F.A.C.T.S.

Don Finch - Editor, retired Linde/Praxair employee

Ralph Krieger - Linde/Praxair employee - President, Local 8-215 OCAW, AFL-CIO

James Rauch -Technical Editor/Analyst, Pharmacist

Purpose: To disseminate, in a timely manner, factual information relating to the cleanup of the Tonawanda nuclear waste site. Also, to serve as a resource to help interested citizens obtain relevant site-related materials. FACTS supports the complete removal of Tonawanda's radioactive waste to a dry, secure site, much more suitable for the long-term management of these wastes.

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On March 15, 1994, Jim Rauch sent a letter to Carl Calabrese, Supervisor, Town of Tonawanda asking several questions concerning the safety of the Seaway landfill gas extraction/cogenerator project. To date, this letter containing these questions is still unanswered.

One of the major concerns is that there is to be no full-time monitoring of the amount of radon gas that will be released into our air. As it is now, there will only be quarterly monitoring for the first year!!! Significant amounts of radon gas from the radioactively contaminated landfill will be sucked out by the gas extraction system. DOE did two rough calculations of the projected discharge. The first showed that BFI would have to obtain a permit due to the high radon release. Strangely, the second time around, DOE shows a much lower discharge, thereby doing away with BFI having to get the radiation control permit. FACTS wonders why federal studies have been performed at taxpayer expense to help a private business try to get around public health regulations. No analysis has been done of the collective radiation dose to the community from this project. FACTS' position is that a supplemental Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) must be done to prioritize DOE's cleanup actions and that this supplemental EIS must include an assessment of the collective dose from the Browning-Ferris project at Seaway if this cogenerator project is to operate.

About a month ago, our group issued a press release criticizing CANiT (Coalition Against Nuclear materials in Tonawanda, a group of area politicians) for continued secrecy and violation of environmental review procedures in their dealings with the Department of Energy (DOE), the agency currently responsible for the waste. The DOE "suspended" the legitimate public environmental review process for the Tonawanda Site over 18 months ago.

To summarize the press release:

A year ago, November 11, 1994, FACTS sent a letter to CANiT Chairman Richard Tobe asking for a description of the discussions that took place at several previous closed meetings of CANiT and an explanation of why the public had been kept out. We reported that no explanation has been provided, despite follow-up requests, including a February request from Legislator Bill Pauly, who was assured by Mr. Tobe's assistant Michael Raab that a letter would be sent. No letter was sent. Instead, Mr. Raab said in a subsequent telephone conversation that a response had been prepared and "placed in file".

We then speculated that "the secret meetings involved discussions of the potential prospects of sending Tonawanda's waste to the closed [and leaking] state nuclear dump at West Valley or to the DOE site at Lewiston in Niagara County" because in a recent telephone conversation, Mr. Raab lamented the unlikelihood that West Valley would ever reopen and a prior commitment that Congressman (and CANiT member) John LaFalce had made to Lewiston to keep out any further waste. When it was pointed out that, like Tonawanda, these two sites are also physically unsuitable (wet and erosion-prone) for long-term nuclear waste management, Mr. Raab said that was not CANiT's concern, that it was 'good government' to be concerned only about affairs within one's own political boundaries."

We said that "FACTS is appalled by such a scientifically irresponsible and provincial approach to the management of long-lived nuclear waste - waste which will be harmful for over 500,000 years. Should it surprise us then that the DOE has often been able to continue its mismanagement of nuclear waste at physically unsuitable sites?" In an October 29th story by Greg Murphy in the METRO COMMUNITY NEWS ("FACTS concerned about CANiT's closed meetings") Mr. Tobe was reported to be perplexed by this statement. He was quoted as saying "CANiT has consistently insisted on an out-of-state location. We have not deviated from that position." This statement is not true. We quote a portion of a March 1, 1989 letter to then Energy Secretary Watkins from former Tonawanda Supervisor and CANiT member Ronald Moline (this letter is a part of the administrative record that is available for public inspection at the DOE's Tonawanda Information Office). CANiT was formed in the spring of 1988, according to Moline's letter, "with two goals: to prevent [nuclear] waste from being shipped into our area from Colonie, N.Y., and to prevent the construction [by the DOE] of a nuclear waste repository within a few hundred yards of the Niagara River, in a densely populated town. The first goal has been accomplished and we are now concentrating on addressing the wastes that remain in our town.

