Detroit – A number of politicians, including U.S. Reps. Debbie Dingell and Rashida Tlaib, vowed Tuesday to push for a change in the law to require state officials and local communities to be notified when hazardous waste is transported and stored in the state.
The demands were made during a Wayne County Commission committee meeting that took place a week after news broke that a hazardous waste treatment and disposal facility in Van Buren Township will accept low-level radioactive soil and concrete from a Manhattan Project remediation site in western New York state, according to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The Manhattan Project was a research and development program conducted during World War II to produce the first nuclear weapons.
The plan has drawn fierce opposition from Wayne County government officials, who are demanding more transparency. On Tuesday afternoon, the Wayne County Commission discussed the plan during a Committee of the Whole meeting attended by a number of politicians and more than 150 people via Zoom.
Dingell, a Democrat from Dearborn, and Tlaib, a Democrat from Detroit, called for legislative action. State Rep. Reggie Miller also did so. The county commission used Tuesday’s meeting as a start to discuss possible county regulations.
“When you say nuclear waste, that’s the mother of all not-in-my-backyard problems,” said County Commissioner Tim Killeen (Democrat of Detroit).
At the commission meeting, representatives from the cities of Belleville and Romulus said their city councils had passed resolutions this week calling for more transparency in the process.
“The dumping of nuclear waste poses a serious threat to residents of the region and our entire county, and we want to make sure their voices are heard,” commission chair Alisha Bell said in an earlier statement. “We are the 19th most populous county in the country and have the largest freshwater supply in the world. There are certainly other, less populated and less risky places to store this waste.”
A larger public forum will be held in Belleville next week. A “Town Hall on Hazardous Waste” is planned for Sept. 4, hosted by Dingell and Wayne County Executive Warren Evans. The event will be held at 6 p.m. at the Wayne County Community College District’s Ted Scott Campus, Room B121, 9555 Haggerty Road in Belleville.
Representatives from the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will be on site, along with other state and local officials, to discuss concerns about the transportation and storage of hazardous waste at the Wayne Disposal facility in Van Buren Township.
The planned shipment did not violate any procedures or laws. The Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy, or EGLE, has approved the shipment, U.S. Army Corps officials said. Under federal hazardous waste disposal law, state permits are not required for shipments, but the Army Corps is seeking them anyway, officials said.
The disposal is in accordance with the state’s environmental laws and does not pose a significant risk to the public or the environment, an EGLE spokesperson previously told The News. The department said it reviewed laboratory analyses and the Army Corps’ work plan before approving the shipment.
According to officials with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Wayne Disposal Inc. in Van Buren Township is the closest licensed disposal facility to the Niagara Falls Storage Site that can accept the material.
