The state of Colorado is restricting disposal of technologically enhanced naturally occurring radioactive materials (TENORM) waste within its borders while it prepares language for potential legislation to regulate the material.
Under Colorado’s 1963 Radiation Control Act the state is prohibited from developing regulations for managing TENORM prior to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency taking the same action – which has yet to happen. The state wants to change the decades-old law to allow for creation of TENORM rules.
“We have been authorized to develop language for a bill to modify the Colorado Radiation Control Act to allow [Colorado’s Department of Public Health and Environment] to promulgate regulations covering TENORM. We do not have a sponsor at this time,” Warren Smith, CDPHE community involvement manager, said by email Tuesday.
If the law is updated, the state agency would work with stakeholders to prepare TENORM rules, including those covering management and disposal of the material, Joe Schieffelin, manager of the department’s Solid Waste and Materials Management Program, wrote in a Nov. 7 letter to solid waste landfill owners and operators, oil and gas operators, and other stakeholders.
Meanwhile, the department is modifying 2007 interim rules on management of TENORM. To start, “and until future notice,” waste from oil and gas exploration and production that could have elevated concentrations of TENORM cannot be disposed of in state landfills that do not have direct approval and designation for such waste, Schieffelin stated.
That directive applies “unless and until each waste is sampled and tested on a per shipment basis or in a representative and statistically-valid manner consistent with the guidelines provided in Attachment B and found to contain TENORM at levels less than the administrative release levels found in the Interim Policy: combined Ra226+228 < 3 pCi/g, natural uranium <30 pCi/g and natural thorium < 3 pCi/g, each above background,” according to the letter, a follow-up to a letter from the state agency that was sent to stakeholders in May and rescinded in July.
Exploration and produce waste suspected of having high TENORM levels must be treated as if that is the case until proven otherwise, Schieffelin said. Such high-TENORM waste could then be shipped out of state or to three designated landfills in Colorado.
