'Hotter' waste fight heats up

Environmentalists are turning up the heat on Envirocare of Utah over a plan to take "hotter" uranium mill tailings.

But Envirocare fired back in a full-page advertisement in Salt Lake's daily newspapers on Tuesday in an effort to take its case to the public.

In the ad, Envirocare denies that the uranium mill tailings it hopes to receive from a U.S. Department of Energy cleanup project in Fernald, Ohio, are hotter or more radioactive than what Utah's law currently allows.

"In fact, the Fernald uranium by-product material is 90 percent less radiologically active than other materials currently handled in Utah under state licenses," the ad said.

Utah environmental regulators, however, say the Ohio waste is significantly more radioactive than any of the current mill tailings Envirocare takes under a federal license.

"Envirocare currently is allowed to receive concentrations of no more than 4,000 picocuries per gram," said Bill Sinclair, executive secretary of the Utah Department of Radiation Control. "The material from Fernald would come in at 100,000 picocuries per gram.

"To me, that's higher."

Envirocare doesn't dispute that. But the company maintains that it accepts other types of Class A waste that exceed the Ohio waste in terms of radioactivity.

"The state of Utah has licensed Envirocare to receive materials that are 10 times higher in radioactivity than 100,000 picocuries per gram that constitute the Fernald waste," responded Tim Barney, senior vice president of Envirocare.

Envirocare would have to justify to the state that it can safely store the higher concentration of uranium mill tailings that critics say would remain highly toxic for more than 10,000 years.

But in the process, Envirocare is trying to convince the public that the material isn't any worse than other low-level radioactive waste stored at its landfill in remote Tooele County.

"News reports about 'hotter' waste from Fernald are simply wrong," Envirocare's ad said.

Environmentalists are outraged.

"This is Envirocare's strategic attempt to create confusion," said Jason Groenewold of Healthy Environment Alliance of Utah, or HEAL Utah. "There is no doubt this is hotter waste."