Citizen Action Sues Nw Mexico Environment Department
The Landfill is located in Albuquerque, New Mexico on the East Mesa. It is in a rapidly growing urban area next to Mesa del Sol residential development and near a major entertainment center. It is also situated above AlbuquerqueÕs only aquifer. The landfill consists of unlined pits and trenches, the complete contents of which are unknown. The waste found there was generated from almost 30 years of nuclear weapons experiments during the Cold War. While no accurate record was kept of the contents of the landfill, through a number of information requests, Citizen Action was able to obtain documents regarding its contents.
Citizen Action found that the Landfill was used from 1959 to 1962 for chemical waste and accepted a range of low level, mixed and hazardous waste. Documents that were released indicate that containerized and uncontainerized radioactive liquids were disposed of in the Landfill until 1975. Dumping continued through the late 1980s, during which time an unknown number of canisters containing high-level waste were dumped into the landfill.
Of particular concern are two types of highly radioactive waste found in the dump. The first type is transuranic waste. Transuranic waste is plutonium contaminated waste generated by the fabrication of nuclear weapons. Transuranic waste has a very long half-life and will remain active for thousands of years. Due to negative health impacts from exposure, federal regulation requires that transuranic waste be disposed of in a deep geologic repository at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant located outside Carlsbad, New Mexico.
The second type of waste is Greater than Class C waste. Greater than Class C waste is the class of commercial low-level waste with the highest concentration of both short and long-lived radionuclides. It contains materials with a range of radioactivity levels, including highly radioactive metals from inside nuclear reactors. Like transuranic waste, Greater then Class C waste is prohibited by federal law to remain in shallow burial.
The lawsuit challenges the decision to leave waste in unlined trenches covered with a three-foot layer of soil. Sue Dayton, director of Citizen Action, said, "The Secretary's Final Order to leave the waste covered with a few feet of dirt in shallow burial does not address the [transuranic] waste or the [G]reater than Class C waste buried in the dump. The Mixed Waste Landfill is a dangerous dump.... It is not a properly engineered landfill nor was it built to accept such wastes. The plan approved by the NMED will attempt to prevent exposure to the public for a period of only 100 years - not 10,000 years."
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