ML20205P301
| ML20205P301 | |
| Person / Time | |
|---|---|
| Issue date: | 04/08/1999 |
| From: | Pederson C NRC OFFICE OF INSPECTION & ENFORCEMENT (IE REGION III) |
| To: | Borello C AFFILIATION NOT ASSIGNED |
| References | |
| NUDOCS 9904200119 | |
| Download: ML20205P301 (5) | |
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' %,*****h April 8,-1999 Ms. Christine Borello President, Concemed Citizens of Lake Township P.O. Box 123 Uniontown, OH 44685
Dear Ms. Borello:
This is in response to your letter to us dated May 23,1998. In yourletter, you provided a list of issues regarding the Industrial Excess Landfill (IEL) in Uniontown, Ohio, for which you requested NRC assistance. We have evaluated your request, and the supporting documents you provided at the time of your letter, as well as materials you forwarded to us at various times.
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through February of 1999. During March of 1999, you provided us with four additional documents which we are still reviewing. This letter constitutes our formal response to your May 23,1998 letter. Each issue from your letter is addressed below. We apologize for the length of time it has taken us to respond to your letter.
1.
Find out if NRC followed through and contacted Dr. Simon.
You raised this issue in a telephone call to Mr. Mike McCann in March of 1998.
Mr. McCann remembers the phone call, but he does not remember that he " reacted strongly" to your report of a radiation reading of 0.3 millirem per hour. He has no recollection of obtaining Dr. Simon's phone number from you, and does not believe he ever called Dr. Simon. Mr. McCann does remember reminding you that past NRC correspondence to you has clearly stated that the IEL is an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Superfund site, that the NRC has no regulatory basis for becoming j/
involved, and you should therefore provide your concems to EPA. The previous correspondence Mr. McCann was referring to were the letters to you from Mr. Axelson dated August 16,1994, from Mr. McCormick-Barger dated April 7,1995, and from
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Mr. Canlano dated March 21,1997.
2.
NRC should take whateverlegal action necessary to obtain those documents that.
Dr. Simon saw... and provide them to the public...
NRC has no regulatory or technical basis for intervening in this matter to try to force the disclosure of anyone else's documents. As stated in Mr. Axelson's letter to you dated August 16,1994, we conducted a search af our licensing files and were unable to identify any documents which would indicate that a former Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) or NRC licensee disposed of licensable radioactive materials at the IEL. No new information has been identified since then to indicate that our initial conclusion was wrong.
190101 9904200119 990408 PDR MISC 9904200119 PDR T
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1 C. Borello l 3.
NRC should intervene immediately and block the signing of the Consent Decree at IEL...
EPA is the lead federal regulatory authority for the IEL and is fully qualified and -
l competent to deal with IEL issues, including radiological issues, if any such issues j
should develop. The NRC has no regulatory or technical basis to support our intervention into the proceeding regarding this site.
4.a.
Put into. writing for us repeating what Mr. Wiedeman told us about EPA legally being required to do furtherIsotopic breakdown when levels for Gross Alpha and Beta are overscreening. Help citizens and township critique the letterfrom ATSDR that claims that they were able to
- account for" all the Beta; give us technical assistance and back up the statements NRC previously made to us, l.a. We had been told that a typical mading at yourfacilities for Beta was 59; that NRC does not field litter, NRC does CORES, AND that after reviewing our data, NRC said our ' numbers did NOT add up" regarding the accounting of the Beta and Alphal Mr. Wiedeman, a Senior Radiation Specialist on our staff, remembers a rather lengthy phone call (about 2% hours) about sampling and radiation levels, but he does not recall the specifics. However, he believes that any discussions regarding EPA would have oeen hypothetical. He was not specifically knowledgeable of EPA's regulations or the IEL. Mr. Wiedeman does not remember any statements referring to ' typical reading... for Beta was 59" or that alpha and beta " numbers don't add up." These statements, since they are out of context, are not able to be understood in radiological terms.
