Española Valley environmentalists want the state to impose stricter rules on the Los Alamos National Laboratory’s hazardous waste burn permit.
“(We) do not feel as though it’s strong enough,” Embudo Valley Environmental Monitoring Group Organizer Sheri Kotowski said of the state Environment Department’s draft hazardous waste facility permit. “The draft permit will allow (the Lab) to dispose of 12,500 pounds of high explosives annually for 10 years through open burning. We are asking for a confined burn facility to dispose of these wastes.”
The Department held a public meeting July 28 at the Ohkay Casino Conference Center to present its revised draft hazardous waste facility permit for the Lab.
The draft permit regulates the Lab’s operation of 26 hazardous waste facilities, Department spokeswoman Marissa Stone Bardino said. The permit would require the Lab to install a network of seismometers to monitor the seismic hazard from ground motions beneath waste facilities, according to Department documents. The Department will not permit the open burning of radioactive waste, according to Department documents and the current draft permit.
“Our recommendation is that open burning of (all) hazardous waste should be banned,” Kotowski said. “Technology has advanced. Confined burn facilities (are) highly efficient in disposing of hazardous waste and containing emissions. Open burning is just what it says: put the stuff on a tray and light it on fire. Everything goes straight up into the air, dispersing the contamination directly into the air.”
“We’re investigating alternative ways to dispose of the material, including contained incinerators,” Lab spokesman Fred DeSousa said Tuesday. “At this point, the way we’re doing it is safer than the alternative of transporting it elsewhere. Here, it’s in a controlled, remote environment. The temperatures used to burn the material completely consumes it. There’s nothing left, not even ash or residue.”
The explosives are incinerated with propane burners, DeSousa said.
“It’s about 1,000 degrees,” DeSousa said. “All you can see are heat waves coming off the pan. It’s not smoke, nothing particulate. Just heat waves. They also ran computer models that showed that there would be nothing detectable at all at the Lab boundary.”
The Lab incinerates 3,000 pounds of high explosives each year, DeSousa said. Open-air burning of high explosives is done at a remote area of the Lab known as Technical Area 16, DeSousa said.
“TA-16 is just one of 26 places covered by the state permit,” DeSousa said. “High explosives were a big topic in the meeting, but there are a lot of other issues covered by the permit … right down to things like old fluorescent light bulbs, for example. Our missions generate hazardous waste.”
The state has the right to regulate the Lab under the state Hazardous Waste Act even though the Lab is a federal facility, DeSousa said.
“We expect there will be another public hearing, perhaps several, in November,” he said. “The Lab will provide comment but I’m not sure we’ll be providing experts (for the public hearings).”
The Department does not expect to finalize the draft prior to 2010.
The public comment period for the revised draft permit will end Sept. 4 at 5 p.m., Bardino said. Anybody may submit written comments on the revised draft permit or request additional public hearings up to that time. The revised draft permit and related documents may be viewed by appointment from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday at the Department’s Hazardous Waste Bureau, at 2905 Rodeo Park Drive East, Building 1, Santa Fe, NM 87505-6303.
Written comments should be brought to the Bureau or mailed to the aforementioned address. Copies of the revised draft permit can be viewed at the Department’s web site at www.nmenv.state.nm.us/HWB/lanlperm.html.
For more information, call Marissa Stone Bardino at 827-0314 or 231-0475.