DOE Reaches Agreement With Regulators on Mercury Treatment Facility
WC Monitor
6/5/2015
The Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge Environmental Management Office has reached a resolution in the dispute with environmental regulators over the proposed mercury-treatment facility at the Y-12 National Security Complex. The dispute had reached formal dispute status after DOE filed paperwork regarding a hoped-for wavier on certain requirements set forth in the Tennessee Ambient Water Quality Criteria for mercury. The level of the dispute was reportedly scaled back so that the agreement could be signed by lower-level officials of the DOE, U.S. EPA and the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation. “Resolution of this dispute with EPA and TDEC settles matters related to the size and performance expectations for the facility and allows us to proceed with design activities for the facility,” Mike Koentop, the executive officer with DOE’s Environmental Management Office, said in an email response to questions.
The $125 million facility is currently in the planning and design stages. The treatment facility will be constructed a short distance from Outfall 200, the site inside Y-12 where the pipelines in the plant’s storm sewer system converge and empty into the headwaters of East Fork Poplar Creek. The creek has long been posted as a hazard because of the large quantities of mercury discharged during the 1950s and 1960s work on development of thermonuclear weapons. Mercury was brought to Oak Ridge in vast supplies for the processing of lithium isotopes for use in the hydrogen bombs.
Out-of-compliance quantities continued to seep into the creek on a daily basis, and there has been an ongoing jousting between DOE and environmental regulators over how to get to the desired reduction in the mercury contamination at Y-12 and in the creek. The plant’s National Pollutant Discharge Elimination Permit remains under dispute because of certain mercury projects that the state wanted to insert into the permit. Meanwhile, the resolution to the dispute on the new mercury treatment facility was signed in late May by Franklin Hill, director of the Superfund Division for EPA’s Region 4; Shari Meghreblian, deputy commissioner of TDEC; and Sue Cange, manager of DOE’s Oak Ridge Office of Environmental Management.
Dispute Centered on Mercury Waiver
The document indicates that the crux of the dispute was DOE’s request for an interim waiver from the Tennessee Ambient Water Quality Criteria for mercury during construction and operation of the treatment facility. According to the document, the mercury standard is 51 parts per trillion. The standard will remain in effect, although there are provisions in the resolution equipment that could give DOE a waiver down the road.
The agreement states that if Y-12 still fails to meet the standards after two years of operating the treatment facility, the three parties – DOE, EPA and TDEC – will “collaborate” on possible “follow-on actions.” The agreement said those future actions could include modifications to the treatment facility to help additionally reduce mercury levels in the upper stretches of the creek inside Y-12. The document also states that if the parties decide not to modify the treatment facility and if other possible actions are not considered “reasonable” for achieving compliance, then DOE will be granted a waiver by EPA and TDEC.
The facility will have a treatment capacity of 3,000 gallons per minute for waters discharged from the plant’s storm sewer system. There will be an additional 2 million gallons of stormwater storage available. The agreement also notes that water bypassing the treatment facility — because of flow conditions or storage capacity limitations — must not exceed a daily concentration of 2,000 parts per trillion of mercury or annual rolling flux of kilogram per year of total mercury. It is noted that discharges from the treatment facility must not be acutely toxic to fish and other aquatic life in the East Fork.
TDEC spokeswoman Kelly Brockman said the new treatment plant will be “an important step in reducing mercury concentration in fish downstream over time.” In a statement, she said, “In additional to agreement on discharge standards for the treated effluents, standards for water that bypasses treatment during storm events were also agreed.” She also noted the provisions that allow the parties to “determine next steps.”
