Community values & waste landfills

Rob Davis, Hanford Information Network, Jan. 7, 2005
(copied from Hanford email list)

Happy New Year Lynn,

If no one has said lately, thanks for all your hard work running this forum. We all appreciate your efforts.

On a different note,

Over the holidays my wife and I were with a party of 20 or so and got to talking about Hanford. We considered the prospect of 40 to 70 landfills with caps, barriers, security and monitoring versus a few mega-landfills with the same.

All accepted the fact that some waste will remain at the site forever, and that there will be a national sacrifice zone for many generations out in the desert. All accepted the premise that these landfills were needed and the technology was well defined and sound. Of course one of the engineers asked about the risk and ground water, but I asked them to consider the question on merits that there would be no increased risk to the public.

The overwhelming total thought that a few big landfills were preferable over 40 to 70 smaller landfills. Most did not trust DOE to fund and be responsible for that many land fills for hundreds of years. Most people asked the same questions we all ask about security, generational knowledge, groundwater, money and who will be in charge.

A comment made also pointed out that piling it all into one giant mountain, hill or "pyramid" will make it a lot easier to control and keep people away for many generations. "It could be a marker to remind us of the long term consequences of our actions," said one of our friends.

It occurred to me that this is a community value. A subset of the Hanford Advisory Board's guiding value of Remove, Treat and Dispose (RT&D).

I would like to use this forum to poll people and ask to voice your opinion. The question is, would you like to see a number of smaller landfills or mega-landfills?

I look forward to reading your response in this forum.

Thanks,
Rob Davis
Pasco

(In addition, a majority at the party felt that all the underground waste tanks need to be dug up and removed as well as dig up all the contaminated soil under the tanks.)