As a wise man once said, before we can turn the page on history, we first need to read the page. The following histories on the spills, fires, accidents, dumps, dumping and landfills in Langley-Bath-Clearwater (LBC) are offered, not to paint a disparaging picture of Horse Creek Valley, but to serve as essential context to frame the issue of yet another landfill proposed for the small LBC community, which has served far too long as receptacle for Aiken’s City and County waste. The article’s odd-looking layout with green tabs is provided to accommodate the choice to either read these background stories — or not — and to easily skim down to the information on Rabbit Hill. A tab-free version can be read here.
The 1970s Accidents and Spills: Putrid Air, Foul Water and Middle-of-the-Night Scares
May 1975
Langley-Bath-Clearwater residents had been complaining for years of the sickening odors but didn’t know where to take their complaints. In May 1975, a local daughter who had recently returned to Langley to care for her aging parents took up the fight. She was quoted in the local paper, “I hear the dumping late at night– sometimes at 2 in the morning, and I lie in bed thinking who can I go to and what can I do.” She described “a splashing sound of tons and tons of water around midnight twice a week” and told how, after the dumping, a foul smell hovered over the homes near the creek. “It’s putrid,” she said. “It burns your sinuses and makes you sick.”1
One neighbor reported having to leave his house, taking his family to stay with relatives whenever the smell was too strong. Another neighbor said the chemicals were peeling the paint from his house. Others complained of nausea, headaches, upset stomach and dizziness. Val-Chem denied they were dumping anything into the creek.
The local DHEC office had reportedly been filing complaints for years but said their hands were tied. For one thing, there was no way to gauge or measure odors. For another, the EPA had previously granted a grace period for Val-Chem and other Horse Creek industries in 1974. Specifically, in exchange for promises to tie into the regional wastewater treatment system, which was expected to be completed in 1978, these industries could not be prosecuted during the interim for dumping into Horse Creek.
In response to the May 1975 complaints, a DHEC official allowed, however, that if Val-Chem was violating an earlier agreement to haul their wastes in solid form to the landfill, they could be investigated.
October 1975
During the dark hours on Sunday morning October 12, Langley residents were awakened by firemen and other civil defense officials going from house to house, banging on doors to warn people not to use the water.2 The day before, residents had noticed an acrid odor in the air and a foul odor and taste to their tap water. This was not unusual, just worse than usual. By midnight Saturday, DHEC officials were on the scene testing the water. The suspected contaminant was ethyl acrylate.
The ethyl acrylate had somehow gotten into the Val-Chem’s private artesian well and was then pumped into the Langley water system — a shared system between the plant and the town. For two days, residents were supplied water from National Guard trucks parked throughout the area. The water system was flushed and the connection between the two water supplies closed off. The artesian well was shut down until further notice.
As was later learned, it may have been a series of spills that led to the ethyl acrylate seeping into the ground and contaminating the well. Val-Chem and DHEC officials speculated that, alternately, the contamination could have also come from above, from Langley Pond. According to Val-Chem’s vice-president, the plant was careful to avoid spills and didn’t dump on the grounds at the plant. Further, “any plant waste that could be harmful is sealed in drums and taken to the Langley landfill.”3
February 1976
Local residents were awakened by an acrid odor in the wee hours on February 23. DHEC received their first calls around 3:00 a.m. By morning, dozens more had phoned DHEC. As would later be learned, Val-Chem had spilled some 200 gallons of ethyl acrylate into Horse Creek. Local reactions to the incident, which affected Bath, Langley and Clearwater residents, were varied. Some people claimed they didn’t smell anything, while others complained the odors made them feel profoundly sickened and nauseated. Some feared losing their jobs if they complained. Others downplayed or denied the smell, with several merchants quipping, “Smells like money.”4
Langley Elementary schoolchildren said the fumes from the plant were always present at the school and that, on bad days, they couldn’t go out to recess. They recalled the October incident when the school had been without water for a day. One sixth grader related that the odors were so bad at school, they came through the closed windows.
