Landfill Burying Tons Of Hazardous Waste Inel Conflict Overshadows Operation Praised By Regulators

The planned shipment of nuclear waste to the Idaho Falls area is grabbing all the attention, but the state has a second repository for hazardous substances in the state.

Envirosafe Services of Idaho Inc. buried 86,000 tons of hazardous materials last year in a landfill 35 miles southeast of Boise, on a former Titan missile site in the sagebrush desert of Owyhee County.

As with the Idaho National Engineering Laboratory, where the Navy wants to ship more spent nuclear fuel, most of the waste has come to Envirosafe from out of state.

After contentious years in the 1980s, when Envirosafe took over the hazardous waste landfill and drew widespread criticism, the company has changed its ways.

Now state and federal regulators call the operation a model of safety and good procedures.

And company efforts to build bridges with the community have turned critics into supporters.

The 120-acre operation, which employs 44 people, is one of only 19 facilities in the country permitted to bury hazardous waste.

Federal law prohibits most hazardous waste from being put in the ground because of the danger of contamination of groundwater.

Some wastes, however, such as metal sludges and hazardous construction debris, must be buried because they cannot be destroyed in incinerators.

Waste trucked to Envirosafe comes from 36 states.

The heart of the operation is an enormous pit where bulldozers bury containers of hazardous waste.

Buildings nearby are used to convert waste to a form suitable for burial.

One operation grinds debris into small pieces, another converts liquids or sludges into stable solids.

Much of Envirosafe’s improved relations with its neighbors stems from better techniques for handling hazardous waste.

The company that owned the site before Envirosafe dumped liquid chemicals directly into the empty silos, raising the possibility of leaks.

The missile site was one of three built in the early 1960s within 45 miles of Mountain Home Air Force Base. The silos were built for Titan missiles armed with nuclear warheads.

The federal government sold the sites after they were decommissioned in the late 1960s.

The situation did not improve dramatically when Envirosafe took over the operation in 1981. While the silos were sealed and closed, Envirosafe still dumped liquid hazardous waste directly into the landfill and allowed an enormous backlog of unprocessed drums to build up on the property.

Since then, the company’s actions have been a textbook example of mending fences.

Addressing fears of groundwater contamination, the company designed a state-of-the art system to keep water from flowing off the property. Water that picks up chemicals flowing through the landfill is caught in the landfill’s impervious liner, pumped out of the ground and treated on site.

More than 50 monitoring wells were sunk into the ground throughout the 120-acre site to detect any contaminants that escape.

The landfill itself is in an ideal location, company officials and state regulators say. Only 7 inches of rain fall a year, in a desert hot enough to evaporate 42 inches a year. That means that there is little danger of contaminated water building up and seeping into groundwater far below.

Thick layers of watertight clay - left by an ancient lake - sit under the landfill and provide further insurance against groundwater contamination. The site also is very isolated, with only two homes within two miles.