EPA wants to dig up, ship out ordnance-plant waste
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BY ALGIS J. LAUKAITIS / Lincoln Journal Star
Mead-area residents and the general public are invited to a meeting tonight to discuss how to clean up radioactive and other hazardous waste at the University of Nebraska Agricultural Research and Development Center on the outskirts of town.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is proposing two possible solutions: Dig up the waste, separate it, and ship it to several facilities for proper disposal, or leave it in place with a protective cap or cover and monitor it for many years.
Depending on which option the federal agency chooses, the cost could range from $5.7 million to $7.5 million.
EPA says its preference is to dig up the buried waste, separate it and transport it off site.
“We believe it’s more permanent — more protective,” said EPA’s project manager Scott Marquess.
The buried waste is on the site of the former Nebraska Ordnance Plant near Mead. After the bomb-making facility closed, the university bought 9,600 acres of the site during the 1960s and 1970s and used it mostly for agricultural research and storage.
But during the late 1970s and into the 1980s, according to EPA officials, the university also buried various types of hazardous waste, including radioactive medical wastes, solvents and pesticides, and radioactive animal carcasses.
The Legislature appropriated about $4.2 million from its general fund to help the university pay for the cleanup and transferred about $2.7 million from the Nebraska Environmental Trust Fund, for a total of $6.9 million.
]Bruce Haley, the university’s project manager, said the waste is buried in seven trenches, ranging from 30 feet to 100 feet long. “Not everything in the excavated area (trenches) is waste; some of it is dirt,” he added.
Marquess estimated the total volume of all the soil in the trenches at 1,500 cubic yards, or about 150 dump trucks.
Haley said the university prefers the same option as EPA: dig up the waste and ship it off-site.
“That’s just the right thing to do. We wouldn’t be putting these types of waste that are out there now in a landfill anyway,” he said.
Marquess said work on the first phase of the university’s cleanup should begin early next year. He said there may be more work later at an old landfill site on the property.
The former ordnance plant is one of 13 Superfund sites in Nebraska. So far, millions of dollars have been spent by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to clean up contaminated soil and groundwater near the ordnance plant’s former bomb-loading lines.
Marquess said the university’s cleanup activities are separate from what the corps is doing to clean up contamination.
Reach Algis J. Laukaitis at 473-7243 or alaukaitis@journalstar.com.
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EPA officials are seeking public comment on two possible options for cleaning up hazardous waste on University of Nebraska-owned land at the former Nebraska Ordnance Plant. Interested persons can attend a meeting at 7 p.m. Wednesday in the auditorium at the University of Nebraska Agricultural Research Center, 1071 County Road G, near Ithaca.
Written comments will be accepted until Dec. 7. They can be mailed to: Debbie Kring, Community Involvement Coordinator, Office of External Programs, U.S. EPA Region 7, 901 N. Fifth St., Kansas City, Kan., 66601.
Or e-mail comments to: kring.debbie@epa.gov
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