In the wake of the February spill, she and another sixth grader got together a petition which was signed by 500 students protesting the earlier contamination of the Langley water system and raising concerns about the long-term effects of the fumes.
Local resident Mike Duncan, a retired safety engineer, sent certified letters to the governor, members of the state legislature, and various DHEC officials requesting the problem be remedied.
In the wake of Mr. Duncan’s campaign, DHEC charged Val-Chem with negligence for the February 23 spill of some 200 gallons of ethyl acrylate into Horse Creek and the resulting “noxious vapors and fumes”5 that permeated the ambient air in and about Langley. A show-cause hearing was scheduled for May 9 to consider the charges and fines.
April 1976
Aiken County Civil Defense received 19 calls in yet another middle-of-the-night spill, the odors from which were described by some as “unbearable.” Four DHEC officials kept vigil over the bridge near Langley where “globs of butyl acrylate could be seen floating down Horse Creek.”6
The May 1976 Show-Cause hearing
Because Val-Chem was in the EPA’s grace period and couldn’t be prosecuted for contaminating the river, the issue boiled down to air pollution, whose fumes came from water, not smokestacks, and could only be gauged by the words of the citizens who smelled it. The fact that this unmeasurable piece of evidence — odor — dissipated over time and varied from place to place made the evidence all the more difficult to quantify, much less prove. Val-Chem’s attorney challenged witnesses to describe the odor of ethyl acrylate. Points were drawn on the subjective and individual nature of the sense of smell. DHEC officials were likewise challenged by the attorneys to describe the odor and to quantify the term “undesirable level of pollution,”5 which was part of the language in DHEC’s charges against Val-Chem. The queue of witnesses for the defense, who denied smelling the odor, outnumbered the witnesses who did smell it.
Val-Chem was ultimately found guilty of negligence, but the company was not fined, as it was determined that DHEC did not have the authority to set a fine on odors.
The issues of pollution in Horse Creek improved in the wake of the 1975-1976 accidents and spills but were by no means gone. A deeper dive into the topic is beyond the scope of this article. The recollection of a 1979 experience on the creek by a former Burnettown resident is provided for reference:
My brother was a born adventurer and blazed a trail from our place to the nearby Horse Creek. He had a canoe, and his idea was to explore the creek. So we went out one day, intending to travel up to the Langley Pond dam. Horse Creek isn’t a huge stream, but it is somewhat manageable by canoe. I was impressed by the wildness of the stream. The overhanging trees, the many streamside plants and flowers, the lack of human presence. It was shortly after we began our trip that I noticed some kind of white deposits, clinging to the roots and rocks in the stream. It looked like melted mats of plastic, maybe a few inches wide, though I suspected it wasn’t melted plastic. It wasn’t just in a few places, but along the entire stream. There were also areas with some kind of red substance on the white “deposits” and elsewhere and on some of the tree roots. My brother laughed and said that maybe we should steer clear of contact with the water. I laughed, too, but I took serious pains to keep from getting any of that water on my skin. I cannot think of another time when I have had such feelings of exhilaration and repulsiveness, all at the same time.
The 1986 Reimer Drum Fire, an Evacuation Order and More
A Fire at the Langley Landfill
On Friday, May 16, 1980, a fire of undetermined origin broke out in the industrial waste area of the Langley landfill. On Saturday morning, the fire was still burning. Aiken County Civil Defense reported there were no hazardous chemicals or waste in the dump, and the fire presented no danger to the residents of the Langley, Bath, or Clearwater communities.7
Bath Resident Files Suit Against Dixie Clay Company
A suit was filed against Dixie Clay Company and its parent, R.T. Vanderbilt Co., alleging pollution of a stream and damage to residential property along the stream. The plaintiff, a Flint Drive resident in Bath, claimed that, since August 1977 and continuing to the present, the clay company had discharged “extremely heavy amounts of kaolin, other forms of siltation, oil, and other non-native substances”8 into a tributary of Horse Creek. The resident claimed that this caused the stream to change color, the fish to die and vegetation to die, and the trees to suffer damage. The plaintiff also alleged that mosquitoes in huge numbers were hatched in the area due to the flooding caused by the silt in the stream.
