June 13, 2001

By FAX

Honorable Erin Crotty
Commissioner
New York Department of Environmental Conservation
50 Wolf Road
Albany, NY

Greetings:

I write today to offer comments on your agency's Proposed Remedial Action Plan (PRAP) for the Cornell University Radiation Disposal Site (7-55-001). With due respect, your agency's plan of action is woefully inadequate to protect the environment, the public health and Cayuga Lake. I urge you to adopt the revisions outlined below.

Site Description

The site is a two-acre, inactive radioactive waste dump that was used between the late 1950's and 1978. It reportedly contains 38,667 cubic yards of waste, including 9,400 cubic yards of low-level radioactive waste. Those wastes reportedly include animal carcasses contained in boxes and barrels, laboratory wastes, including 1,4 paradioxane, alcohols, naphthalene, toluene and xylene, and radioactive materials, including carbon-14, tritium, cesium-137, strontium-90 and other isotopes. A comprehensive inventory of the dump's contents has not been compiled.

Since the site was not properly designed, constructed or maintained to hold its contents securely, it has leaked a wide assortment of toxic pollutants and now poses a significant threat to the environment. These threats include but may not be limited to: groundwater contamination, surface water contamination, soil and bedrock contamination as well as human health hazards posed by direct contact with pollutants or ingestion of pollutants in drinking water.

Failure to Assign a Correct Classification Code to the Site

My first concern relates to an incorrect classification code for the site. According to the first paragraph of Section I of the PRAP, your agency is proposing a remedy to address "the significant threat to the environment created by the presence of hazardous waste at the Cornell University Radiation Disposal Site." Despite this clear and concise statement, your agency's Inactive Hazardous Waste Disposal Site Registry profile for the site includes a classification code of "3": "Does not present a significant threat to the public health or the environment -- action may be deferred." I urge you to give this site a classification code of "2": "Presents a significant threat to the public health or environment -- action required."

Failure to Assess the Environmental and Public Health Hazards of the Site

In order to formulate an adequate site clean up plan, it is imperative to conduct a comprehensive site investigation that properly assesses all of the site's environmental and public health hazards. I would like to point out several critical shortcomings that must be corrected before any remedial plan is approved by your agency.

Failure to Assess Surface and Groundwater Impacts

My main concern with the PRAP is that it fails to address the dump's surface and groundwater impacts. On page 10 of the PRAP, it is noted that surface water near the dump flows three miles through a series of ditches, culverts and creeks until discharging into Cayuga Lake. It is further noted that:

"One detection of paradioxane was noted at SW-30 at the inlet of Twin Glens Creek to Cayuga Lake in December 1997, at a concentration of 25 ppb (parts per billion). There were no previous detections or any subsequent detections (in a total of 8 sampling events) of paradioxane at this location. Additionally, the upgradient location (SW-33) was sampled during the same event in December 1997 and no detection of paradioxane was observed. This single detection of paradioxane at SW-30 is not considered to be representative of conditions resulting from releases from the site."

This statement is utterly misleading and calls into question the integrity of the PRAP. What is left unreported is that paradioxane was subsequently identified at SW-30 in December 1998 at a concentration of 11 ppb as well as in June 1999 at a concentration of 19 ppb. Clearly, the multiple detections of paradioxane at SW-30 support the conclusion that the toxic solvent is migrating into Cayuga Lake through the surface water drainageways.

In addition, sampling at SW-33 identified paradioxane in June 1995 at a concentration of 17.5 ppb, in October 1995 at a concentration of 22 ppb, in December 1998 at a concentration of 18 ppb, in March 1999 at a concentration of 9 ppb and in March 2000 at a concentration of 2 ppb. These monitoring results refute the PRAP's suggestion that the paradioxane identified at SW-30 was an analytical anomaly that was not verified by sampling conducted upgradient from the detection point.

Moreover, tritium had been detected at SW-30 in March 1997 at a concentration of 70 pCi/l. Strontium 90 also had been detected at SW-30 in March 1997 at a concentration of .26 pCi/l. These data also support the conclusion that radioactive contamination from the dump is migrating down the surface water drainageways into Cayuga Lake.

