US EPA Aministrator Gina McCarthy
Washington D.C.
Dear Ms. McCarthy,
Please kindly review the below comments. They are based primarily upon your agency's own former top radiation experts and other top US government radiation experts I have consulted with over the decades.
In approx. 2003, deeply concerned technical experts within your agency had personally warned me about the PAGs being proposed even back then. I strongly believe they shared this with me because they were already acutely aware of the deeply troubling situation regarding radiation and testing at our Uniontown IEL Superfund site in Ohio. In this same time frame in the mid 2000s, after reviewing the US EPA's/corporations' data base on IEL, top independent university radiation experts indeed estimated the IEL toxic landfill may contain up to 1/2 ton of deadly Plutonium and other dangerous radiation isotopes, but may have been underestimated given outdated, questionable methods permitted by US EPA's NAREL. However, apparently due to the perceived severe politics/pressures involved, and thanks to US Region 5 bowing to the corporations' wishes, even the most basic clean up of mere institutional controls were killed off that your agency had promised the community would be implemented to help mitigate the outward migration of toxins by isolating the hundreds of tons of waste perched just a few feet above the water table linked to the area's sole source aquifer system serving up to 600,000 Ohioans in several counties. Instead this Superfund Site continues to freely flush to this day ..
Ms. McCarthy, I believe that those same US EPA experts who had long ago shared their worries about the PAGs being implemented all too well understood the "gaming" of the rad testing that had already been going on for years. .... - i.e, so called "compliance monitoring " - using the US EPA "Finished Drinking Water 900 Methods" - methods meant for finished, treated water systems and they said was never meant to be used on raw, untreated water sources found like at IEL. Please see numerous letters documenting these serious deviations away from what is considered to be best available science in letters to EPA found on our group's website: http://cclt.starksummit.org
Thus, the EPA scientists not simply expressed their fears of the PAGs being misused leaving Americans at risk to dangerous radiation, but they likewise raised serious concerns to me about the US EPA's unscientific usage of the "EPA Finished Drinking Water 900 Methods" on raw, untreated water sources suspected of containing radiation, which is what occurred at Uniontown IEL.
Therefore, I am writing you today to not only ask that you NOT sign off on the PAGs , but to please issue a change in policy immediately, before this Administration ceases, to once and for all prohibit the US EPA from allowing/prescribing/condoning the continued usage of the EPA Finished Drinking Water 900 Methods whenever raw, untreated water suspected of containing radiation is involved.
Important note : While those same EPA whistle blowers had thought by 2000 they had at least stopped this practice of using the 900 on raw, untreated water after this was erroneously done to the Uniontown IEL Superfund Site, we have outrageously come to learn in recent years in working on fracking issues that US EPA continues to apparently suggest/permit others consulting the EPA to use the Finished Drinking Water 900 Methods on raw fracking waste water, despite the scientific evidence going against this being allowed, if in fact, there is a desire to learn the true amounts of water soluble radium 226 present in the fracking wastes . Experts consulted over the years advised me that they believed that while most people know that Plutonium is deadly, many do not understand that given the way the water soluble radium can be metabolized = bone seeking, even more in the body than Plutonium, which is somewhat excreted, It is essential that EPA take these steps immediately to insure credible data is gathered given the vast amounts of fracking wastes being discharged daily into our US communities in Ohio, PA., W. Virginia, New York and elsewhere, or many more IEL landfills will occur.
Sincerely,
Chris Borello, President , Concerned Citizens of Lake Twp.
Uniontown IEL Superfund Site, Ohio
ON NOVEMBER 21st 2016 The following letter was sent from the Nuclear Information and Resource Service to alert and inform people of the serious threat of increased radiation levels to the water supplies across the nation...
