Date Published: 08/05/2020 [Source]
A Steuben County judge has dismissed a civil suit alleging that state officials granted Hakes C&D Disposal Landfill a permit to expand without properly considering evidence that the dump contains dangerously high levels of radioactivity.
As petitioners, the Sierra Club and others had claimed that the landfill's own tests showed that its leachate contained radioactive decay isotopes at levels that pointed unmistakably to high levels of radium and radon.
Radon is the nation's second leading cause of lung cancer, after cigarette smoking. Citing a potential major public health hazard only six miles northeast of Corning, petitioners called for new tests for Radon 222 in the landfill's released gas and leachate.
The state Department of Environmental Conservation declined to order the radon tests. Instead it expressed confidence that drive-through monitoring stations at the landfill's entrance have prevented trucks from delivering any highly radioactive material. Only "drill cuttings" — rock chips from the vertical portion of hydrofracked wells — with background-level radiation have been allowed to pass through the detectors, the agency insisted.
But after analyzing leachate test results obtained through the Freedom of Information Law, the Sierra Club filed suit in April 2019 against the DEC, the landfill and the town of Campbell. Experts for the group noted exceptionally high levels of the isotopes Bismuth-214 and Lead-214, which they said were red flags for radium and radon.