The U.S. Department of Energy now plans to issue its draft record of decision for a proposed 2.2-million-cubic yard landfill for the Oak Ridge Site in Tennessee on Sept. 30.
Officials with DOE’s Office of Environmental Management, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and the state of Tennessee agreed to delay publication of the ROD from Aug. 30 in order to allow more time to work out a mutually agreeable approach to regulating landfill wastewater effluents containing radionuclides.
Jay Mullis, manager of DOE’s Oak Ridge Office of Environmental Management, believes the EPA’s Atlanta-based Region 4 office is trying to implement much tougher standards for this type of runoff than those at either government or commercial facilities elsewhere in the country.
Traditionally, the EPA defers to Atomic Energy Act standards when the runoff contains radionuclide materials, Mullis said in April documents filed with EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler.
The new Environmental Management Disposal Facility at Oak Ridge would replace the nearly full Environmental Management Waste Management Facility. Like the existing facility, the new landfill would be located in the Bear Creek Valley at Oak Ridge. It would take low-level radioactive and mixed waste from cleanup at the Y-12 National Security Complex and the Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
Constance Jones, a manager with the EPA’s Superfund and Emergency Management Division, issued the formal extension in a memo dated Sept. 3. A record of decision lays out the plan of action at a Superfund site, such as Oak Ridge, under the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA). The ROD would commit the Energy Department to build a landfill to standards that would protect the environment and public health and safety.
After the ROD, the Energy Department would ultimately publish a remedial action work plan for the landfill in June 2021. The Energy Department has not issued a final cost estimate for the project.
