Citizens
group to sue over West Valley cleanup
By Rick Miller
The Times Herald
04/11/03
ASHFORD HOLLOW- A citizens group plans to sue the U.S. Department
of Energy over its decision to split the environmental impact
statement on cleanup at the West Valley Demonstration Project.
The Coalition on West Valley Nuclear Waste will proceed
with the lawsuit because they feel DOE has violated a 1987
agreement with the group by proposing to leave radioactive
material at the 3,345-acre site in the town of Ashford.
Splitting the EIS in to two parts waste management alternatives
and long-term stewardship of the WVDP site a Coalition spokesman
said, will let DOE reclassify high-level radioactive waste
and leave it on-site.
This amounts to linguistically detoxifying high-level radioactive
wastes, which would be grouted or cemented in place, Diane
D’Arrigo of the Washington, D.C.-based Nuclear Information
and Resource Service, said Thursday at a hearing on the
EIS. The whole site, she said, will someday erode into the
Great Lakes.
Ray Vaughan of the Coalition and a member of the Citizens
Task Force, said erosion of the site over hundreds of years
could carry buried radioactive wastes from the 175-acre
DOE site and the state licensed low-level radioactive disposal
site into waterways that empty into Lake Erie.
Another longtime member of the Coalition, Carol Mongerson,
who disclosed the decision to sue DOE for violating a stipulation
compromise, said radioactive waste should be retrievable,
packaged and stored ready to be moved when a safer more
suitable (disposal) area has been found.
Gary Abraham of the Cattaraugus County Concerned Citizens
group, said, We want a full cleanup of the site and are
concerned about splitting the EIS. He also asked where the
money for the cleanup would come from given rising federal
budget deficits.
Under the West Valley Demonstration Project Act of 1980,
the federal government currently pays 90 percent of the
cleanup costs, while the New York State Energy Research
and Development Agency (NYSERDA) pays 10 percent.
Alice Williams, DOE director of the West Valley Demonstration
Project, said the EIS was not being split so we can do something
clever by renaming high-level radioactive wastes.
She said since off-site disposal is now available for low-level
radioactive wastes, it makes sense to address that now so
officials can then concentrate on issues of decommissioning
and stewardship, which will take much longer.
Dan Sullivan of the DOE said officials hope to complete
the first EIS before the end of this year. A draft EIS on
the long-term decommissioning and stewardship issues is
expected to be presented next month.
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