Langley Landfill Supervisor Speaks to County Council
In October 1983, a recently terminated Aiken Country landfill supervisor reported to County Council that 339,000 gallons of butyl latex and 2,000 drums of highly volatile waste had been dumped in the Langley landfill between late summer 1975 and April 1976. The Council chairman responded that SLED had investigated the butyl latex in 1982 and found it not hazardous waste. The chairman added the SLED report also mentioned 17 loads of chemicals dumped in the Langley Landfill from the Exxon Corporation’s Summerville, SC location during 1975-1976, about which the SLED report mentioned no health hazard.9 (Note: The author has not examined the 1982 SLED report).
A read of 1982-1984. Aiken County Council meeting minutes finds numerous requests approved by Council for asbestos burial in the Langley Landfill. Among these were requests from Kimberly Clark Corp., Crawford Insulation, Daniel Construction Co., Val-Chem, the Willcox Inn, and the County Engineer with quantities ranging from 180 lbs to 13,827 lbs, and from 75-80 plastic bags to 95 drums filled with asbestos. There was regular debate among Council over the issue of disposing of asbestos in the Langley Landfill, with Councilman Mike Toole opposing the burial in plastic bags and favoring disposal in a Sumter County, SC landfill created for disposal of hazardous waste.
The Hazardous Waste Drums
On March 11, 1986, the local paper reported a story about a large number of drums sitting in the open at the intersection of Dixie Clay Road and Highway 421 in Bath. A concerned local resident reported them to the EPA The drums, approximately 120 of them, had been there for six years but only recently became visible after the old service station that had been housing them was torn down. Some of the drums were stacked helter-skelter at the site; others were lying on their side, some were bulging, others leaking. There were homes nearby, and a child had recently been seen playing in the sand at the site.10
The new owner of the property, who’d purchased the corner property five months earlier intending to put a convenience store on the lot, had actually reported the drums to the EPA in October 1985. At that time, there was no funding in the EPA’s Superfund program to address the piles of drums.
In March 1986, in the wake of a second complaint, and with funding now available, the EPA investigated the contents and found a number of substances, including polymethylene, polyphenylene, polyisocyanate, fluorocarbons, and methylene chloride. The drums, purchased from the Air Force in Oklahoma by the previous owner, Mr. Reimer, were said to be at risk for catching fire, which could potentially produce deadly toxics. “We’re considering all of the drums as hazardous waste,” said Hagan Thompson, spokesman for EPA.11
On March 25-26, 1986, workers with HAZTECH, the EPA’s Superfund contractor, removed the barrels to a less populated, more secure, “undisclosed place in the county.”12 According to Mr. Thompson, the drums would be there for two to three weeks. The agency was considering moving them to the closest available approved hazardous waste disposal site, the GSX landfill in Sumter County.
The 1986 Reimer Drum Fire
On May 13, 1986, a chemical fire broke out on Dixie Clay Co. property, where HAZTECH workers and the EPA had moved the drums seven weeks earlier and were now attempting to convert the chemicals into foam. According to various accounts, some 700-800 Bath area residents were evacuated from their homes. The emergency evacuation lasted about 2 hours and affected those southwest of Bath, downwind from the fire. About 50 firefighters from seven fire departments were called to extinguish the blaze which was, according to the Bath Fire Chief, mostly smoke. 13
Afterward, EPA officials, who were reportedly mystified to understand the fire,14 assured local residents that there would be no long-term health effects from it. A different assessment was given by Dietrich Weyel, assistant professor in the University of Pittsburgh’s occupational health department and considered an expert on the burning of these materials. Addressing the possibility of severe harm that could have occurred from this accident, he described Bath residents as “lucky.”15
On June 6, 1986, local resident Tom King, president of the Aiken County Libertarian Party, delivered a petition with 500 names to U.S. Rep. Butler Derrick. The petitioners made a formal request for a “complete investigation”16 by the federal government into the toxic waste accident.