This scenario raises serious public health implications. The Twin Glens discharge into Cayuga Lake is in the immediate vicinity of a densely populated lakefront community where citizens swim, boat and possibly drink water from the lake. It is also possible that people entering the drainageways could become contaminated. No assessment of either of these threats has been undertaken. No warning signs are posted to alert an unwary public along the lakefront or near homes, baseball fields, schools and churches along the drainageways.

Surface water contamination is evidently not limited to the drainageways according to Cornell's monitoring results. SW-1 is located approximately 2,000 feet to the northeast of the dump. This is in the opposite direction of surface water flow specified in the PRAP (page 10). Nevertheless, paradioxane was detected in March 1997 at a concentration of 20 ppb and in June 1998 at a concentration of 55 ppb. Tritium was detected in March 1997 at a concentration of 257 pCi/l and in December 1999 at a concentration of 220 pCi/l. Strontium 90 was detected in March 1997 at a concentration of .22 pCi/l, in December 1999 at a concentration of 0.76 pCi/l and in December 2000 at a concentration of 1.06 pCi/l.

A proper assessment of the dump's surface water impact is obviously needed since the existing PRAP fails to account for the impacts noted above. Moreover, there are at least two reported dumps that should be investigated for possible pollution contributions to the environment in the vicinity of Cornell's Radiation Disposal Site. The first is Cornell's "Elm Tree Dump" located to the east of the Cornell Chemical Dump Site. The second is the Collins Dump to the northeast of the Radiation Disposal Site. Both of these sites should be added to the registry qualifying section of the Inactive Hazardous Waste Disposal Site Registry.

I would like to briefly point out that Cornell's subsurface investigative efforts are also flawed because they are based on the assumption that the groundwaters in the vicinity of the dump flow either westerly or southwesterly. This assumption fails to account for at least one reference in the 1994 Dames and Moore preliminary environmental assessment that a northwest component to groundwater flow exists in the till layer underlying the radioactive dump.

In short, the surface and groundwater assessments that Cornell performed for its dump are flawed and self-fulfilling. Cornell's investigations are guided by assumptions that the dump's pollution migrates essentially west or southwest. As a result, insufficient monitoring efforts were undertaken in other directions. In addition, Cornell inexplicably disregarded the SW-1 data that refuted its assumptions about pollution migration patterns. Additional monitoring should be undertaken to address these critical issues.

Unacceptable Clean up Proposal

Finally, the proposed clean up solution for the dump is unacceptable. At the public hearing that I attended, your department's representative stated unequivocally that no Radiation Disposal Site could possibly be granted a permit by your agency for the existing site location. If a state-of-the-art radiation storage facility could not be permitted to operate at this site, it makes no sense to tolerate a dump that currently leaks into surface water, groundwater, fractured bedrock and solid, competent bedrock.

Over time, there is no doubt that the proposed engineered pollution containment and capture system involving a landfill cap, slurry wall, grout curtain and groundwater recovery will surely fail. Similar systems approved by your agency at other dump sites in New York have already failed.

Even worse, you propose that pollution that has already escaped the dump site be allowed to migrate through the environment until it self-attenuates. As Cornell's monitoring results document, pollution has long been flowing into Cayuga Lake on an on-going basis instead of self-attenuating. As a result, your proposal would condemn Cayuga Lake to lingering pollution discharges for decades if not hundreds of years to come.

The southern end of the lake is already included by your agency on the 303(d) list of impaired waterbodies. I respectfully point out that your agency is required to reduce Cayuga Lake's pollution burden and is specifically prohibited pursuant to Section 122.4(i) of the Clean Water Act from issuing new discharge permits that exacerbate existing water quality violations.

In conclusion, I enclose a map that illustrates some of the areas and facilities that warrant further investigation to protect the environment and the public health. Since your agency declined my request for a two business day extension for submitting comments on your PRAP, I intend to speak to those issues at another time.

Thank you for giving your prompt attention to the matters specified in this letter. I look forward to your timely reply.