The state Department of Environmental Protection’s answer to the radioactive Pottstown Landfill appears to be legalizing the acceptance of carte blanche radioactive wastes and making matters worse, the DEP is considering a major permit modification for the Pottstown Landfill to legally accept radioactive wastes -- permit No. 100549. If this was about monitoring to keep radioactive wastes out, a permit to legalize dumping them would not be needed.

• The DEP’s plan will help generators of radioactive wastes dispose of their wastes cheaply and avoid liability, not protect our community.

• Logistically, it’s impossible to adequately monitor 300 trucks in nine operating hours -- one truck less than every two minutes. More smoke and mirrors at our expense.

• About 300 garbage trucks travel through our communities and dump as much as 8 to 12 million pounds of garbage every day, five days a week at the Pottstown Landfill.

If true comprehensive and protective radioactive monitoring were done, many trucks would need to follow a very time consuming, cumbersome plan, which realistically does not lead to protection. The landfill and haulers would lose time and money. Is this going to happen? Of course not. Local employees need to produce corporate profits.

The DEP’s "UNprotective" radiation monitoring plan won’t find even a fraction of the radioactive wastes hidden in 8 to 12 million pounds of wastes every day.

Calibration of monitors will not be set to prevent cancer or other illnesses.

Radiation already escapes into our air and water with Pottstown Landfill gas and leachate. Leukemia, almost twice the rate of the state around the Pottstown Landfill, is linked to low-level radiation exposure. Childhood cancer rates are almost 100 percent higher than the state and the tri-county area around the landfill.

Can we afford to continue to be exposed to concentrations of everyone else’s radioactive wastes? About 80 percent of the 8 million pounds of garbage dumped here every day are from seven other counties, including Philadelphia. The DEP admits the waste stream is very radioactive. To protect our community, the landfill needs to be closed. There is no safe dose of radiation, especially here.

The best protection is prevention. Radioactive waste should not be transported here. It’s time to shut down the Pottstown Landfill -- not issue a permit to legalize carte blanche radioactive waste dumping, which would adversely impact health of area residents for decades.

The Alliance for a Clean Environment board commends Pottstown Borough Council’s unanimous resolution against Pottstown Landfill’s radiation permit. Pottstown Mayor Anne Jones, area physicians and many others testified at the public hearing to try to stop this threat to the health of our community.

ACE urges you to join the opposition and write today: Ron Furlan, PA DEP, Lee Park Suite 6010, 555 North Lane, Conshohocken, PA 19428 or e-mail rfurlan@state.pa.us. Please send copy to ACE, P.O. Box 3063, Stowe, PA 19464 or ace@acereport.org. Deadline is January 17, 4 p.m.

ACE BOARD OF DIRECTORS

For More Information:

landfill radiation

ACE
P.O. Box 3063
Stowe, PA 19464
ace@acereport.org





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