According to King, “We were led to believe that the toxic chemicals had been removed from the area last month for proper disposal. Instead, the chemicals were moved to an undisclosed location nearby and improperly handled, resulting in 800 people being evacuated and not told details for several hours, and many more nearby residents not even notified of the accident. We demand to know how this happened, who is responsible, why we weren’t told what was going on until it was too late, and what the lasting effects will be.”16
Information on the outcome of that request is stubborn to find today, as are the results of the group’s related demands that the Reimer drums and the ashes from that fire not be buried in the Langley Landfill.
A History on Langley-Bath-Clearwater Dumps, Dumping and Landfills
In the 1960s-1970s, the use of open dumps and burn pits was phased out across America and replaced with a sanitary landfill system, which involved spreading the daily waste into thin layers, then compacting it and covering it with a layer of soil at the end of each day. Many landfills started as dumps.
The former City of Aiken landfill on Beaufort Street, for instance, was a dump for most of the century preceding its transformation into a sanitary landfill around 1970. Before and after its transformation, this was the place for disposing of everything from household garbage to business and industrial waste, broken-down appliances and equipment, furniture and mattresses; building materials, tree stumps, leaf mould, and even dead animals. Before 1970, the contents smoldered in open burn piles. With the advent of the EPA in the 1970s, this practice was phased out and replaced with the sanitary landfill system. In 1986, the City of Aiken began phasing out the Beaufort Street landfill entirely, because there was simply no more space on that property to bury trash.
An aside: Here, it bears mention that the benefactors of the rodents, flies, smoke and stench from Aiken’s City dump were the nearby residents of the predominately working class, lower income, predominantly minority neighborhoods surrounding the dump. As a rule, polluting industries, dumps and landfills are not sited adjacent to middle and upper-class residential areas. Today, the injustice of this dynamic is recognized by the term “environmental justice.” More on that in a moment.
The Langley-Bath-Burnettown and Clearwater stretch of Horse Creek Valley has seen its share of dumps and landfills. The locations of the various, unofficial dumping grounds were primarily a matter of convenience — a nearby vacant lot, a nearly patch of woods, a ditch, a hillside, a pond, a swampy area. Some of the larger dumping areas are remembered by locals today and indicated on the map below.
Two of these dumping areas — Clearwater Swamp and the Huber Pit — became part of the County landfill system during the 1970-era transition from dumps to sanitary landfills.
Clearwater Swamp
The Clearwater Swamp is one of the 9 EPA superfund sites within the 4-mile stretch of Highway 421 that runs between Langley, Bath and Clearwater. The original idea behind this former sand-mining operation-turned-flooded swampland was to use garbage to displace the water. This quickly created an eyesore and heavily polluted swamp. In the mid-1960s, local groups petitioned the governor and South Carolina’s State Pollution Authority to remedy the situation. Change only came with the eventual closure of the Clearwater Swamp by EPA order in 1971. In the interim, this 40-acre area remained an unregulated dump, and it remained so even after it was designated a sanitary landfill, due to the ongoing difficulty of finding soil to cover the garbage. At days’s end, rather than being covered over with soil, as mandated, the trash would be bulldozed into the swamp by prison labor workers.
In addition to creating a severely polluted swampland, this body of water also became a major breeding ground for mosquitoes. A decision was made to conduct an experimental aerial spraying of what was all but certainly DDT over the swamp and the surrounding lands from Clearwater to Langley to see the effect on mosquitoes and midges. Assurances were made that fish, wildlife and people would be unharmed.17
The Huber Pit and Others
The Huber Pit suffered similar and ongoing difficulties transitioning to a sanitary landfill. The Huber Pit, which was also referred to as the Langley Landfill in records, opened in 1969, was already in use as a dump for household garbage and industrial waste before being slowly transitioned to sanitary landfill practices.
A 1973 article in the local paper stated that there were 50-75 tons of garbage received per week at the site and that improvements were being made to improve “health hazards” potentially caused by “uncovered garbage” to be operational by January 1974, the targeted date for all the County’s dumping to be turned over to the Huber Pit.18
Until 1974, Aiken County had a total of four dump/landfill sites, all of which suffered similar difficulties with consistent compliance with sanitary landfill practices. By 1974, three of these sites had closed — Clearwater Swamp (1971) and Vaucluse and Wire Road (1973), the latter of which was polluting the nearby Shaw’s Creek, Aiken’s municipal water supply.
