EPA Defeats Novel DOE Push To Limit Treatment Of 'Principal Threat Wastes'

摘要

EPA last month defeated an attempt by the Energy Department (DOE) at a Kentucky facility to narrow the agency's definition of "principal threat wastes" (PTW) - a key term used by the agency to drive Superfund cleanup remedies toward treatment options rather than containment. Had DOE prevailed in its arguments effectively challenging EPA's definition of PTW, EPA feared it would have set a negative precedent for how cleanups are performed nationwide, one regulator source says. But sources say EPA prevailed in the dispute governing cleanup of several burial grounds at the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant (PGDP), a DOE uranium enrichment plant in Kentucky, following a formal dispute resolution process that reached the EPA Region IV administrator, the commissioner of Kentucky's Department for Environmental Protection and the manager of DOE's Portsmouth/Paducah Project Office.