An alleged plan to cover-up critical information at the low level nuclear waste dump in Barnwell County, the only one in the country to take such materials, could land a number of people in serious legal trouble. The Palmetto Scoop has learned that Attorney General Henry McMaster may soon launch an inquiry into whether or not high radioactive pollution levels at the Barnwell Chem-Nuclear site were intentionally concealed from state legislators deliberating the future of the facility.

The State newspaper reported Saturday that, according to eight of the 18 members of the House agriculture committee, officials “did not provide information last spring showing more than 30 monitoring wells contained radioactive tritium exceeding a federal safe drinking-water standard.” The information in question, a series of maps displaying contamination levels and well locations, would have been of vital importance in making a decision as to the site’s fate.

And now sources have informed TPS that McMaster will summon officials from the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control and Chem-Nuclear officials and lobbyists to appear before him in the next few days. The parties will be asked to explain why they did not disclose information about radioactive pollution leaks at the Barnwell site to the public, media and the General Assembly. We were also told that McMaster, who personally toured the facility in the spring, will demand an explanation for the failure to provide the pollution data during his visit.

The investigation would shed a great deal of light on the information uncovered by The State.

S.C. health officials and Chem-Nuclear have long acknowledged a leak of tritium occurred in the 1970s, but said this week the 235-acre site is not polluting anyone’s drinking water and complies with federal radiation standards.

Still, the 2004 and 2006 maps, obtained recently by The State newspaper under the Freedom of Information Act, provide details many environmentalists, state lawmakers and Barnwell County residents say they were never told about. Among the details:

• Tritium levels exceeded the Environmental Protection Agency’s safe drinking-water standard in about a third of the monitoring wells at the waste dump and below the site.

• Some of the tritium levels exceeded the EPA standard by hundreds of times and were higher than tritium readings on parts of the nearby Savannah River Site nuclear-weapons complex, the newspaper found. The EPA standard is 20,000 picocuries per liter; about 19 wells averaged at least 1 million picocuries, with some of those averaging 10 million picocuries.

• About a dozen of the tainted monitoring wells are outside the landfill, just north of a small community that relies on private wells for drinking water. [SAMMY FRETWELL - The State]

If true, it was a very bold and reckless move by these individuals to lie or hide such crucial information from the state’s top law enforcement official while he was visiting the site. Yet they may have done just that.

And it will be very interesting to see the political fallout - pun intended - that will likely ensue once the inquiry reveals the full scope of the involved lobbyists’ connections.

Photo: Attorney General Henry McMaster tours the Laidlaw GSX facility on Lake Marion

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 26th, 2007 at 8:35 pm and is filed under Around the state, Judicial, Legislature. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.