Radioactive Waste from Ohio Will Be Dumped in Wayne County Landfill

March 27, 2017, 4:13 PM

Radioactive material will be shipped from Luckey, Ohio, to a suburban Detroit landfill, reports an Ohio newspaper called The Press. It cites a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers newsletter, which says the encased materials will be buried in Wayne, Mich., and Northwood, Ohio. 

“The plan calls for trucks to avoid leaving the site during the early morning or late afternoon, when people are going to and from work, or when school buses are picking up or dropping off children,” the newsletter says.

The shipments to U.S. Ecology Landfill in Wayne and the Waste Management Evergreen Landfill in Ohio are part of a clean up of contaminated material from the former Brush Beryllium site near Luckey, Ohio about 22 miles southeast of Toledo.

According to the paper:  

The site was used to process beryllium in the early 1950s and the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission sent about 1,000 tons of radioactive scrap metal there for processing magnesium. Although it was never used, the scrap was stored on site. Records also indicate that beryllium scrap – some radioactive -  from other AEC operations was sent to Luckey for reprocessing.

In 1959, the AEC contracted with Brush Beryllium Co. to close the facility. Two years later, the site was purchased by Aluminum and Magnesium, Inc. and in 1968 Goodyear Tire and Rubber Co. bought the site.  In 1987, the property was transferred to Motor Wheel Corp. Former Motor Wheel executives bought the site and formed Uretech International, Inc. in 1995.The current property owner, Industrial Properties Recovery, LLC , an industrial scrapping business, purchased the property in 2006 and began demolishing several buildings including the former annex building.

Since 2006, on several occasions, state and county health agencies in Ohio have stepped in to address concerns about cleaning up the site properly and disposing of hazardous materials. 

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers will hold a public meeting to discuss the project from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. Tuesday at the American Legion Post 240, 335 Park Dr., Luckey, Ohio.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in Buffalo did not immediately return a call to Deadline Detroit for comment.

We first saw this story in ​Metro Times.


Read more:  The Press


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