Air and Water at Risk from Mixed Waste Landfill?

Mayor Joins Citizens on Landfill Concerns

Mayor Baca, and Citizen Action, a local environmental group, and members of the Albuquerque/Bernalillo County Groundwater Protection Advisory Board announced on June 18th support for the cleanup of the Sandia Mixed Waste Landfill.

The 2.6-acre site was used to dispose of radioactive and chemical waste in unlined pits and trenches from 1959 to 1989.

The landfill contains about 3700 cubic yards of waste contaminated with 6300 curies of activity, including short-lived radionuclides (such as tritium and cobalt-60) and very long-lived radionuclides (such as depleted uranium).

The half lives of these radionuclides range from days to billions of years.

The landfill consists of both classified and non-classified areas where waste was disposed over the course of 30 years.

While much of the buried wastes are solids, a large quantity (over 200,000 gallons) of reactor coolant water was discharged to trench D in 1967.

Over the past year, the Albuquerque/Bernalillo County Groundwater Protection Advisory Board has reviewed the data, held hearings and has completed its findings and recommendations in a formal resolution.

The New Mexico Environment Department plans to make a decision on the Sandia Mixed Waste Landfill permit modification this summer.

Mayor Jim Baca and Citizen Action support the following recommendations of the Albuquerque/Bernalillo County Groundwater Protection Advisory Board (GPAB), calling for the New Mexico Environment Department to include the following GPAB recommendations in a permit modification for the landfill:

• Install a cover to prevent airborne transport of contaminants, limit infiltration of water into the landfill, prevent intrusion, and prevent erosion at the site.

• Continue monitoring efforts at the landfill until remediation activities are completed. Current efforts by Sandia National Laboratories and the Department of Energy to identify technologies for improved monitoring of contaminants in the environment and for waste recovery and/or stabilization of contaminated sites should be continued.

• Place a condition in Sandia National Laboratories' Resource, Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) permit that remediation of the landfill be evaluated every five years, or when a change of property ownership occurs, or when monitoring indicates a change of conditions within the landfill.

• Excavate the landfill and properly stabilize and dispose of the landfill materials when either: 1) radiation levels decrease to levels acceptable for remediation activities, or 2) the waste is determined to present an unacceptable risk to human health and the environment.

• Sandia National Laboratories and the Department of Energy should develop a mechanism by which financial assurance can be provided to the City of Albuquerque, Bernalillo County, and the State of New Mexico to maintain adequate institutional control over the landfill as long as waste is present at the site.

This financial assurance should include a provision for adequate technical and fiscal resources necessary to complete waste removal, disposal, and remediation activities at the site.

• Work with the City of Albuquerque and Bernalillo County on land use constraints for the landfill that will prevent inappropriate development near the site.

Mayor Baca and Citizen Action are also:

• asking for clarification of when cleanup of the landfill will occur and urging for a cleanup date as soon as it is safe to do so;

• requesting that the Department of Energy make this site a visible demonstration project;

• requesting that air above the landfill be monitored on an ongoing basis; and,

• requesting that Sandia Labs and the Department of Energy enhance the provision of information to the public.

Mayor Baca stated: "Our overriding concern is to ensure that the mixed waste landfill does not and will not pose a threat to human health or the environment, now or in the future. More specifically, we must:

• protect the groundwater resource that underlies the landfill;

• ensure that the landfill doesn't pose a threat from airborne contamination;

• ensure that the integrity of the landfill cover will not be compromised by intrusion of animals or humans;

• ensure that wastes contained in the landfill do not enter the biological food chain;

• ensure that land in the vicinity will remain safe for future development as the City expands to the south;

• ensure the safety of workers who will be involved in construction of the landfill cover in the near term, monitoring of the facility over a period of decades and eventual excavation, stabilization and disposal of buried wastes;

• include the public in discussions and decisions regarding effective stewardship; and

• continue a constructive dialogue between all local, state and federal agencies."

Air Contamination Not Monitored at Dump

Although the Mixed Waste Landfill (MWL) is considered pretty small by some standards, it will remain hazardous essentially forever.

We don't have accurate records of everything that's buried in it; it's leaking tritium into the air and soil (radioactive hydrogen), plutonium, and potentially other contaminants as well.

An independent scientist has concluded it might have already contaminated the groundwater. Still, despite a call for cleanup from hundreds of members of several communities, area and downstream and government officials including: Mayor Jim Baca, the City/County Groundwater Protection Advisory Board, and New Mexico State Land Commissioner Ray Powell, Sandia National Laboratories (SNL) and the Department of Energy (DOE) refuse to clean it up because it will cost too much and would likely "set a precedent" for cleanup of other contaminated sites.

In the meantime, contaminants in the air around the dump are not being monitored, and haven't been monitored since 1993, because at that time they existed at levels "below regulatory standards."

Dr. Miles Nelson, a local physician and cofounder of Citizen Action, an environmental group advocating for cleanup of the hazardous waste dump, presented this information to the Albuquerque/Bernalillo County Air Quality Control Board in June.

The Board has authority over air quality for Albuquerque and Bernalillo County.

Apparently no one on the Board knew about the lack of monitoring at the landfill, but it's definitely on people's radar screen now.

The risk assessment conducted by SNL almost succeeds in giving the MWL a clean bill of health.

But in a recent report on risk commissioned by Citizen Action, Dr. Marvin Resnikoff of Radioactive Waste Management Associates, N.Y., found SNL's risk assessment of the MWL seriously flawed.

Dr. Resnikoff will present his findings at a public meeting hosted by Citizen Action on Fri-day, August 10th, at the University of New Mexico, in Albuquerque.