In a spirit of cooperation and mutual concern, we have had several meetings with DOE officials regarding the remedial alternatives that should be investigated by the DOE. Members of CANiT recently suggested to DOE

officials that the DOE should contact the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) working together to site a facility in New York State that could serve as a repository of DOE low-level radioactive wastes (LLRW) and wastes of similar nature that New York State must address." [emphasis added]

It appears that Mr. Tobe, who has been CANiT Chair from the outset, has the conveniently poor memory common among politicians.

The METRO article then touches on the core of the secrecy issue. When pursued by Murphy about the secret meetings, Tobe said that CANiT is not a government organization and therefore does not need to observe the public meeting law - that is, they can conduct their business in secret.

Fine. However, by law the environmental review/remediation decision process (Environmental Impact Statement [EIS]) that is required by the DOE at the Tonawanda Site must be an open, public process that includes the participation of all interested parties. CANiT does not represent the views and interests of important stakeholder groups such as the environmental, labor and academic interests represented by FACTS. The DOE knows CANiT does not represent the views of these stakeholder groups. The DOE also knows that past and present private meetings of and with CANiT violate the required open public review process and that complaints have been made in this regard.

Why then does the DOE continue to condone CANiT's secrecy and violate the required open, public review procedure by making secret deals with CANiT ?

DOE knows that the community and these other stakeholder groups have good reasons for, and are adamant about, getting all the waste out. Perhaps they think CANiT is more likely to give them what they want. After all, what do the Department of Energy and CANit have in common? Both are political groups. The DOE is controlled and led by politicians (in the current 'slash and burn' budget scene, one could say that even DOE's lowliest scientists are -- when push comes to shove -- politicians). To both DOE and CANiT, the Tonawanda Site is first and foremost a political problem, not a real public health problem requiring a sound scientific solution.

Several recent events support this view of CANiT:

1) When FACTS questioned the partial "interim" cleanup plan arranged by Congressman LaFalce for the Linde/Praxair property, saying that it did not address important issues, such as whether or not the State's ten times more stringent cleanup guideline would be used (issues properly resolved by completing the EIS process which was "suspended" over 18 months ago by DOE), CANiT did not give any answers. FACTS has since learned that DOE does not intend to apply the state's more stringent cleanup guideline.

2) The EIS's complete cleanup alternatives call for demolition and removal of the contaminated buildings and the contaminated soil under them, Whereas LaFalce's "interim" partial cleanup would decontaminate instead of remove three of the four buildings and leave the contaminated soil under them - at greater cost and with greater exposure to cleanup workers. Three of the four buildings were built at taxpayer expense during the Manhattan Project and are unused because of the contamination. The increased expense of decontamination will be money unavailable for cleanup at the other properties. No justification has been given by DOE, LaFalce or CANiT for this change. Corporate welfare and indifference to ensuring a proper, complete cleanup that minimizes worker exposure?

3) When Congressman LaFalce brought DOE Assistant Secretary Thomas Grumbly and other DOE officials into town on October 23rd, the future of waterfront development came up. Grumbly asked if "the banks" had attended any CANiT meetings and had made known what they needed in the way of a cleanup before they would commit to finance any redevelopment in the affected area. The answer came from CANiT member and Town Councilman Ray Sinclair: the developers require the public's "perception" to be that cleanup has made the site safe. The clear implication was that it's okay if the cleanup is not really a protective cleanup to health-based levels of residual contamination, so long as the public believes that it is.

4) FACTS has pointed out that the BFI biogas extraction/cogenerator project at the Seaway landfill, which will also pump radon gas from the contaminated landfill into the air of area residents, is about to start up, and that this may present a greater public health threat than the worker exposures at the Linde/Praxair site. CANiT has exhibited no interest in this public health threat. In fact, during an appearance recently on public TV's "Meet the Candidates", Tonawanda Supervisor and CANiT member Carl Calabrese extolled the BFI project as a feather in his cap, never mentioning the radon gas problem.

It is now clear to the public at many of DOE's cleanup sites, as at Tonawanda, that the draconian budgetary constraints being imposed on the DOE by single-minded Congressional budget-cutters are negatively impacting the quality of the environmental review process, not simply improving management efficiency. Inadequate "band-aid" approaches are increasingly being taken to avoid the higher initial cost of environmentally sound waste management plans even though the latter plans are arguably more cost-effective in the long run in terms of lower long-term waste isolation costs and/or lower public health and environmental damage costs.

