PLEASE SAVE THE DATE!
DTSC Public Meeting
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Meeting ID: 812 7410 4126.
Key Points to Make in Your Comment:
1. The Department of Energy (DOE) and DTSC are making a big deal about plans to demolish eight DOE buildings that DOE has always wanted to remove. However, DOE plans to leave behind the radioactive slabs, basements, vaults, and anything else that is below grade.
2. DOE still is refusing to clean up the soil contamination, which is by far the bigger problem. DOE & DTSC signed an agreement in 2010 to clean up all the contamination in the soil, to be completed by 2017. We are in 2020 and the promised soil cleanup hasn’t even begun.
3. DOE has announced (in its Final Environmental Impact Statement) that its preferred alternative is to breach the cleanup agreement and leave the great majority of the contaminated soil not cleaned up.
4. NASA in the last few weeks has likewise issued a “Record of Decision” saying it has “decided” to break its cleanup agreement and leave 84% of its contaminated acreage not cleaned up.
5. DOE has also just issued a “Record of Decision” to leave much of its contaminated groundwater not cleaned up (under the euphemism “natural attenuation”) and claims it, the polluter, not DTSC, its regulator, gets to decide how much of its pollution it will clean up.
6. The DOE-DTSC agreement on demolition of the upper parts of these 8 buildings also appears to breach the cleanup agreement, which requires all such “low level radioactive waste” (LLRW) to be disposed of in one of the 4 commercial licensed LLRW disposal sites in the country or at an authorized LLRW disposal site at a DOE facility. However, this agreement appears to allow waste from 4 of the buildings to be disposed of elsewhere, in violation of the agreement. DTSC is being evasive about where the waste would go, suggesting it would go to an unlicensed but somehow “authorized” site other than at a DOE facility or a commercial licensed LLRW site. This is important because it would violate the cleanup agreement and sites not licensed or designed to handle LLRW can result in its leakage into the environment.
7. Despite all these violations of the cleanup agreements by DOE and NASA, DTSC has taken no actions whatsoever to enforce the agreements.
PLEASE PARTICIPATE IN THE THURSDAY MEETING AND SPEAK OUT, DEMANDING THE FULL CLEANUP PROMISED IN THE AGREEMENTS AND THAT THOSE AGREEMENTS BE VIGOROUSLY ENFORCED.