corps said it began shipping it to the Waste Control Specialists facility in Andrews County, Tex., the week of July 14.<\/p>\n \u201cAfter careful evaluation, the Corps of Engineers approved a contractor-proposed plan to ship material to Texas,\u201d said Andrew Kornacki, Army Corps Buffalo District spokesperson.<\/p>\n The decision was made to keep remediation at the Niagara Falls site on schedule, Kornacki said. The Army Corps had initially chosen Michigan because it was the closest state with an adequate landfill and therefore the least expensive transportation option. The waste had to be shipped out of state because New York bans disposal of any radioactive waste.<\/p>\n The Texas Compact Waste Facility<\/a> is licensed to receive TENORM, or Technologically Enhanced Naturally Occurring Radioactive Material.<\/p>\n Messages to Texas county officials weren\u2019t immediately returned.<\/p>\n Legislation introduced last year by Democrats in Lansing would have banned radioactive waste import to Michigan, but it died in the December lame duck session. This June, legislation to disincentivize hazardous waste imports by hiking tipping fees on radioactive material cleared committee in the Democratic-controlled Senate. A companion bill in the Republican-controlled House hasn\u2019t moved since it was introduced in April.<\/p>\n Brandon Grysko, an attorney representing municipalities in the lawsuit against Republic Services, called the decision to redirect waste a \u201cclear win\u201d but said the case is continuing to potentially prevent the landfill from accepting other TENORM waste.<\/p>\n \u201cIt doesn\u2019t necessarily make the case moot or mean that there\u2019s not additional restrictions that would be necessary,\u201d Grysko said.<\/p>\n The case remains pending before Wayne County Judge Kevin Cox after being briefly removed to federal court last year.<\/p>\n \u201cThe law allows for the judge to impose additional restrictions if he finds that there\u2019s statutory deficiencies,\u201d Grysko said.<\/p>\n If you purchase a product or register for an account through a link on our site, we may receive compensation. By using this site, you consent to our User Agreement<\/a> and agree that your clicks, interactions, and personal information may be collected, recorded, and\/or stored by us and social media and other third-party partners in accordance with our Privacy Policy.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WAYNE COUNTY, MI \u2014 The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is sending lightly irradiated waste from upstate New…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":90020,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[746,159,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-90019","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-environment","9":"tag-science","10":"tag-united-states","11":"tag-unitedstates","12":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90019","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=90019"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90019\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/90020"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=90019"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=90019"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=90019"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}