The budget crunch should raise a serious question for DOE: is it better to use the limited funds for these "band- aid" approaches that remove some contamination, rather than perform the rigorous scientific investigation and analysis to show society what the full future risks from these sites are? We believe that rigorous risk assessments should be performed for these sites. Of course, any such scientifically rigorous risk assessment would need to be based on realistic assumptions, which we have not seen so far from DOE. The Department has always had a political interest in playing down the risks from its facilities.

Meeting with Linde/Praxair employees

On October 17, 1995 Linde/Praxair held a meeting during which DOE explained the partial "interim" cleanup procedures to the employees and answered employees' questions. From the questions asked, it appears that many of the employees are deeply concerned about the ramifications surrounding the radioactive waste present on the property. One question really stood out. Why is $14 million being spent if there's no problem - as we've been told all along?

DOE's "interim" cleanup

A point to ponder - Even though Building 30 (on the Linde/Praxair property) is to be decontaminated, nothing will be done about the above background radioactivity that is and will still be present in the floor of this building. This is only one of several shortcomings that FACTS sees in this partial "cleanup" process.

Building 14

Concerning the floor in Building 14: The floor tiles were just recently replaced and now supposedly the DOE subcontractor is going to lift tiles at random to check the radiation level under the tile floor. Hmmmm. Sounds backwards to us.

An interesting side note - On the Friday prior to the meeting with Grumbly Ralph Krieger got a call from a representative of the National Executive Board of the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers (OCAW) wanting to know why Congressman LaFalce had someone from his staff contact the International headquarters in Denver, Colorado? LaFalce's office wanted to know who Jim Rauch and Ralph Krieger were. They asked if Jim Rauch was on the OCAW payroll or if he was receiving funds from OCAW. They were told that he isn't. Denver explained that Ralph is the President of Local 8-215 OCAW, AFL-CIO that represents the Linde/Praxair hourly workers. Ralph points out that he is doing just what the International wants - to become active with the local community.

Decontamination of Building 31

Decontamination of Building 31 has begun. Supposedly, it is being done by a local contractor (?) (Haseley Construction) whose employees will be working under the direction of Bechtel (prime subcontractor for DOE). It seems that, up until fairly recently, no one was aware that there was contamination on the second floor of this building. This was found when the entire building was checked for contamination. This leads us to wonder if there's even more contamination than originally described.

ON OCTOBER 23rd 1995, FACTS MET WITH DOE ASSISTANT SECRETARY THOMAS GRUMBLY AND OTHER TOP DOE OFFICIALS TO DISCUSS FACTS' VERY DIFFERENT VIEW OF WHAT NEEDS TO BE DONE TO PROPERLY CLEAN UP THE NUCLEAR WASTE AT THE TONAWANDA SITE.

THE CENTRAL ISSUE WAS DOE'S VIOLATION OF THE LEGITIMATE ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT STATEMENT (EIS) DECISION-MAKING PROCESS BY THEIR FAILING TO ISSUE THE REQUIRED SITEWIDE COMPLETE CLEANUP PLAN (RECORD OF DECISION) AND INSTEAD PROCEEDING WITH AN INADEQUATE PARTIAL CLEANUP OF ONLY THE LINDE SITE. (THE LINDE SITE IS THE LEAST CONTAMINATED OF THE FIVE PROPERTIES).

NO PROGRESS WAS MADE TOWARD GETTING A SITEWIDE CLEANUP COMMITTMENT FROM THE DOE. HOWEVER, SEVERAL COMMITTMENTS WERE MADE ON RELATED ISSUES. A FOLLOW-UP LETTER (OCTOBER 24th, 1995) SUMMARIZING THE DISCUSSION AND IDENTIFYING THE COMMITTMENTS MADE BY MR. GRUMBLY WAS SENT TO MR. GRUMBLY BY FACTS' JIM RAUCH.

THE TEXT OF THAT LETTER IS REPRINTED BELOW. COMMITTMENTS MADE BY MR. GRUMBLY HAVE BEEN UNDERLINED. TO DATE, THE ONLY RESPONSE HAS BEEN THE FAXING (FROM DOE'S OAK RIDGE OFFICE) OF A "CATEGORICAL EXCLUSION" WHICH CLAIMS NO ENVIRONMENTAL REVIEW IS NECESSARY FOR THIS PARTIAL CLEANUP AT THE LINDE SITE.

