Beatty faces buried threat

Mary Manning and Benjamin Grove

Friday, June 26, 1998 | 3:58 a.m.

A stunning new report reveals that 47 pounds of highly radioactive plutonium have been buried at the waste dump near Beatty, which is generally thought of as exclusively for "low-level" waste.

That finding was revealed Tuesday for the first time in a report by the U.S. General Accounting Office, shocking environmentalists and lawmakers.

"The amount of plutonium is astonishing," said Dan Hirsch, spokesman for Los Angeles-based environmental group Committee to Bridge the Gap. "No one knew how much plutonium was buried at any of these sites. Plutonium will be in the ground for half a million years."

The plutonium dumping in Beatty -- about 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas -- is legal, but dangerous, environmentalists say.

A weightless, invisible speck of plutonium -- weighing one 1,000,000th of an ounce -- once inhaled will cause lung cancer. Plutonium can be dangerous for half a million years.

Hirsch said the 47 pounds of plutonium found at Beatty would be dangerous enough to pollute the water in a 5-foot swimming pool with four sides each 175 miles long. That's about the square mileage of Maine. It's about the amount of water 200 million households use in a year.

"It's exquisitely toxic material," Hirsch said. "It's sometimes described as the most most toxic material on Earth."

Most in the general public do not realize that federal laws can define plutonium as "low-level" waste.

Low-level radioactive repositories generally dispose of contaminated clothing and other debris from nuclear facilities, hospitals and research centers, but not large amounts of plutonium, the fuel for reactors and nuclear weapons.

"That's the real scam -- they allow you to use unlined trenches and dump in material that is identically toxic to the stuff that is considered high-level," Hirsch said.

Waste company US Ecology operated the Beatty dump, until the state closed the nuclear waste portion of it in 1992 after violations were discovered. US Ecology had never disclosed how much plutonium had been disposed at any of its sites throughout the country, at Beatty, in Illinois, Kentucky and Washington.

The US Ecology dumps accepted radioactive wastes from commercial nuclear reactors and laboratories, items ranging from contaminated tools and gloves to pieces of pipe.

American Ecology, the parent company of US Ecology, did not return phone calls for comment.

But Joe Nagel, spokesperson for American Ecology, attacked the GAO report in a letter.

"Specious arguments offered by project opponents are presented without providing readily available scientific information, which discredits those arguments," Nagel wrote.

There is no evidence the 47 pounds of plutonium represent an imminent danger to the town of Beatty, which is 11 miles northwest of the dump.

A 1995 U.S. Geological Survey study revealed radiation contamination in the ground water south of the Beatty dump, but not plutonium contamination. No radiation of any kind has been found in Beatty's drinking water supply or at the farms south and west of the site.

"There is no environmental evidence to indicate the plutonium is migrating," said Stan Marshall, director of the Radiological Protection Section of the Nevada Division of Health.

Still, environmentalists said they were concerned about the quantity of plutonium sitting in Nevada water and soil for thousands of years.

"That's drinking water for anyone a half-million years in the future who want to use it," Hirsch said. "We're talking about resources that future generations are going to desperately need."

Other experts temper their concern.

"I would not get immediately alarmed about it. You certainly want to have an understanding of it," said Glenn Miller, an environmental sciences and health professor at the University of Nevada, Reno. "Forty-seven pounds dispersed over that area may not be a substantial amount. The Beatty site is one that needs to be monitored for a long time, and this is one reason why."

Another reason to watch: scientists believe the ground water around Beatty flows toward the Amargosa Valley, one of the most fertile areas of the state about 70 miles northwest of Las Vegas. So far, no tests have detected radiation in the water in the valley, where people raise dairy cows and grow pistachio nuts and vegetables.

Radiological experts with the Nevada Division of Health are reviewing 30 year's worth of records in an effort to study radiation levels there, Marshall said.

The dump in Beatty opened in 1962. The nuclear waste area of the dump is roughly 35 acres of unlined trenches. Dump trucks brought waste -- including liquid sludge -- to the site and dumped it in the trenches, which were covered by soil.

The plutonium in the landfill is not isolated in one area; the radioactive material entered the dump in tiny particles attached to waste, such as rubber gloves.

The GAO report was requested by Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., and Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., who were concerned about a US Ecology-proposed dump at Ward Valley, near Needles, Calif., roughly 100 miles south of Las Vegas.

The GAO study said serious environmental issues have not been answered about the proposed Ward Valley dump.

The report said the California site had not been assessed for the potential to contaminate the Colorado River, less than 20 miles east.

Initially, American Ecology said only a few ounces of plutonium would be stored at Ward Valley, but the GAO reported that the company revised the estimate as high as 124 pounds of plutonium.

American Ecology denied it. "US Ecology never projected that 120 pounds of plutonium would go to Ward Valley," Nagel wrote. That figure was part of a safety analysis, he noted.

The GAO report said additional reports completed after 1991 on Ward Valley were not considered in the environmental compliance documents.

Miller said the continuing environmental concerns "must raise very serious questions about the wisdom of going forward with the Ward Valley project at all."

California Gov. Pete Wilson has pushed the federal government to turn the Ward Valley site over to the state. Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt, however, ordered further testing.

The GAO also discovered that US Ecology had dumped 47,800, 55-gallon drums into the Pacific Ocean near San Francisco Bay between 1946 and 1970. Many of the drums had ruptured and spilled contents onto the sea floor, the report said.