Concerns aired over landfill leak

COLUMBIA — Some conservation groups and lawmakers called Thursday for an investigation of South Carolina's environmental agency because of concerns that information about a nuclear waste leak at a Barnwell County facility was not properly disclosed.

Conservationists also are seeking the release of the state Department of Health and Environmental Control's pollution records about Chem-Nuclear's low-level atomic waste landfill.

"We are tired of a DHEC which shrinks from taking on polluting industries," said Ann Timberlake, director of the Conservation Voters of South Carolina. "We are tired of our regulators appearing as enablers and defenders" of industries.

Tritium levels in wells beneath the site have registered above federal standards for safe drinking water, but DHEC has said that the material hasn't tainted drinking wells. Members of a committee debating the site's future were told this year that there had been a tritium leak in the past, but Chem-Nuclear officials said it had been caught in time.

"This isn't a little issue," said Rep. Joan Brady, R-Columbia, a member of the panel that voted to allow the site to accept waste from only South Carolina, New Jersey and Connecticut beginning next July. "This is about public safety. This is about public health. This is about drinking water."

Chem-Nuclear has been trying to reduce the tritium leaks by closing landfill trenches to keep rainwater out of burial pits and is using synthetic liners above some trenches to repel rainwater that would leach through the nuclear garbage into groundwater, DHEC officials have said.

State Attorney General Henry McMaster has also called for tougher groundwater monitoring standards at the site, pressing DHEC to enforce federal standards. The site has operated since 1971 under Nuclear Regulatory Commission standards.