Dear Mr. Grumbly:

"This letter summarizes the issues we raised and commitments you made, during yesterday's short meeting requested by Congressman LaFalce and held in his Niagara Falls office, concerning an "interim" action you have proposed for the Linde site while the Department of Energy's required NEPA/CERCLA Environmental Impact Statement [EIS] environmental review process for the Tonawanda NY FUSRAP Site remains "suspended". A copy is being provided to all meeting participants, and Assistant Secretary O'Toole and Paul Merges.

I opened the discussion by presenting a brief outline of the history of the environmental review process at Tonawanda:

the original Notice of Intent to prepare an Environmental Impact Statement issued in February of 1988 ("Remedial Actions at Four FUSRAP Sites in New York: Notice of Intent to Prepare an Environmental Impact Statement", covering the Ashland 1, Ashland 2, and Linde sites in Tonawanda and the Colonie site near Albany);

the "Notice of Intent to include the Seaway Site in the RI/FS-EIS for the Tonawanda Sites" in May of 1989;

the designation in December of 1992 of the Town of Tonawanda Landfill into the FUSRAP program for remedial action;

your "suspension" of the process in April 1994 following strong community opposition to the DOE's preferred partial cleanup and onsite storage plan expressed at the public hearing and through numerous written comments critical of the draft RI/BRA/FC/PP-EIS document;

Admiral Guimond's commitment to include all interested parties in a new DOE-prescribed process which was subsequently unilaterally terminated by DOE without the approval of all interested parties;

your August announcement that an agreement had been reached with Congressman LaFalce for an "interim" action to commence this fall at the Linde site; our September 10th letter to Secretary O'Leary requesting clarification of what we saw as a potential violation of the proper review process;

our October 2nd letter to Congressman LaFalce seeking immediate explanation of what environmental review process was to authorize the proposed "interim" action;

our recent discovery that the "interim" action would proceed under a not-yet-issued "Categorical Exclusion" for the proposed decontamination of Buildings 14, 30, and 31, although this work has apparently started, and under a CERCLA "EE/CA" for removal of the soil pile and demolition of Building 38.

I pointed out that the Assistant Secretary for Environment, Safety and Health is responsible for assuring compliance with NEPA, and quoted from page 1-5 of the Remedial Investigation: "Because of the significance of issues raised during the scoping meeting, DOE has determined that an EIS is the appropriate level of NEPA review necessary to adequately inform decision-makers and the public of reasonable alternatives for minimizing any adverse impacts of the proposed action at the Tonawanda site." I said that the planned issuance of a "Categorical Exclusion" and the preparation of a CERCLA "EE/CA" contradicts and short-circuits this required EIS process. The purpose of the NEPA review process is to involve both the decision-makers and the public in the determination and analysis of all impacts and trade-offs of each alternative action before the responsible decision-makers reach a decision, in this case a sitewide cleanup decision, and act upon that decision.

I said that the DOE was embarking on a similar course to that taken over ten years ago at the Niagara Falls Storage Site, where a delayed and flawed environmental review took a back seat to an "interim" action, and where as a result we now have waste of "high-level" hazard sitting in the saturated zone of an "interim" containment.. You denied that the "interim" action would cause any violation of the still "suspended NEPA/CERCLA EIS review process and in support said you had obtained a legal opinion from DOE lawyers. [1] I requested that this opinion be provided to us in writing. I also requested a copy of the "Categorical Exclusion". Our understanding is that you will provide us both of these items. I pointed out that following the "suspension", our participation in the new process centered on attempts to get DOE to address the significant comments I (copy enclosed) and many others had made on the draft EIS documents; that at the January 1995 work plan meeting Site Manager Ron Kirk had said that a Responsiveness Summary to the public comments on the draft EIS had been prepared and therefore DOE could issue a ROD and proceed with their preferred partial onsite cleanup plan; that I subsequently sent a FOIA request for the Responsiveness Summary and received a response (three months later) that it had not been completed and was therefore unavailable to the public. [2] You responded that I would be provided a response to all of my comments. I would appreciate a detailed response. However, you did not address the contradiction between Mr. Kirk's statement and the Oak Ridge FOIA Office's response, i.e. which party is correct about the status of the Responsiveness Summary. Such lack of accountability is not conducive to the relationship of trust the Secretary is trying to establish with the public.

