And now:Ish <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Source: <A HREF="http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/137/metro/Concord_firm_halts_cleanup+. shtml">http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/137/metro/Concord_firm_halts_cleanup+ .shtml</A> ===================================================== Concord firm halts cleanup Company cites cost of uranium removal By Scott Allen, Globe Staff, 05/17/99 CONCORD - Staggered by the cost of excavating tons of radioactive uranium from a pit in their backyard, the owners of one of Massachusetts' most dangerous waste sites have stopped cleanup work altogether, raising fears among neighbors that soil contamination up to 600 times the current limit could be left for years to come. Starmet Corp., a financially troubled defense contractor formerly known as Nuclear Metals Inc., has stopped the cleanup while company officials ask the state to dramatically relax cleanup standards at their West Concord property. That would allow them to simply cover the remaining contamination at a cost of $750,000 rather than spend tens of millions of dollars to remove it. But Department of Environmental Protection officials say the former waste-holding basin may need much more than a cover, and they have asked the US Environmental Protection Agency to consider funding the cleanup if Starmet cannot finish the job. ''This is one of the highest-priority sites we are dealing with in the state,'' said Stephen Roberson, the state environmental analyst who asked EPA to study the possibility of adding the Starmet site to the federal Superfund list. ''We have to go into this with our eyes open and ... thinking that Starmet might not be in a position to continue the cleanup.'' Officials at Starmet, which has lost money in five of the last six years, say they are victims of a cutback in military spending on their main product, armor-piercing bullets like those used in the Gulf War. After four years of running the Concord plant at 10 percent capacity, Starmet is laying off employees in the face of a five-year moratorium on armor-piercing bullet purchases. Company president Robert Quinn said Starmet cannot afford to pay up to $50 million to excavate the waste site. If the Defense Department doesn't cover basin cleanup costs, as Starmet has urged, ''the company would be required to consider insolvency or similar reorganization proceeding to preserve its business operations,'' according to Starmet filings at the Securities and Exchange Commission. Quinn argued that his company's less expensive cleanup plan won't compromise the environment. He said that an impermeable barrier over the partially excavated waste pit will prevent depleted uranium in the soil from spreading, and a deed restriction would limit future owners' use of the land. But environmentalists, who have been pushing to clean up the waste pit for a decade, are appalled at Starmet's proposal, noting that the plant site is surrounded by growing residential neighborhoods. Moreover, they note that uranium has reached the groundwater in concentrations up to 3,000 times the safe level. ''The reality is grim,'' said Judy Scotnicki of the Citizens' Research & Environmental Watch, a Starmet watchdog group. ''Someone has to be responsible for cleaning up that site.'' Starmet, tucked into the woods off Main Street in West Concord, looks more like a school campus than a hazardous waste site, but neighbor Betty Oleson found a darker side when she was walking near her home with her husband in 1972: a pit where the company disposed of 400,000 pounds of depleted uranium and 700,000 pounds of copper from 1958 to 1985. ''The water in this pit was green with no fences around it where kids could fall in,'' recalled Oleson. Depleted uranium is less than 1 percent as radioactive as the uranium used in nuclear power plants, but it is toxic, highly flammable, and long-lived, taking billions of years to decay. But depleted uranium is perfect for penetrating steel tank shells by literally burning its way through. The uranium migrates slowly through the soil, and there is no evidence it has contaminated nearby water supplies or the Assabet River, a tributary of the Concord River. However, uranium has reached groundwater on the site, raising the possibility of widespread contamination. ''The uranium will continue to move... it will contaminate aquifers beneath neighboring properties and the Assabet River,'' wrote Marvin Resnikoff of Radioactive Waste Management Associates in a new report for the Starmet watchdog group. At the group's urging, Starmet finally agreed to clean up the holding basin, but the cleanup turned out to be far more involved than Starmet expected. By last September, the company had removed 8,000 cubic yards of material - 2,000 cubic yards more than it planned - but the soil was still 25 times more contaminated than the cleanup plan allowed. Starmet's consultant GZA Geoenvironmental Inc. calculated that continued excavation would cost up to $50 million more - and still require an impermeable cover. Rather than plunge ahead, the company asked the Department of Environmental Protection to drop its insistence on a complete cleanup, allowing Starmet to enclose the waste. Roberson of the department said his office hasn't rejected the plan yet, but he called it ''a big, big change'' that requires the agency to allow uranium levels of up to 1,062 parts per million rather than the 20 parts per million under the current cleanup plan. ''We are still of the mind that a lot more significant remediation needs to be done at the site,'' Roberson said, adding, ''Whatever they do with the basin today, the groundwater has been contaminated'' and Starmet will have to deal with it. But a big cleanup may be beyond the reach of Starmet, which lost $19 million on $32 million in revenue last year, according to the Radioactive Waste Management Associates report. Starmet officials argue that they shouldn't have to pay for the basin cleanup, since the site was part of defense contracts. Already, the Defense Department has kicked in $6.5 million of the $8.2 million the company has paid for basin cleanup. Roberson said the state won't let Starmet's problems compromise the cleanup. The EPA will hire a contractor in the next few weeks to determine if the site could be eligible for Superfund listing, which could bring federal money to the cleanup. ===================================================== Comments: This is one of the Companies that made the DU ammo for the Gulf War that made everyone sick. Here one can see 20 ppm is dangerous in the soils----when one breathes in the airborne dust one gets far more than what is absorbed in water and food chains. In the lungs the dusts persist for decades. Reprinted under the fair use http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.html doctrine of international copyright law. &&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&& Tsonkwadiyonrat (We are ONE Spirit) Unenh onhwa' Awayaton http://www.tdi.net/ishgooda/ &&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&
