ARTICLE - "Don't Dump On Me: Nuclear Waste in Our Midst"

On January 23 and 25, the New Mexico Environment Department (NMED) held two public meetings on the MIXED WASTE LANDFILL (MWL), a radioactive and chemical waste dump just south of Kirtland Air Force Base.

In the 1950s, when scientists and workers at Sandia National Labs (SNL)
began dumping at this site, Albuquerque was a much smaller place.

Today our sprawling metropolis has surrounded the area and the proposed
80,000-person Mesa Del Sol development, including the new amphitheater and a proposed park in the buffer zone around the dump, will further populate the surrounding area.

The NMED is considering whether or not to issue the SNL a permit to cap the unlined dump with an "engineered" soil cover, the plans for which have yet to be completed.

By the DOE's own admission, the 2.6-acre landfill contains 100,000 cubic
feet of radioactive and chemical mixed waste.

Low level radioactive materials, including tritium and cadmium, 270,000
gallons of nuclear reactor coolant water, and some "hot" waste including
plutonium, strontium and depleted uranium in the classified area.

The DOE admits that the tritium has already penetrated the ground to a depth
of 120 feet.

As in the past, at facilities around the nation, the DOE once again wishes
to assure citizens that the dump is "safe," and that no contaminants have
escaped to the aquifer 460 feet below the site.

However, citizen groups like "Citizen Action," and the research and reports
of independent scientists (including Dr. Mark Baskaran, Doug Earp and Paul
Robinson) challenge the veracity of their statements.

Issues of public health and community safety are weighed against disposal
costs as DOE/Sandia officials try to figure out what to do with the mess
they have made at this and hundreds of other sites over the past four to
five decades.

This is one concerned citizen's response to the proceedings at the public
meetings. We urge other citizens to contact Secretary Pete Maggiore on this
issue.

For more information, see Hey, Pete: Clean Up This Hazardous Waste Dump!"

Sec. Pete Maggiore, NMED
2044-A Galisteo, P.O. Box 26110
Santa Fe, NM 87502
505-827-1567

Open Letter to Secretary of the Environment Pete Maggiore:

Dear Secretary Maggiore,

I was present at both public meetings on the Mixed Waste Landfill at SNL,
held in Albuquerque during the third week in January.

It was clear at both gatherings that among the citizens present there were
two clearly defined groups.

Present in force were those who are, were, or hope to be in the employ of
the powerful military industrial complex, as represented by the Department
of Energy and Sandia National Labs.

The rest of the crowd were everyday folk, mothers, fathers, teachers,
healthcare professionals, workers of both the blue and white collar variety,
artists and the like, who look to you and your department to protect our
homes as well as our enchanting shared environment.

After listening carefully to the educational portion of the meeting,
respectfully keeping an open heart as speaker after speaker shared their
views, and reading the packet of materials your staff and the SNL/DOE put
together, I am making the following suggestions for future action:

1. To cap or not to cap? .and what else?
I have long heard that SNL is populated with some of the brightest and best
scientific minds in the nation.

Challenge those minds to put their thinking caps back on and come up with
more than just the capping solution, or a cleanup scenario that puts workers
or residents at risk.

I, for one, would like to see a series of options and alternatives with
comparisons regarding public health and safety, environmental health and
safety, costs, effectiveness and the effects on future generations.

Bring in the robots! What about above-ground solutions? Isolate and alchemize the waste!

Think more creatively. We obviously don't have the right answer yet or there
would have been some measure of agreement between the above-mentioned
groups.

Let's create more options before we make our decision.

2. Do it right the first time.
Let's keep in mind an old piece of wisdom and not be penny-wise and
pound-foolish.

As a taxpayer, I would much rather have my money spent wisely the first
time, capping it now only to have to dig it all up again when and if any of
the contaminants hit the aquifer seems wasteful and unwise to me, especially
given the precious nature of water in our desert climate.

It doesn't take a rocket scientist, just good old common sense, to know that
an unlined waste dump filled with rusting barrels of "hot" nukes, corrosive,
persistent organic pollutants and liquids that will aid in their migration,
is bound to leak at some point.

If the DOE and DOD can afford to spend trillions of our dollars on weapons
in space and other programs including so-called "stewardship," which in many cases continues to manufacture similar wastes under the guise of
refurbishing of our current arsenal as well as new weapon development, they
can certainly afford to protect all of us here at home by utilizing the best
means of waste disposal. Even if it is a sizable chunk of change out of
their budget.

3. Before you give the go.
Before any permit is granted and so there can be no doubt that the NMED has
done all it could to protect the people and the lands of our state, require
resampling and reanalysis of soil, groundwater and air as suggested by both
the Earp Report, other independent scientists and citizens groups including
Citizen Action.

Utilize both citizen and independent scientists to ensure the veracity of
the data cannot be questioned, and all appropriate scientific protocol is
followed.

4. More heads is better.
Because the DOE has not always been forthcoming with information, anyone
familiar with the historical practices of the DOE recognizes that citizens
have good reason to be mistrustful of their pronouncements.

And, because we are faced with dueling scientists (Earp, Baskaran, Robinson,
Gould, etc.) convene a panel of independent scientists or utilize NAS
scientists to restudy and verify DOE data and conclusions.

Independent is the operative word here; organizations or scientists who have
or continue to get major funding from DOE, DOD or others do not fit the
bill.

Take citizen input on who these scientists should be.

5. Beyond a reasonable doubt. (This is a really tough one.)
Cancer rates are skyrocketing; American Cancer Society statistics state that
one in three of us get cancer and one in four died of it.

It is time to acknowledge that traditional risk assessment models, with
their one in a million "acceptable" deaths from each and every exposure to
radioactive or chemical pollutants no longer work.

No death from environmental pollutants is acceptable. It's time to utilize
the precautionary principle, and switch the onus of proof of safety to the
DOE rather than force the state and the citizenry to prove risk.

Require that all health, safety and environmental data be reassessed
according to the precautionary principle rather than continue to allow the
DOE and the NMED to utilize outdated risk assessment models in making this
and other decisions.

6. More than just lip service.
To citizens it seems that the NMED, but especially the DOE/SNL don't really
want citizen input.

They are only paying it lip service.

Year after year on many important issues citizens go to public meetings only
to find that the decision has really already been made and government
agencies are merely fulfilling regulations by holding public meetings.

With the dissolution of the Citizens Advisory Board and NMED officials
restating DOE line on capping, decision-making on the MWL seems like
businesses as usual.

Reinstitute a state form of the Citizens Advisory Board that is not funded
and beholden to the DOE, hold more public meetings and discussion groups
after the new data from actions outlined above is in.

And really get the word out to citizens on when and where these meetings
are, rather than bury the info in the "Legal Notices" section of the daily
newspaper.

Allow a well-educated citizenry to really participate in the decision-making
process.

Maybe then we will really believe you are "of, for, and by the people."

7. Watch your back.
Any public official, no matter what political party that is really working
for the people, especially when that means bucking the status quo, is a
threat to the entrenched power structure. During the Cerro Grande Fire, I
saw you on TV.

You were the only one who didn't parrot the "trust us, it's perfectly safe,
there's no contamination" line.

For that honesty, we thank you. We hope that in this situation, you will
continue to exhibit that kind of integrity, a quality that seems rare in
public life these days.

In cooperation,
Robyn Seydel