A hazardous waste treatment and disposal facility in Wayne County will accept low-level radioactive soil and concrete from a Manhattan Project remediation site in western New York, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said Monday, a development that met with opposition from Wayne County’s governor.
Wayne Disposal Inc. in Belleville is the closest licensed disposal facility to the Niagara Falls Storage Site that can accept the material, said Brent LaSpada, site project manager for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in the Buffalo District.
“If you want to transport material in the safest way, you do it in the shortest way possible. For this material, transporting it from Western New York to Michigan just makes sense,” he said.
The Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy approved the shipment, Army Corps spokesman Andy Kornacki said. Under federal hazardous waste disposal law, shipments do not have to be approved by states, but the Army Corps wants that anyway, Kornacki said.
The disposal complies with the state’s environmental laws and poses no significant risk to the public or the environment, EGLE spokesman Scott Dean said in a statement Monday. The department said it reviewed laboratory analyses and the Army Corps’ work plan before approving the shipment.
“The materials intended for Wayne Disposal are soil and debris that still contain residual radioactivity from uranium processing during World War II,” the agency said. “The waste intended for Wayne Disposal is exempt from federal radioactive material disposal regulations and has concentrations well below those permitted in the permit.”
Wayne County Executive Warren Evans expressed his frustration over the garbage shipment in a statement.
“There has to be a better way to handle and dispose of hazardous waste and toxic chemicals that doesn’t always result in these most unwelcome materials finding their way into Wayne County,” Evans said. “While I understand that these materials have to go somewhere and few, if any, public officials are willing to welcome toxic waste with open arms, there has to be a solution through new policies or legislation that doesn’t view Wayne County as a dumping ground for things no one else wants. Because that’s a job we’re simply not going to take on.”
Evans recalled events in early 2023, when some of the hazardous waste released during the high-profile train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, was sent to disposal facilities in Michigan.
Evans, other Wayne County officials and some Detroit-area lawmakers were outraged by the shipment, in part because they had not been informed about it, and called on EGLE to improve its transparency regarding the import of hazardous waste into the region.
About contaminated material
In March 2023, Representative Reggie Miller (D-Van Buren Township) sponsored a House resolution calling on the federal government to increase transparency and reporting standards for the transportation of toxic waste across state and municipal lines. The resolution passed that same month.
On Monday, Miller said she was in contact with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Department of Transportation and Michigan’s congressional delegation to stay updated on the shipment.
“This is not the first time Wayne Disposal Inc. and Michigan Disposal Inc. have accepted hazardous waste from other states. As always, it is imperative to protect our community’s right to safety, especially when it comes to transporting hazardous materials across our public roads and into our landfills,” Miller said.
The Niagara Falls Storage Site was used from 1944 onwards to store radioactive residues and waste from uranium ore processing. The processing was carried out by the Manhattan Engineer District, which developed the atomic bomb during World War II.
The contaminants do not migrate from the site, LaSpada said. The Army Corps cleans up sites contaminated by early nuclear energy and weapons development, including the Niagara Falls storage facility, and sends the waste to approved disposal facilities. Twenty-one sites are in the Formerly Utilized Sites Remedial Action Program and another 10 are monitored by the U.S. Department of Energy.
Cleanup at the Niagara Falls camp site is in Phase 1, LaSpada said. The contractor working on the Army Corps project will excavate about 5,500 cubic yards of contaminated soil and concrete in the first phase of the project.
Kornacki said no contaminated groundwater will be transported to Michigan. The groundwater will be treated near the cleanup site, he said.
The soil and concrete shipped to Michigan would contain small amounts of radioactivity that could be harmful to health if exposed for a long time, LaSpada said.
LaSpada described the radioactivity of the waste from Phase 1 as “on the low end of the scale” compared to the material being excavated from the landfill in Phase 2. He said it was “very unlikely” that the high-level waste would be sent to Wayne Disposal, but the Army Corps has not yet identified a disposal site for Phase 2.
The Army Corps does not notify communities along the route where the garbage is shipped because that would be a large number of notifications, LaSpada said.
When deliveries begin
Waste shipments from Phase 1 of the project to Michigan will begin in September, LaSpada said. The waste will be transported in trucks equipped with liners to contain the waste. The trucks will be washed when they leave the site to prevent them from spreading contamination, he said.
Kornacki said trucks carrying hazardous waste would largely remain on interstate highways, which the U.S. Department of Transportation considers “preferred routes” for transporting hazardous waste, unless states establish preferred alternative routes.
According to a poster Kornacki provided to the Detroit News, the trucks will follow an Army Corps-designated route to New York interstates. From there, they will stay on interstate highways until they reach the Belleville disposal facility on Interstate-94.
Michigan does not have preferred transportation routes for hazardous waste, but there are some restrictions on the movement of radioactive waste, such as the Lodge Freeway between Howard Street and Woodward Avenue, the Mackinac Bridge, and border crossings into Canada, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation’s National Hazardous Materials Route Registry.
