[CPEO-MEF] Liability concerns loom over Johnston dump

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[Hawaii]
Liability concerns loom over Johnston dump
By Diana Leone
dleone@starbulletin.com

Some 800 miles southwest of Honolulu on Johnston Island, a contractor
hopes to complete a 25-acre landfill of radioactive rubble by next
month.

The Defense Threat Reduction Agency, an arm of the U.S. Department of
Defense, has pledged that radiation exposure on top of the landfill will
meet Environmental Protection Agency standards set for the whole island.

But there's a hitch. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which is
scheduled to become the sole caretaker of the island after the military
leaves in 2004, doesn't want the liability of the radioactive dump.

The Fish and Wildlife Service maintains that "land-filling of plutonium
contaminated material on Johnston Island is not appropriate, and that it
should be shipped off-island to a radioactive waste facility," Regional
Director Anne Badgley wrote in a July 25 letter to the Defense Threat
Reduction Agency.

Fish and Wildlife officials are still waiting to hear from the defense
agency about how to resolve the impasse, said Don Palawski, who oversees
Pacific Island refuges, including Johnston, for Fish and Wildlife.

The landfill contains 45,000 cubic meters of radioactive material, the
last remnants of fallout from two failed 1962 test explosions of nuclear
warheads that contaminated Johnston Atoll National Wildlife Refuge. The
material is buried under 2 feet of coral.

Johnston Island is the largest of four islands and the site of military
activity that has coexisted with the refuge.

Because nuclear fission never occurred, EPA engineer Ray Saracino likens
the plutonium contamination to what people today call a "dirty bomb." It
will take 24,000 years before half of the plutonium decomposes to a
harmless state, he said.

This article can be viewed at:
http://starbulletin.com/2002/10/19/news/story10.html

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