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A new independent West Valley study shows nuclear waste
removal
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May 2008 photo of the Buttermilk
Creek "big slide"
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The DOE and irresponsible site owner NYSERDA (the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority, a public authority corporation of New York State) are proceeding down the same irrational path at West Valley as was taken at the Niagara Falls Storage Site: applying onsite "interim action" band-aids in a shortsighted, attempt to contain huge quantities of long-lived, dangerous radioactive wastes buried in the ground at an unsuitable physical location, this time at a uniquely unsuitable location on a rapidly eroding small plateau within a steep, unconsolidated glacial till filled valley that drains via Cattaraugus Creek into Lake Erie, an irrepleaceable freshwater resource.
For many years, New York State and federal DOE officials have backed indefinite onsite management of West Valley's wastes, not because it will save money and avoid environmental disaster in the long term, but simply because it is less costly in current budget years. Public expectation that the "Change We Can Believe In" Obama Administration would bring rigorous, scientific decision-making to DOE activities has not been realized. The Obama Administration has spent a trillion public dollars to bail out the ersatz investment scams of corrupt investment bankers, but it won't make the smart, short-term outlays required to implement cost-effective, long-term-protective waste management strategies at DOE's large nuclear waste sites. West Valley is threatening to come apart at the seams and contaminate precious Great Lakes drinking water supplies, but apparently a calculation has been made in both Albany and Washington that no immediate political harm will result from the continuation of DOE's unsound and failing nuclear waste management practices.
And so, in this latest, 2008 DEIS, the DOE and NYSERDA call for the long-overdue (1987 court-ordered), site-wide waste disposition decision (NEPA ROD) at West Valley, NY to be delayed thirty more years, proposing instead a NEPA-illegitimate (i.e. non-sitewide) "phased decision making" alternative that would continue to implement DOE and NYSERDA's onsite waste management plans through more "interim actions," including the NDA and North Plateau slurry walls, tank drying, and plastic covers over the burial grounds. This proposed alternative, widely regarded as a de facto final onsite waste management decision, violates the purpose and intent of NEPA because it does not provide the required final site-wide waste disposition decision for the majority of the site's wastes before significant public monies are spent. It is simply a prologue to a future CERCLA ("Superfund") morass, following in the pattern of the NFSS and Tonawanda, and represents a colossal failure of State leadership that even surpasses the original siting blunder of a naive Nelson Rockefeller. Such a fundamental violation of the purposes of NEPA would again result in State and federal governments throwing away public money, this time in the billions, trying to maintain waste isolation at this untenable location. The DOE employed the same NEPA-evasion strategy at the Niagara Falls Storage Site in the 1980s, squandering tens of millions on a faulty "interim" tumulus that otherwise would never have been sited, see a detailed description of the NFSS story; and in 1997 Congress transferred remediation of the the Tonawanda Manhattan Project site to the Army Corps of Engineers and called for the use of CERCLA, to replace the much more stringent NRC regulatory framework.
post-August
2009 storms photo of the Buttermilk Creek "big slide"
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The Spitzer administration did not offer to join the Coalition on West Valley Nuclear Wastes in its unsuccessful 2005 complaint against DOE for completion of the legitimate 1996 NEPA site-wide cleanup process and decision at West Valley. Instead the State joined DOE's "Core Team" and secretly planned this NEPA-illegitimate "interim end state" proposal which addresses only a fraction of the site's wastes. The unwise August 31, 2009 federal appeals court decision denying the Coalition's claim means that the DOE/NYSERDA-preferred "non-decision" alternative may proceed while the the legitimate 1987-court-ordered NEPA site-wide public review process is now at the whim of DOE and NYSERDA, an unconscionable situation for long-time public interest stakeholders.
A 2006 lawsuit brought by NYS/NYSDEC/NYSERDA against the DOE was subsequently submitted to mediation and after six secret negotiating sessions between NYS and DOE a settlement was reached in June 2009 and set down in a Consent Decree. The terms of this consent decree, released by the Buffalo office of the NYS Attorney General at the end of October, clearly constitute waste management decision-making. These decisions were made in secret and withheld from the public during the 2008 DEIS's comment period, thereby violating both NYS public administration law and proper NEPA process. The agreement assigns onsite waste management responsibilities and apportions cost splits for future "remedy actions" under CERCLA.
