Wayne County radioactive waste trial ends with attorney’s warning over future Manhattan Project shipments

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Lawyers presented closing arguments on Tuesday in the bench trial to decide whether shipments of Manhattan Project-era waste to a Wayne County landfill can resume.

Attorneys for Wayne County and communities near the landfill warned Wayne Disposal could receive radioactive waste from many more sites, posing a public health risk, while the landfill’s attorneys said such fears are unsubstantiated.

The legal battle over the shipments began in 2024 after it was revealed the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers planned to transport elevated radiation waste from the Niagara Falls Storage Site in Lewiston, New York  to the Wayne Disposal landfill in Van Buren Township.

Belleville, Van Buren Township, Canton Township, Romulus, and the Van Buren Township fire chief filed suit in September 2024 to stop the shipments, and Wayne County intervened in the case.

The lawsuit is primarily a nuisance case, and it’s unreasonable to dispose of so much elevated radiation waste, called TENORM, in a highly populated area, less than 1 mile from downtown Belleville, said Stephen Brown, an attorney for the Wayne County communities.

Brown asked whether it’s reasonable to dispose of hundreds of thousands of tons of “culturally notorious” waste in an area with vulnerable populations that are already burdened by other environmental problems.

Landfill owner Republic Services owns other disposal sites in states like Texas and Idaho where waste could be shipped, he said.

“These alternative sites are readily available, and they have no schools, churches, residences, towns or the world’s largest supply of fresh water located nearby,” Brown said, arguing the trial is only taking place because it’s cheaper to truck materials to Wayne Disposal.

Michigan’s law governing TENORM is deficient, with carve-outs that fail to effectively regulate thorium and radium, he said.

Brown quoted a section of Michigan’s Natural Resources and Environmental Protection Act that says if a court finds a standard to be deficient, it can direct the adoption of a standard approved and specified by the court. 

Brown asked Wayne County Circuit Court Judge Kevin Cox to retain his Aug. 6 preliminary injunction that bars shipments of TENORM from Army Corps sites to Wayne Disposal — or to at least set volume limits on TENORM disposal at the facility.

Scott Watson, an attorney for Wayne Disposal, said in his closing arguments that evidence shared at the trial showed the plaintiffs’ fears are unfounded, and no evidence of actual harm was presented. Over 600,000 tons of TENORM were already disposed of at the facility without incident, he added.

“They offered no evidence that the harm they complain of, the fear and anxiety, would be redressed by an injunction prohibiting the disposal of FUSRAP TENORM,” Watson said, using the acronym for the Army Corps’ Formerly Utilized Sites Remedial Action Program.

The plaintiffs offered no evidence to support adoption of stronger pollution control measures beyond the current limits on uranium, thorium, radium, and lead-210, Watson said.

Landfill monitoring is ‘garbage in, garbage out’: Wayne County attorney

Radiation monitoring data was a key point of contention during Tuesday’s closing arguments, with attorneys drawing opposite conclusions from the data presented at trial.

This data showed radiation at Wayne Disposal’s fence line present at 10 millirem per year, said Wayne Disposal’s Watson.. One millirem is equivalent to the radiation received from watching television for one year, according to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

The dose someone would receive from living on top of the landfill for 1,000 years would be “functionally zero,” Watson said.

Mike Caldwell, an attorney for Wayne County, said radiation assessments were based on Wayne Disposal’s data, which he called “garbage in, garbage out.”

Kimberlee Kearfott, a University of Michigan professor and radiation protection expert, previously testified that Wayne Disposal failed to properly account for background levels because it didn’t monitor radiation levels off-site.

Caldwell said monitoring data showed gamma radiation levels increasing at the monitor on the facility’s eastern perimeter, which is intended to serve as the background monitor.

This worked in the landfill’s favor because the higher the background dose, the lower the supposed dose of radiation from the landfill, he said.

On Feb. 5, Cox asked Kearfott about her statement that radiation from the site is increasing, and what the impacts of this would be.

Kearfott said: “It’s increasing the risk of cancers, life-shortening, and other effects associated with radiation.”

At the close of Tuesday’s hearing, Caldwell presented a map with around 20 actively managed Manhattan Project-era sites, most of them in the Northeast and Midwest. Wayne Disposal is set to receive hundreds of thousands of tons of material from these sites because its proximity reduces transportation costs, he said.

“Your honor, we’re gonna get all of it,” he said.

Cox set a March 10 deadline for the attorneys to submit their findings of fact and conclusions of law to the court before the judge renders a decision.

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