by KYW's John Ostapkovich
An interagency meeting on Thursday may go a long way toward defusing a controversy about dumping radioactive sludge at a Bucks County, Pa. landfill.
People in and around Tullytown have been raising the roof over imminent disposal of the sludge, so much so that the landfill balked.
Deborah Fries of the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection, which approved the dumping after a little-known period for public comment, says this is actually sludge from the Royersford sewage plant which treated outflow from a laundry:
"The customer was washing uniforms from some nuclear facilities. And while the wastewater itself never had high levels of radiation, as I understand, over time in the reed beds there was a concentration of both cesium-137 and cobalt-60."
The DEP says the sludge did not meet the standard for radioactive waste, despite the presence of those isotopes.
Rochelle Benson of Exelon, which runs the Limerick power plant, points out that this is not plant waste:
"We do not send our waste to local or public landfills and we do not release it into the sewer system."
The meeting among the agencies involved may result in a decision to proceed, or find a plan "B."
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