Action Alert: Keep Nuclear Waste Out Of Pottstown Landfill/Consumer Goods

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The Alliance For A Clean Environment

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Action Alert

Want to Keep Nuclear Waste Out Of the Pottstown Landfill and Consumer Goods?

Tell the PA DEP NOW!
Deadline, January 17, 2003 - 4:00 P.M.
If mailing, best by January 14, 2003

Comments go to:
Ron Furlan
PA Department of Environmental Protection
Lee Park Suite 6010
555 North Lane
Conshohocken, PA 19428

Or e-mail rfurlan@state.pa.us

Please send a copy to:
ACE P.O. Box 3063 Stowe, PA 19464
Or aceactivists@netzero.net

Radioactive Wastes To Be Legally Permitted
into PA Landfills, Composters, Resource Recovery and Processors,
Impoundments, Transfer Stations, and Incinerators.

Greater Pottstown Area Residents Say NO
State and National Radiation Experts Say NO

Why?
PA DEP’s Radiation “UNprotection” Plan will allow Waste Management in Pottstown and other landfill and solid waste facility operators across the state to accept radioactive wastes and do self-monitoring of the wastes at the gates of the landfill instead of monitoring the wastes before they get to the community.

1. DEP’s UNprotection plan threatens to increase the amount of radioactive waste going into the Pottstown Landfill and all landfills across the state.

2. DEP’s UNprotection plan will help generators of radioactive wastes to dispose of their waste cheaply and avoid liability.

3. DEP’s UNprotection plan will make it virtually impossible for landfills to identify the source of radioactive wastes. Even with manifests, the haulers may not know where the wastes originated from or the real contents.

4. DEP’s UNprotection plan forces landfill employees to choose between a time consuming, impractical, confusing procedure to protect public health, or saving time to protect profits of the landfill.

5. DEP’s UNprotection plan does not use the Precautionary Principle to protect public health because it exposes populations along garbage routes, mixes radiation with regular trash streams, increases concentrations with daily dumping, and allows more radiation in the gas and leachate.

Background:

1) 1989: Pennsylvania passed a LAW prohibiting deregulating nuclear waste.

2) September 2000: PA DEP adopted "GUIDANCE" calling for all facilities that take in solid waste (approx 10 categories of facilities including landfills, processors, composters, others) to install radiation detection equipment and set up plans for what to do if radioactive materials are detected.

Essentially the guidance says that radioactive materials less than 2 millirems/hour can stay in the solid waste facility.
By comparison, in 1992, Congress revoked the NRC's policies that would have allowed a 1 to 10 to 100 millirem/YEAR deregulation standard.
No human-made radioactive waste should go to facilities without licenses for that kind of waste.

3) December 2000: DEP adopted REGULATIONS IN THE SOLID WASTE regulations to require the Guidance to be followed.

4) NOW all PA solid waste facilities will start implementing the requirements. Waste Management at Pottstown Landfill is one of the first waste sites to propose a plan to DEP.

Unfortunately, rather than prohibiting radioactive waste from being accepted, the guidance and regulations and plan set high levels for acceptance of nuclear waste and procedures/technology that probably will not result in really detecting or rejecting nuclear wastes.

This is a clever ploy to legalize radioactive waste deregulation in PA, the largest solid waste importer in the country.

ACE is calling for prevention to protect Greater Pottstown Area Residents.

1. We need DEP to say "NO" to Waste Management's request to dispose of radioactive contaminated wastes at the Pottstown Landfill. On behalf of all residents, including the children in the Greater Pottstown Area, ACE urges DEP to deny this Major Permit Modification.

2. ACE urges DEP to require monitoring for radioactive wastes (Alpha, Beta and Gamma) PRIOR to the wastes leaving their origination point and on every waste truck PRIOR to bringing the wastes to the Pottstown or any other landfill across the state.

3. ACE once again requests continuous radiation perimeter monitoring for Alpha, Beta and Gamma in Pottstown Landfill gas and leachate.

4. ACE requests that radiation monitoring levels be set to prevent cancer and protect our children on each truck, at each point of origin, and at the landfill.

5. If background levels of radiation are already too high to prevent cancer or protect children, then the Pottstown Landfill must be shut down to avoid unnecessary increases in cancer and other illnesses.

6. ACE urges DEP to require the wealthy waste industry who made PA the #1 dumping ground in the nation, to provide safer isolated containment areas to store radioactive wastes.

Ultimately, we want the Pottstown Landfill shut down. When the last expansion has been given and the last load of garbage dumped, radioactive or otherwise, the Greater Pottstown Area will bear the burden of the contaminated, air, water, soil and the cleanup for years to come. Area residents will pay now and later with higher cleanup costs, higher health care costs and the knowledge that prevention could have saved millions of dollars and unknown numbers of lives.

Tell the DEP what you think about this by January 17 at 4 PM!!

For More Information:

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