Mar. 07, 2022: Working in communities in the Southeast since 1984, we are well aware of radioactive waste initiatives going out to potential waste dump communities. The Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League was founded because of one such program, the DOE’s Crystalline Repository Project and interim Monitored Retrievable Storage Site. We have continually opposed such radioactive waste dumps wherever they are proposed, including Yucca Mountain, Nevada. Likewise, we oppose so-called consolidated interim storage schemes.
For decades, the transfer of liability from private hands to public entities has been the underlying factor driving nuclear waste site legislation. The assumption of this liability by the people via a government agency is a transfer of wealth from poor to rich. Therefore, we see no just application of informed consent to the imposition of a nuclear waste legacy lasting millennia.
BREDL submits comments to EPA regarding Draft PFAS recommendations
The EPA interim recommendations for addressing groundwater contaminated with PFOA and PFOS needs to be expanded to include all PFAS as a class. Any talk of cleanup needs to examine previous industrial sites that probably emitted/discharged PFAS chemicals. All areas of PFAS contamination – soil, surface and ground water, air and food – need to be properly addressed. In addition to the class of PFAS, short-chain replacement chemicals that convey similar health impacts – such as GenX – also need to be included.
The federal government is hell-bent on fast tracking projects that harm the environment. For a change, how about fast tracking a plan that will clean up the entire class of PFAS contaminants and their short-chain replacements?
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