As a follow-up to last week's announcement that Gov. Ritter is opposed to the federal government possibly storing mercury waste near Grand Junction, Gov. Ritter today sent the below letter to U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu:
July 30, 2009
The Honorable Steven Chu
Secretary
Dear Secretary Chu:
Several days ago, I announced that I will oppose the designation of the Grand Junction Disposal Site, at which uranium mill tailings and related materials are disposed, as a long-term storage and disposal site for elemental mercury. I am writing today to reiterate my opposition and to explain the reasons for my decision.
I believe it is important at the outset to recognize that for planning purposes, we must assume at this juncture that any site designated for the long-term storage of a highly toxic material will actually become the disposal site for this material. There is no reason to believe, or assume, that in some future year a federal agency will elect to once again transport large quantities of this material for storage or disposal at another site. Neither is there any basis to assume some future economic use of this highly toxic material. Instead, our planning assumption must be based on the realistic expectation that the designated site or sites will effectively become the disposal site for this material.
Viewed in that light, I believe that consideration of the Grand Junction Disposal Site is deeply flawed, for several reasons.
First, in the arid Southwest water is our life's blood. The Colorado River and its tributaries directly serve not merely millions of people in our state – for irrigation as well as domestic uses – but many millions more in both upper and lower basin states. Our state simply could not countenance the disposal – and as I said, we must proceed upon the assumption that this site will become thede facto disposal site – of a large quantity of elemental mercury at a site not significantly removed from a major tributary to the Colorado River . Any loss of mercury by any pathway to ground water or to surface water (for example, as the result of a major precipitation event) could be catastrophic.
Second, I note that much of the existing elemental mercury inventory is controlled either by the Department of Energy or the Department of Defense. And a very large part of that inventory is located at Oak Ridge
At bare minimum, I believe that the Department of Energy's environmental analysis must include a detailed and complete assessment of the entire transportation infrastructure that would be needed for this program: what transportation mode, what routes, what security precautions, what form of container or cask, what testing for that container or cask, how the mercury would be transferred into the facility, what level and type of monitoring will be performed, what are the incident response capabilities, and so on. But more fundamentally, I simply do not subscribe to the notion that rural western Colorado Colorado Colorado
Third, I also want to note that when the Department of Energy was searching for sites at which it could dispose of large quantities of uranium mill tailings and related materials, the Department assured the local community that the Cheney reservoir site would not become a hazardous waste disposal site. While that was many years ago now, and the Department has done commendable work at the Grand Junction and other legacy sites, the Department has made no case for why its earlier commitment should not stand. But beyond that fact, I am convinced that the State as well as the Department would have taken a much harder look at the Cheney Reservoir site had we known at the time that it might in future be considered as a storage and disposal site for elemental mercury. Simply put, we cannot go back in time.
Respectfully,
Governor