NUCLEAR INFORMATION AND RESOURCE SERVICE • 6930 Carroll Ave., Ste. 340 • Takoma Park, MD, 20912 • (301) 270-6477 • www.nirs.org
November 21, 2016
Dear Friend,
In July, thousands of us took action to stop dangerous new radiation guidance for drinking water. The EPA refused to listen, and now this guidance could be approved anytime--unless we act now!
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Gina McCarthy is on the verge of approving radiation levels hundreds and thousands of times higher than currently allowed in drinking water and at cleaned-up Superfund sites.
These mis-named “Protective” Action Guides for Drinking Water (Water PAGs) dramatically INCREASE allowable radioactivity in water. Enormous levels of invisible but deadly radioactive contamination would be permitted in drinking water for weeks, months or even years after a nuclear accident or “incident.” The PAGs are not for the immediate phase after a radioactive release but the next phase--which could last for years--when local residents may return home to contaminated water and not know the danger.
Take action now: Protect drinking water from dangerous radiation levels!
There are two quick actions to take today:
Tell your EPA Regional Administrator (see map and list on the NIRS website) to ask EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy why she is raising radiation levels allowed in drinking water.
Send a message to Administrator McCarthy yourself asking her not to approve these dangerous radiation levels in drinking water.
We have stopped PAGs like these from being approved before--and we can do it again. EPA insiders attempted to push these dangerous guides through in the waning days of the Bush administration, and public pressure like this got the agency to pull them back. Now we have to do it again!
Thanks for all you do!
Diane D'Arrigo
Radioactive Waste Project Director
More Information
The PAGs protect the polluters from liability, not the public from radiation. CHECK out the NBC 4 News Story . (Available on the NIRS website)
These PAGs are a bad legacy . Approving them now is a deceptive way to circumvent the Safe Drinking Water Act, Superfund cleanup levels, and EPA’s history of limiting the allowable risk of cancer to 1 in a million people exposed (or at most 1 in 10,000 in worst-case scenarios).
The PAGs don't just affect water!
They markedly relax long-term cleanup standards.
They set very high and outdated radiation levels allowable in food.
They eliminate requirements to evacuate people vulnterable to high radiation doses to the thyroid and skin.
They eliminate limits on lifetime whole body radiation exposures.
And they recommend dumping radioactive waste in municipal garbage dumps not designed for such waste.
Outrageously, EPA is expanding the kinds of radioactive ‘incidents’ that would be allowed to give off these dangerously high levels and doses.
PAGs originally applied to huge nuclear disasters like the nuclear power meltdowns at Fukushima or a dirty bomb BUT NOW they could ALSO apply to less dramatic releases from nuclear power reactors or radio-pharmaceutical spills, nuclear transport accidents, fires or any radioactive “incident” that “warrant[s] consideration of protective action.”
EPA REGIONS and REGIONAL ADMINISTRATORS
Region 1 Administrator Curt Spalding
(617) 918-1010
spalding.curt@epa.gov
Region 2 Administrator Judith Enck
(212) 637-5000
enck.judith@epa.gov
Region 3 Administrator Cecil Rodrigues
(215) 814-2683
Rodrigues.cecil@Epa.gov
Region 4 Administrator Heather McTeer Toney
(404) 562-9900
McTeertoney.heather@Epa.gov
Region 5 Acting Administrator Robert A. Kaplan
(312) 886-3000
Kaplan.robert@Epa.gov
Region 6 Administrator Ron Curry
(214) 665-2100
Curry.ron@Epa.gov
Region 7 Administrator Mark Hague
(913) 551-7006
Hague.mark@Epa.gov
Region 8 Administrator Shaun McGrath
(303) 312-6532
McGrath.shaun@Epa.gov
Region 9 Acting Administrator Alexis Strauss
(415) 947-8000
Strauss.alexis@Epa.gov
Region 10 Administrator Dennis McLerran
(206) 553-1234
mclerran.dennis@epa.gov
For more info, contact Diane D'Arrigo at NIRS: dianed@nirs.org or 301-270-6477
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