Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm told a House Appropriations panel Thursday that she supports a new on-site landfill at the Oak Ridge Site in Tennessee and that the Department of Energy is studying contamination at a school near the Portsmouth Site in Ohio.
The House Appropriations energy and water development subcommittee called Granholm in to talk about the budget before the Joe Biden administration released its detailed DOE spending proposal for fiscal year 2022.
For the entire DOE, Biden seeks $46 billion, according to the so-called skinny budget the White House released in April. However, the administration had not published its topline proposal for the Office of Environmental Management when Granholm testified about the cleanup office to DOE’s check-writers.
Among those check-writers is Rep. Tim Ryan (D-Ohio), a fresh face on the subcommittee for the 117th Congress. Ryan asked Granholm “to commit to a meeting” with residents of Pike County, Ohio near the Zahn’s Corner Middle School, which has been vacant for two years after Northern Arizona University researchers found air and soil samples around the campus contained enriched uranium and neptunium-237.
“We want to make sure that the people around there are safe,” Ryan said.
“I know Ike White … has met with the local community,” Granholm said, alluding to William (Ike) White, the acting assistant secretary for Environmental Management. “I’m happy to follow up with you. Obviously, safety is our highest priority.”
Ryan said some children who attended the school in the shadow of the former Gaseous Diffusion Plant have contracted cancer. The DOE Office of Office of Environmental Management has previously said contamination around the school is too minimal to threaten human health.
Ryan said pending open-air demolition of the X-326 Process Building, scheduled to start this spring and conclude in 2023, has increased local fear about off-site contamination.
“Significant work has been done to prepare Building X-326 for demolition in a manner that is safe and protective of the workers, the environment and the public,” an Environmental Management spokesperson said Friday via email. As an additional safety feature, the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency and the Ohio Department of Health have set up 23 air monitoring stations or co-located air monitors around the site to provide independent verification of DOE air monitoring data from demolition, the spokesperson said.
Meanwhile, over at the Oak Ridge Site in Tennessee, DOE continues to support plans for a new on-site 2.2-million-cubic yard landfill to replace the existing one that will be filled to capacity by 2027.
In response to Rep. Chuck Fleischmann (R-Tenn.), Granholm voiced support for the Environmental Management Disposal Facility, designed to hold low-risk construction waste from building demolition at the Y-12 National Security Complex and the Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
Granholm also expressed confidence DOE can iron out effluent runoff concerns about the proposed new landfill raised by Tennessee and the Environmental Protection Agency.
From the other side of the country, Rep. Dan Newhouse (R-Wash), whose district includes the Hanford Site, urged Granholm not to jettison a 2019 DOE policy change on high-level waste, which held some waste now classified as high-level poses no more risk than low-level or mixed waste.
While the policy was issued by DOE during the Donald Trump administration, the agency actually started laying the groundwork for it during the Barack Obama administration, Newhouse said.
Granholm stopped short of endorsing the policy.
“This administration is a believer in science,” Granholm said. “I do recognize there is some friction” and debate over the 2019 policy, the DOE boss added.
Meanwhile, Rep. Mike Simpson (R-Idaho), the ranking Republican on the subcommittee, questioned if surplus weapons-grade plutonium slated to be diluted at the Savannah River Site in Aiken, S.C., can be expediently disposed of at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in New Mexico, given various legal and operational issues at underground disposal site.
“Obviously WIPP is really important to DOE’s legacy cleanup mission,” Granholm said. None of the issues at WIPP, such as a lawsuit over the way the government calculates the volume of waste underground, is likely to stop disposal, she said. The secretary of energy also said there is a state hearing May 17 on resumption of work to sink a new underground utility shaft.
