Sludge Spill Site Not Hazardous, State Officials Say

A Dawn Mining Co. truck sloshed 1 to 2 gallons of radioactive sludge on a road here last week, but state officials say no harm was done.

The spill occurred when the truck accidentally lunged upon entering state Highway 231 from the Ford-Wellpinit Road last Tuesday.

Dawn Manager Bob Nelson said workers from the company’s nearby uranium mill quickly cleaned up the sludge by mixing it with material used to mop up oil on garage floors.

A state Health Department worker confirmed that the site was cleaned up completely and posed no health hazard, according to Radiation Division Director T.R. Strong. He said the department found no other spill along the truck’s route from the Midnite Mine north of Wellpinit, Wash.

The sludge came from a water-treatment plant that is keeping contaminated water from the abandoned mine from entering a nearby creek. The sludge is processed at Dawn’s otherwise unused mill at Ford.

Meanwhile, Strong said the state Transportation Department has asked to perform a $10,000 study of Dawn’s proposed route for transporting out-of-state uranium mill tailings to a plastic-lined disposal pit at the mill. The study, to be paid by Dawn, will determine the cost of necessary highway improvements.

Nelson said Dawn has made no final decision, but would prefer to truck the waste from a railyard in the Spokane Valley to Reardan, Wash., via Interstate 90 and U.S. Highway 2 and from there to Ford on state Highway 231. That is the state’s least-favored route because Highway 231 is narrow and substandard for truck traffic.

The Transportation Department wants Dawn to ship the waste by rail to Springdale. That would limit trucking to a 12-mile section of Highway 231.

Dawn officials don’t expect the waste-importation plan to be delayed by a recent lawsuit filed by environmentalists, Nelson said. The lawsuit argues that Dawn needs a federal permit for contamination seeping into Chamokane Creek.

Nelson said the seepage is from old, unlined disposal pits, not the plastic-lined one that is to receive the out-of-state waste. The Health Department authorized the nearly bankrupt Dawn to import slightly radioactive mill tailings to pay for cleaning up the mill contamination.

The cleanup plan was endorsed by Ford residents, three of whom will go to Tonawanda, N.Y., Thursday to inspect waste materials stored there by the U.S. Energy Department. Members of the Ford monitoring committee already have visited a similar site at St. Louis, Mo.

Nelson said Dawn is trying to negotiate a contract to receive materials from the Tonawanda or St. Louis sites.

, DataTimes