EPA Announces Withdrawal of Ruling Granting Idaho Enforcement Authority on Hazardous Waste Laws 

 On Friday October 5, EPA announced in the Federal Register that "We are withdrawing the immediate final rule for Idaho: final Authorization of State Hazardous Waste Management Program ... because we received comments that oppose this authorization... " 

 After a decade of serious and substantial non-enforcement of this nation's hazardous waste laws at the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory (INEEL), the Environmental Defense Institute, Keep Yellowstone Nuclear Free, and attorney David McCoy filed a formal petition to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for removal of the State of Idaho's authority to enforce these laws. The petition also seeks a stay of the EPA decision until the petitioner's allegations to the EPA Inspector General have been investigated and findings issued. EPA recently announced its intent to confirm final enforcement authority on Idaho after a ten-year trial period intended to demonstrate whether or not the State has the ability and/or political will to enforce federal hazardous and radioactive waste environmental statutes. 

 The Petition alleges that Idaho failed to comply with laws controlling the handling of high-level radioactive and mixed hazardous waste treatment operations while IDEQ was under the oversight of the EPA. Hazardous waste facilities were allowed to operate at lesser standards resulting in emissions such as arsenic, beryllium, mercury and plutonium which could not have occurred if IDEQ had complied with federal regulations. 

 "In the interest of public health and welfare, the State Department of Environmental Quality (IDEQ) must be held accountable for not fulfilling its mandate to enforce the law," notes Chuck Broscious, Executive Director of the Troy Based Environmental Defense Institute. 

 Based on Freedom of Information Act and the Idaho version Public Information Requests, it is clear that some of IDEQ's technical staff made top-level agency management aware that the hazardous waste laws were not complied with by the U.S. Department of Energy that operates the INEEL. Tragically, IDEQ management choose to ignore its own technical staff and implement a politically motivated course of laissez faire inaction bowing to INEEL, the largest employer in the state and one which wields enormous economic and political power in the State of Idaho. 

"It is clear from our own experience that Idaho is unable or unwilling to make the Department of Energy (DOE) follow the law," explained Erik Ringelberg, KYNF Executive Director. 

 "The Idaho DEQ and the DOE have run operations in violation of federal and State law over the last decade up to the present at an extreme risk to public health and safety for ours and future generations. Political collusion between state administrators and federal agencies has allowed illegal operations and secret procedures which denied the public a full picture of the these dangerous operations, the improper permitting processes and planned projects," states co-petitioner and Idaho Falls attorney David McCoy. 

 The Petition identifies 36 unpermittable high-level radioactive/hazardous waste treatment units that are currently operating illegally at INEEL and an additional fifty-four storage tanks and vessels for failure to meet regulatory containment requirements. 

 The full text of the Petition is available on the Environmental Defense Institute website at
http://home.earthlink.net/~edinst/ Or Keep Yellowstone Nuclear Free at www.yellowstonenuclearfree.com