Jeremy L. Dillon
RW Monitor
2/6/2015
More investigation is needed to determine if additional radiological contamination exists outside the fence line of the Shallow Land Disposal Area in Armstrong County, Pa., a recent Environmental Protection Agency report said. Following a request from an activist, the EPA went through a trough of documents containing information about the burial practices of Nuclear Materials and Equipment Corp. (NUMEC), who operated the site in 1960s. The activist alleged that anecdotal evidence exists that material was buried in mines just outside the SLDA fence line, but the EPA was not able to confirm or deny the allegations. “The [Superfund Technical Assessment and Response Team] was unable to confirm or disprove statements made to EPA,” the report, released last month, said. “The documentation lacked completeness, yet provided snapshots of significant concerns that may warrant further investigation.” The report added, “Many documents were reviewed to assess the claims provided by an informed and concerned citizen activist, some of these documents are old, from the 1960s and 1970s, some are redacted, some appear to be incomplete, and some reference other documents. Having access to more complete records would assist with developing a more informed and complete review of concerns.”
‘We Haven’t Stopped Looking’
The area of concern exists just outside the Army Corp of Engineers-responsible SLDA site, known as Kiskimere Groundwater Investigation. The EPA has responsibility for the site, mainly to monitor for groundwater contamination. According to EPA’ On-Scene Coordinator Rich Rupert, the EPA has been continuously monitoring for extra contamination, but these documents do not pinpoint any potential troubleshoot areas. “There’s some interesting information in there, but there’s no smoking gun,” Rupert told RW Monitor this week. “Looking through these documents, there is a lot of evidence that suggest there is something somewhere, but it’s hard to put a geographic location to it. My conclusion from this document is that we need to keep looking, and we haven’t stopped looking.”
The SLDA site has come under intense scrutiny in the past year with the release of a Nuclear Regulatory Commission Investigator General’s report which concluded the Formerly Utilized Sites Remedial Action Program’s remediation plan “grossly underestimates” how much radioactive material remains on site while a lack of documents inhibits the government’s ability to know exactly what is buried on site. The SLDA site is one of the larger projects in FUSRAP. USACE is currently working on amending the Record of Decision for the site, with a completion date set for this summer. According to a recently released proposed ROD, the cost of the cleanup has jumped to $350 million under an increased 46 month timeline. If the EPA would need to conduct work outside of the Corps’ SLDA Area of Authorization (the 44 acres) would not delay the work nor change the ROD/ROD Amendment, Corps spokesman Dan Jones said.