Regarding our environmental sampling program, it is true the NRC does not normally field filter water samples. Also, the NRC collects most soll samples at the surface, and typically does not sample greater than a foot below the surface. However, water and soll sampling practices should be determined on a site specific basis, depending on the radiological information the collecting party is investigating for that particular site.
Neither field filtering of water or deeper sampling of soil is inherently better. It is inappropriate to compare the sampling practices the NRC " typically" employs to what any other party chooses to do at a specific site.
Regarding "the letter from ATSDR " we are unfamiliar with the document and have no regulatory or technical basis that would prompt us to conduct a review.
4.b.
NRC told us that records of the waste haulerimm Wingfoot were ' destroyed ormissing" mgarding Telydyne isotopes. We want this on the record, as well as admitting that you didnt include the year 1969 when you didyour search. These two things were omitted from the record...
Teledyne Isotopes was a waste broker that transported radioactive waste for Goodyear from the Wingfoot Lake facility during the time that NRC licensed activities were conducted there, between 1974 and 1985. The type of radioactive waste that would have been hauled bet *>een 1974 and 1978 (when the IEL was shut down) would have
C. Borello primarily consisted of contaminated articles of protective clothing wom during work activities. Our records indicated that this waste was subsequently transferred to one of the three low-level radioactive burial sites.
Current NRC staff who have communicated with you do not remember any discussion of records being " destroyed or missing." We do not have knowledge that anything was "omitted from the record." Our letter to you dated August 16,1994, specifically stated that "a file search was conducted of expired and terminated AEC and NRC licenses for the period 1970-1985 for lost sources or disposals." This mh?es clear that 1969 was not included in the review.
4.c Find out why the Mamh 3rd 1994 memo of Mr. Wiedeman's to Mr. McCann was -
' sanitized." It ironically and misleadingly states at the bottom that this memo was read to the alleger for ' accuracy" and yet the memo itselfis NOT accurate! Omitted is the entire statement made by Mr. Wiedeman that he recommended to his ' superiors ~ tl; et the site be taken over and NRC 'shculd conduct full-blown field studies - core samples gases, the stream.' NOTE: Since Mr. Wiedeman repeated this to a reporter, and she cor5;r.tvJ :his to others at the newspaper and back to us, we want to know WHY this memo, when it was FOIA'd this spdng..., did not accurately portray what Mr. Wiedeman had read that moming to CCLT... More importantly, we want Mr. Wiedemt recommendation put back on the record to properly charactedze what was mally sou usat day. We wouldlike a copy of the corrected version...
We have discussed Mr. Wiedeman's memo of March 3,1994, with him. He stated that the memo is correct as written, was never " sanitized," by him and was in fact what he read over the phone. Mr. Wiedeman also stated that he does not remember making any recommendation t.o his management that the NRC should take over the IEL site or conduct sampling of any kind. He also stated that in his original 2% hour telephone call with you, that you proposed many hypothetical and "what if" scenarios. Mr. Wiedeman believes that you may have taken some of his responses to a hypothetical situation out of context. Mr. Wiedeman has no specific recollection of ever discussing ibis issue with a reporterin 1994.
5.
As was almady verbally requested, we want you to talk to Ms. Ruth Vandegrift at Ohio Department of Health... we would like you to get on the record Ms. Vandegritt's statements that she made previously... regarding her opinion of the SAB teport...
We would also like confirmation that Ms. Vandegrift also had told citizens that EPA was requimd to do furtherbreakdown of the Gross readings, Just as NRC said. Please also obtain in wdting herstatements regarding UF 6... Both Ms. Vandegrift and Mr. Wiedeman seemed very suspicious that we have Goodyear Atomic waste at IEL.