I pointed out that the "interim" action proposed for the Linde site represents a narrowing of the EIS alternatives for cleanup of this property at a greater cost, i.e. the "interim" action calls for the labor-intensive and therefore more costly decontamination of Buildings 14, 30, and 31 instead of their demolition and removal (and indefinitely

postpones dealing with the contaminated soil beneath these three buildings); that the increased cost associated with this portion of the Linde "interim" action would be money unavailable for the cleanup of the rest of the Tonawanda Site; and that such action violates the fundamental purpose of NEPA: to determine such trade-offs before taking action.

You again denied that this implied any improper segmentation of the review process. [3] You agreed to provide us an accounting of the cost difference between the proposed "interim" decontamination of the buildings (14, 30, 31) versus their demolition and offsite disposal. We would appreciate a breakdown of cost estimates for all components of the proposed action.

We would also like to know the reason DOE now wants to decontaminate, at higher cost, buildings which were planned to be demolished in the draft EIS alternatives.

You then asked if we were opposed to the "interim" action at Linde. I expressed our keen interest in effective cleanup of all Tonawanda properties but said that this piecemeal cleanup approach entails problems not anticipated or dealt with in the draft EIS which addresses and assumes sitewide cleanup. Specifically, I raised our concern that the gas extraction project being installed by Browning-Ferris Gas Services, Inc. at the BFI operated Niagara Landfill on the Seaway property may produce as great or greater collective dose than the dose to workers at the Linde site and that no consideration was given to this dose pathway in the draft EIS documents (no collective analysis has been done for this project).

I said that the first radon release calculations that were done by DOE for BFGS demonstrated the need for a NYSDEC Part 380 radiation control permit, with the result that a less conservative second calculation was done presumably to avoid this requirement. We believe that it was improper for DOE to spend public money to aid a private business in their effort to avoid state regulation.

I then indicated that the first calculations relied on assumptions which could produce significant underestimation of actual radon release; that the system, capable of extracting 2500 cubic feet of landfill gas per second, was expected to start operating very shortly; that BFGS has not yet responded to NYSDEC's year- old request for a quarterly blower discharge sampling plan. We are not convinced that quarterly sampling is sufficient to detect changes in landfill structure and fluctuations in radon release that may occur more quickly. [4] You said that you would ensure that discharge sampling for radon concentration would be done at start-up and we would be provided the results.

Still, we are very concerned about this project and believe that if piecemeal "interim" cleanup actions, specifically the "interim" action at the Linde site, are to be undertaken at the Tonawanda Site in lieu of a ROD for total site cleanup, such actions first must be prioritized by performing a supplemental EIS, which must include an assessment of the collective dose from the BFGS project at Seaway, if that project is to operate.

With time running short, I requested more specific answers to questions (7) and (8) in my September 10, 1995 letter to Secretary O'Leary: [5] A full accounting of how the other 16 million dollars (in addition to the 6 million dollars for the draft RI/BRA/FS/PP-EIS) were spent at Tonawanda, and an answer to question (8)  [Is Union Carbide a potentially responsible party for remediation costs at the Tonawanda Site, in particular, contamination resulting from 'deep' well injection, storm and sanitary sewer and direct surface discharges?] that is specific to the contracts with Linde/Union Carbide.

Finally, there was a short discussion of dosimetry and risk assessment. I criticized the approach of the draft BRA which looked at doses over only the next 150 to 200 years as presenting an unrealistic yardstick for making long-term storage site decisions for wastes that will remain hazardous for over 500,000 years. I said that the total hazard period would be more appropriate for evaluating the costs of maintaining waste isolation in Tonawanda, where expensive continuous maintenance and intervention will be necessary, versus the cost of storage at the Nevada Test Site or Envirocare, where little additional cost will be incurred for a great while, and that this approach should be fundamental to the NEPA/CERCLA EIS process for Tonawanda. [6] You said that a longer timeframe may be appropriate and agreed to pursue such an evaluation.

We appreciate this opportunity to communicate with you and we look forward to your reply."

Sincerely,

/s/ James Rauch

(FACTS)

cc: (w/o enclosure): John LaFalce, John Baublitz, Craig De Remer, Ron Kirk, John Patterson, Tara O'Toole, Paul Merges.