On September 5, 2009, three days before the close of the comment period on the 2008 DEIS, NYSERDA's project director revealed to the Coalition that transfer of control over "a portion of the [WVDPA] Project Premises on the north and east sides of the SDA to NYSERDA" is being negotiated with DOE prior to the decommissioning of the West Valley Demonstration Project in order to perform recently started knickpoint erosion control work on Erdman Brook, to establish "an erosion control buffer area for the SDA ... and to meet a requirement of NYSERDA's 6 NYCRR Part 380 Permit for the SDA." He further noted that "DOE and NYSERDA are working to develop and document a mutually agreeable cost split for this work." This pre-DEIS-decision onsite erosion control work, no doubt hastened by the August storms event, clearly implements some details of the DEIS's "phased decision making" alternative. Did the appeals court examine the details of the NYSERDA/DOE "tentative" settlement agreement prior to making its August 31, 2009 ruling denying the Coalition's complaint asking for a legitimate NEPA site-wide waste decision after 22 years of process?
A safe, fiscally sound outcome at the West Valley site requires New York State government to take the following actions:
NYS should not settle its lawsuit, but instead should engage expert counsel to vigorously pursue its legitimate causes for action against the DOE. NYS Attorney General Cuomo should give priority to necessary actions to ensure the prompt completion of the legitimate site-wide NEPA process that began in 1987 and culminated in the release of the 1996 site-wide DEIS, and to assure compliance with the letter of the 1980 West Valley Demonstration Project Act including:
1) injunctions to stop illegal onsite waste management "interim actions" being conducted by DOE before the legitimate NEPA site-wide review process Record of Decision (ROD) is issued; this NEPA site-wide ROD should have been issued over ten years ago;
2) a declaration that DOE is responsible for exhumation of the high-level waste tanks, the NRC-licensed Disposal Area (NDA) and the federally-sourced materials in the State Disposal Area (SDA), as well as removal of the process buildings and underlying contaminated soils; and
3) a declaration that the NRC must not apply the generic-EIS-supported, 1997 10 CFR Part 20 Subpart E (the so-called "License Termination Rule" or "LTR") to evaluate DOE's decommisioning plan for the WVDP Premises, but instead must perform a site-specific EIS to fulfill its main WVDPA task: the prescribing of West Valley site-specific cleanup criteria (see this discussion).
The Paterson Administration should demonstrate its understanding of the near-term threat that West Valley's wastes and site conditions pose to the regional watershed by promptly declaring that the burial grounds and HLW tanks must be exhumed, even if that means a substantial share of the cost of SDA exhumation is borne by New Yorkers and bonding of the project is required.
THE WEST
VALLEY COALITION'S COMMENTS ON THE CERCLA CONSENT DECREE
Attachment 1, Email
to Jim Rauch from David Munro, November 23, 2009
Attachment 2, EPA ltr to DOE West
Valley Project Mgr. Bower, Sept. 1, 2009
Attachment 3, DEC General
Counsel J Eckls reply to J Rauch, May 7, 2008
THE WEST VALLEY COALITION'S COMMENTS ON
THE 2008 DEIS
FACTS'
Comments on the 2008 West Valley DEIS
SUMMARY OF EXCURSIONARY AUGUST 2009 STORM
EVENTS
PHOTOS OF ONSITE EROSION
RESULTING FROM EXCURSIONARY AUGUST 2009 STORM EVENTS
PHOTOS OF OFFSITE EROSION IN THE IMMEDIATE
VICINITY OF THE WEST VALLEY SITE
PHOTOS OF
PREVIOUS EROSION ON THE WEST VALLEY SITE
Background
West
Valley, NY Nuclear Waste Site aerial photo
West Valley Nuclear Site aerial photo with
facilities and creeks identified
Interactive
Mapquest site location aerial photo/road map
Comments on the 1996 West Valley sitewide closure draft
EIS
Great
Lakes United resolution on West Valley Nuclear Wastes
Evaluation of the West Valley Remediation Act
bill
| Appalling irresponsibility by NY's
Democrat US Senators: July 2003, Schumer introduced the site transfer "study" bill; 9/30/05, Presidential-aspirant Clinton and Schumer introduced S.1806, the Pataki administration's WVRA bill, in the Senate. Representative Kuhl first introduced the WVRA bill in 2005. Ignoring the opposition of over 40 citizens' groups, Senators Schumer and Clinton subsequently re-introduced the WVRA bill in the 110th Congress. |
West Valley workers seek EEOICPA compensation for cancers
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