Radioactive waste
Drums of highly toxic radioactive transuranic wastes set inside a salt cavern at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in Carlsbad New Mexico March 20, 2006.
(Photo by Brian Vander Brug/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)
- In the last three years, 2 million pounds of radioactive fracking waste has been exported from North Dakota into Oregon and then illegally buried in a landfill in Arlington.
- The state’s Energy Department regulators said the landfill won’t be fined for accepting the radioactive waste.
- The disposal of such toxic fracking waste is now a national scale controversy.
It started with a tip from North Dakota.
Oilfield Waste Logistics of Culbertson, Montana, needed to dispose of their radioactive toxic waste from Bakken oil field and proposed doing so to Chemical Waste Management, a landfill operator in Oregon. Between 2016 and September 2019, nearly 2 million pounds of radioactive waste— highly contaminated filters, tank sludge and slurry from drilling pipes— were transported to Oregon on unmarked railcars and buried in Arlington, the Oregonian reported.
Here’s where things started getting gnarly. No one’s allowed to bury radioactive fracking waste in Oregon. It’s illegal. The state actually passed a law in 1980 prohibiting many types of disposal of radioactive waste in the state. A proprietor also cannot store unwanted radioactive waste for more than 7 days, and must contact Oregon’s Department of Energy for assistance in disposing of it.
In the last three years, 2 million pounds of radioactive fracking waste has been exported from North Dakota into Oregon and then illegally buried in a landfill in Arlington near the Columbia Gorge.
Chemical Waste Management did not carefully examine whether or not they could dispose of the specific type of waste, according to the Oregonian. “We don’t think they did the due diligence to make sure this could be disposed of here,” said Ken Niles, assistant director for nuclear safety at the agency
After receiving a tip from someone in North Dakota, Oregon regulators discovered the illegal waste disposal after checking data provided by the landfill as well as from the state of North Dakota.
In addition for the waste disposal being illegal, some of the waste registered radium at 300 times the state’s limits, in the landfill with the landowners’ permission. On average, the waste registered radium at 140 picocuries per gram, Jeff Burright, a state nuclear waste remediation specialist, told the Oregonian. For context, the state’s maximum level for waste stored at Arlington is 5 picocuries.
This highly radioactive waste is stored on the 1,300-acre landfill and is covered by just 10 feet of other material.
Oregon Department of Energy officials issued a notice of violation to Chemical Waste Management’s landfill near the small town of Arlington last week. But this notice of violation is missing a seemingly vital portion: a penalty.
The state’s Energy Department regulators said the landfill won’t be fined for accepting the radioactive waste. Their reasoning behind it is that they believe landfill operators misunderstood state guidelines and weren’t aware of the violations, Niles told the Oregonian.
Both Oilfield Waste Logistics cited Oregon rules and landfill operators referred to the wrong Oregon state standards for waste containing radium, according to regulators. “We don’t know if it was intentional or accidental,” Niles said, adding that the state nuclear waste rules are complicated. “They could have misunderstood.”
When in violation of state waste disposal laws, Niles explained, companies can only be fined if certain qualifications are met. Fines range from $60 to $500 a day.
The fines are dynamic. For example, fines can be enforced if a violator has previously been warned of a violation and didn’t change its behavior. The fines are also imposed if a company willfully violated the law, and this violation results in “significant adverse impacts” to humans or the environment.
Speaking to the Oregonian, Niles said none of those issues applied in the case of Chemical Waste Management. So for the site, a fine has not been issued. Nor has a fine been issued for the logistics company or the owner.
“That could change if something were to change in our knowledge,” Niles said. “But the company has been taking this very seriously. They have been very cooperative and want to do the right thing.”
But does being cooperative negate the massive public health risk they’ve posed, and environmental disaster they could cause?
Regulators said the biggest risks would be if the waste were ingested or inhaled, as the Oregonian reported, if people faced direct exposure or if it emitted radon. Currently the state does not believe those issues are a risk.
The Oregonian reported that employees at the landfill avoided direct exposure because they work in pressurized cabins and when they’re outside, rely on oxygen masks.
Chemical Waste Management’s only obligation is to create a risk assessment and action plan to address the violation.
That’s it.
It is becoming increasingly difficult to find radioactive dump sites in Oregon. The Arlington landfill, which accepts about 20 million pounds of hazardous chemical waste a month, is among only a dozen sites nationwide that can accept certain types of such waste, according to the Oregonian’s reporting.
Oregon doesn’t have any other locations that would accept it, regulators said, and several other states are seeking to enact limits on the waste similar to Oregon’s.
This is the first time anyone had been caught illegally disposing of radioactive waste in Oregon, and the first time the Department of Energy has exercised its related regulatory authority.
Comedian and political commentator John Oliver of HBO’s ‘Last Week Tonight’ did a full length investigative episode on the alarming history and presence of toxic waste disposal regulations and practices in the United States:
The disposal of such toxic fracking waste is now a national scale controversy. Its health and safety impacts on those who come within a certain proximity of the waste and the fact that 38 out of 50 states contain some form of a radioactive dump site.
