Sierra Club, People for a Healthy Environment, Inc. (“PHE”)
and Concerned Citizens of Allegany County, Inc. filed an amended verified
petition in Steuben County Supreme Court in Bath on Friday to update their
legal challenge to the expansion of Hakes C&D Landfill in the Town of
Campbell in Steuben County. The filing updated the lawsuit filed by the
environmental groups and three individuals against the NYS Department of
Environmental Conservation (“DEC”) and the Town of Campbell on April 9, 2019.
The case had been on hold pending the issuance of the required permits by DEC,
which occurred in December 19.
The groups filed a new affidavit by their expert Dr. Raymond
Vaughan from Buffalo in support of the amended verified petition. Dr. Vaughan
has performed new calculations to estimate the amounts of radium in the
landfill. These calculations are based on his earlier calculations regarding
the amount of radon in the landfill. Because radon is a breakdown product of
radium, the radon estimates can form the basis of a radium calculation. Based
on a comparison of the Hakes Landfill to another landfill where the amounts of
radium in the waste are known, Dr. Vaughan calculates that the Hakes Landfill
would need to contain about 2500 to 175,000 pCi/g radium in its waste to
produce the ~1 million pCi/L of radon in its landfill gas that he has
previously calculated is present in the landfill, based on the landfill’s
leachate test results. The range of 2500 to 175,000 pCi/g radium is far beyond
the Hakes Landfill's nominal acceptance limit of 25 pCi/g.
“This does not mean that the Hakes landfill actually
contains radium-bearing waste that approaches 2500 to 175,000 pCi/g radium,”
said Vaughan. “How much radioactive waste is in the landfill is an open
question that requires testing to answer. My rough calculation of radium in the
landfill, like my earlier calculations of radon levels, are intended as a
warning that low levels of radium in the Hakes landfill waste (less than 25
pCi/g) can’t be reconciled with the intermittently high radon levels indicated
by the Hakes leachate test results, and that DEC must investigate what is
happening.”
The lawsuit alleges that DEC and the Town of Campbell
violated the requirements of the State Environmental Quality Review Act (SEQRA)
when they failed to take a hard look at the scientific evidence contained in
the landfill’s leachate test results of significant levels of radium and radon
in the landfill and failed to conduct further testing before approving the
landfill expansion. The lawsuit also alleges that DEC and the Town of Campbell
failed to mitigate the risks of the expansion.
The case, Sierra Club v. DEC, case no. E2019-0441CV, was
electronically filed, and the papers are available on the NYS court system
website. A new judge has been assigned to the case following the retirement of
Justice Robert Wiggins at the end of December 2019. The new judge is Justice
Patrick McAllister. The petitioners are represented by attorneys Richard Lippes
from Buffalo and Rachel Treichler from Hammondsport.
“We expect Judge McAllister to agree that more testing
should have been conducted before DEC and the Town of Campbell released their
approvals of the Hakes landfill expansion project,” said Kate Bartholomew, chair
of the Sierra Club Atlantic Chapter. “The neighbors of the landfill need to be
protected from large scale releases of radon gas through the landfill’s flaring
system. There is strong evidence in the landfill’s leachate test results that
radon gas builds up in the air of the landfill and is emitted to the atmosphere
through the flares. Because radon in not flammable, radon does not burn like
the other gases being flared. Instead, it circulates in the atmosphere around
the landfill, where people can breathe it in and where its radioactive
breakdown products attach to the dust generated by the landfill.”
“Rather than investigate what is happening, DEC has chosen
to stick its head in the mud,” Bartholomew said. “After the we filed our expert
witness statements pointing out that the landfill’s leachate test results show
very high levels of radon breakdown products in several of the test samples,
instead of investigating, DEC removed the requirement that the landfill test
its leachate for the radon breakdown products. In so doing, DEC has greatly
lessened its ability to monitor radioactivity in the landfill.
“Similar evidence of radium and radon is contained in the
leachate test results of the Chemung County landfill,” said Gary McCaslin,
President of People for a Healthy Environment, Inc. (“PHE”). “It is imperative
that DEC investigate why the leachate test results at the two landfills in New
York taking the greatest volume of drill cuttings from gas drilling operations
in the Marcellus shale in Pennsylvania show evidence of high levels of radium
and radon,” McCaslin said.
For copies of the permits issued by DEC on December 19,
2019, visit https://hakesexpansion.blogspot.com.
