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The Department of Energy is laying the legal groundwork now to abandon the site and leave waste in the ground that will be dangerous for over 100,000 years, said Seth Wochensky, a spokesman for the Coalition. In a Record of Decision issued in June, the Department of Energy stated that they will be able to rename dangerous high-level radioactive wastes as “waste incidental to reprocessing” which will allow them to bypass decades of nuclear regulatory safety standards, Mr. Wochensky said. “This declassification is not supported in the accompanying Environmental Impact Statement,” he said. “It is not in the West Valley Demonstration Project Act, which governs the cleanup, and it is not allowable under U.S. law.” As part of a campaign by the current administration to promote nuclear power and reprocessing, the Department of Energy is forcing less costly, but indefinite storage of wastes on unsafe sites across the country, Mr. Wochensky said. The complaint asks the courts to strike the latest (decision) and enforce a 1987 agreement between the Coalition and the Department of Energy in which the Department agreed to complete an Environmental Impact Study. A draft version of that study, released in 1996, calculated high erosion and exposure rates from the West Valley site. The Coalition, other groups and area municipalities called for exhumation of the wastes as the only safe course. The Department of Energy has since abandoned that study, he said. “For the health and safety of Western New York and Canada, the Coalition is forced to challenge the DOE decision because it sets the stage for abandoning nuclear weapons and power wastes in ground that is destined to erode into the Great Lakes. The DOE has done great cleanup work at the site thus far, but it must not stop.” He added, “The Department of Energy is cutting jobs at the site, jeopardizing the public’s safety now and threatening the drinking water supply for millions of Canadians and Americans for hundreds of generations.” He said the site is in the Great lakes watershed and is directly upstream from the Seneca Nation of Indians’ Cattaraugus Reservation. The Coalition’s complaint in U.S. District Court in Buffalo has the support of the Natural Resources Defense Council. The Coalition’s Web site is www.digitup.org
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