MEDIA ADVISORY

Mayor: Jennifer P. Dougherty

Fort Detrick Public Affairs Office

810 Schreider Street

Fort Detrick, MD 21702-5000

September 11, 2003
Waste from water treatment plant heads West

FORT DETRICK, MD-Seventeen 25-cubic-yard containers filled with about 250 cubic yards of dried solid waste from Fort Detrick's wastewater treatment plant will travel to Utah for disposal the week of September 15.

During the week, one truck will transport the bins, one at a time, to a nearby weighing station and then back to the wastewater treatment plant. Later in the week, the containers will be loaded on trucks that will transport them to Philadelphia. The containers will then travel by rail to a disposal facility in Utah.

Weighing and hauling operations will take place during normal business hours. Disruptions to normal traffic flow are expected to be minimal.

The solid waste contains minute levels of the radionuclides tritium (about 8 picocuries per gram) and carbon-14 (about 4 picocuries per gram), which came from Detrick labs and were formerly disposed of in the sanitary sewer. Thus, the waste is classified as radioactive by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and cannot be put in Detrick's landfill in keeping with the fort's Nuclear Regulatory Commission license. Detrick labs still use the radionuclides, however, they are disposed of differently now in accordance with Nuclear Regulatory Commission standards.

Soil containing comparable levels of radionuclides to Detrick's dried solid waste may be disposed of in a landfill. However, because the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has no standard for acceptable levels of radionuclides in dried solid waste, the waste must be handled as radioactive and trucked to an accredited disposal facility.

Fort Detrick officials have worked with Nuclear Regulatory Commission officials since 1997 to have the solid waste reclassified as not radioactive so it can be put in Detrick's landfill at Area B. Discussions between Detrick and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission continue to progress toward this goal.

The waste poses no danger to the Frederick community.
"The one thing I really want to emphasize here is that the low levels of radioactivity in the sludge are absolutely safe," said Col. John E. Ball, U.S. Army Garrison commander. "We are absolutely committed to protecting the health and safety of not only the Fort Detrick personnel but also the Frederick community because Fort Detrick is an extension of the Frederick community."

The cost to haul the solid waste west is about $200,000 annually.