The NRC has no basis with which to approach Ms. Vandegrift regarding the IEL site because this is an EPA Superfund site. We have no knowledge of any related comments she may have made. We have worked closely with the Ohio Department of Health on a number of projects, but IEL is not such a project. If an NRC staff member i
responded to a hypothetical set of conditions that you had posed, such a response should not be considered as a recommendation for any action by the NRC or the EPA.
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kMic-C. Borello In addition, Mr. Wiedeman says he is not at all" suspicious" that radiological waste from Goodyear Atomic was placed in the IEL. On the contrary, his review tumed up no evidence that there was NRC licensable material in the landfill.
6.
..., we very much want the NRC to take your own " split samples"...
As stated previously, since EPA 's the lead federal regulatory authority for the IEL site, we have no basis with which to conduct any sampling.
I recognize that you may not agree with our responses to your requests, and I do appreciate the concems of the residents of Lake Township; however, we have no evidence that any NRC licensable material was ever placed in the IEL. As a result, we have no regulatory basis for becoming involved in this site. We have consistently stated, both in a public meeting we held in your local area in 1994, and in our letters to you since 1994, that the EPA has the faderal responsibility for this landfill. Accordingly, we are forwarding all information we have received from you to date to the EPA, and we request that you direct any future correspondence regarding radiological concems at the IEL site directly to the EPA. Absent any new information indicating the presence of licensable material at the IEL site, we will forward any future correspondence we receive from you on this matter to the apprapriate foderal entity EPA, without any additional response. We will, however, respond to the four documents we received from you during March 1999.
We will inform the NRC inspector General's Office regarding your complaints about specific NRC employees, for such followup action as that office deems appropriate. In addition, you may contact the NRC Inspector General by calling 1-800-233-3497.
- Sinarely,
/s/ C. D. Pederson Cynthia D. Pederson, Director Division of Nuclear Materials Safety cc:
R. Vandegrift, Ohlo Department of Health R. Delrosario, Environmental Protection Agency, RV bec:
J. Greeves, NMSS J. Dyer, Rlli DOCUMENT NAME: G:\\SEC\\BORELLO.LTR (See previous concurrence)
To receive a copy of this document, Indicate in the box:"C" = Copy without enclosure *E% Copy with enclosure *N"= No copy j
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l C. Borello In addition, Mr. Wiedeman says he is not at all " suspicious" that radiological waste from Goodyear Atomic was placed in the IEL. On the contrary, his review tumed up no evidence that there was NRC licensable material in the landfill.
6.
..., we very much want the NRC to take your own " split samples"...
As stated previously, since EPA is the lead federal regulatory authority for the IEL site, we have no basis with which to conduct any sampling.
I recognize that you may not agree with our responses to your requests, and I do appreciate the concems of the residents of Lake Township; however, we have no evidence that any NRC licensable material was ever placed in the IEL. As a result, we have no regulatory basis for becoming involved in this site. We have consistently stated, both in a public meeting we held in your local area in 1994, and in our letters to you since 1994, that the EPA has the federal responsibility for this landfill. Accordingly, we are forwarding all information we have received from you to date to the EPA, and we request that you direct any future correspondence regarding radiological concerns at the IEL site directly to the EPA. Absent any new information indicating the presence of licensable material at the IEL site, w] will forward any future correspondence we receive from you on this matter to the appropriate federal entity, EPA, without any additional response.
We will inform the NRC Inspector General's Office regarding your complaints about specific NRC employees, for such followup action as that office deems approprinte. In addition, you may contact the NRC Inspector General by calling 1-800-233-3497.
Sincerely, Cynthia D. Pederson, Director Division of Nuclear Materials Safety cc:
R. Vandegrift, Ohio Department of Health R Detrosario. Environmental Protection Agency, RV bec:
J. Greeves, NMSS J. Dyer, Rill DOCUMENT NAME: G:\\SEC\\BORELLO.LTR To receive a copy of this document, Indicato in the box:"c" = Copy without enclosure "E"= Copy with enclosure *N"= No copy 0FFICE RillA Lag) l A Rl!!
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