In the coming years, a series of other Huber clay pits would be pressed into service for Aiken County landfills. This arrangement was a win-win for both the clay company and the County. South Carolina mining operations are required to restore former mine sites to a natural state. The reclamation process involves filling the quarries and pits, (which is accomplished through landfill operations), then covering them with soil and planting them with grasses and/or trees.
From about 1969 to 1998, the Huber Clay Company leased its clay pits to Aiken County for $1 per year to use as dumps and landfills. The Huber pit was the first to be used by the County. This was expanded in 1973, Over the next 25 years, other areas of the clay company property were utilized.
The Langley Landfill closed in 1998 after the opening of the Three Rivers Landfill, a regional solid waste facility on Savannah River Site property,
Fifty Years on Langley Pond: 1974 – 2024
The largest concentration of Horse Creek Valley’s pollution was in the Langley-Burnettown-Bath-Clearwater area, with Langley Pond at the epicenter. The advent of the EPA in 1970, then the Clean Water Act in 1972, brought teeth to enforce pollution control efforts that had been ongoing for more than a decade. The opening of the Horse Creek Waste Water Treatment Plant in 1979 ended the dumpling of raw sewage and industrial waste into the creek. With this, the recovery began in earnest.
By 1984, the biologically dead pond was coming back to life. However, it still retained its legacy of heavy metals and PCBs. These pollutants do not degrade but persist in soil and silt. There were a number of possible remedies considered in the late 1980s, including a prohibitively costly draining and dredging of the pond. Ultimately, recovery was accomplished through self-healing, with time and sediments covering over the contamination.
In 1994, the first rowing events were held at the pond. Before long, these grew to more events, with international teams, including Olympic rowers, coming to Langley Pond to train and practice. In 2004 — twenty-five years after the Horse Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant opened — the pond was tested and deemed safe for swimming. Step by step, the park’s popularity and amenities grew.
No stranger to hardship, Langley Pond had yet another hurdle to overcome — a leaking dam discovered in 2014 that required draining the pond and a 5-year closure while the County found the means and methods to repair the problem.
Two years into the closure, the Aiken County Parks, Recreation and Tourist director gave a presentation to City Council in which he enumerated some of the economic losses from the closure. Most shocking was the nearly $23 million losses to the local economy from events that were canceled or couldn’t be scheduled, among them the Augusta Invitational Regatta, the U.S. Rowing S.E. Youth Regional Regatta, the U.S. Rowing Masters National Championship, and the Southern Intercollegiate Rowing Championships and Scholastic National Championship.19
Today, Langley Pond has reopened and features a swimming area and beach, a disc golf course, a covered picnic shelter and a playground. The pond is also part the 9-mile Horse Creek Water Trail for canoes and paddlers. As Aiken County Council chairman Gary Bunker said in 2022, Langley Park is, “the crown jewel of Aiken County’s park system.”20
2024: The Proposed Rabbit Hill Landfill
In late March 2024, word began to circulate on local social media (see below) about an upcoming, informal meeting with DHEC staff to be held on March 28 at the Midland Valley Fire Department to give the public opportunity to discuss a proposed landfill.
Click above screenshot for full size view.
DHEC had earlier delivered a notice (see below) dated March 14, 2024 to the relatively small number of residents in the Rabbit Hill area of Bath, Burnettown whose properties are located adjacent to the proposed landfill. The letter cites the address of the landfill as “330 Dixie Clay Road in Beech Island, SC.”
Click above document for full-size view.
While this address would sow no confusion for 911 operators, GPS and the US Postal Service, it does seed at least some confusion into the understanding of the location, as this proposed Rabbit Hill Class 2 Landfill is geographically located in Langley-Bath on clay company property directly adjacent to the former Huber pit dump and the various generations of Langley Landfills. As the crow flies, Beech Island is over 6 miles away.
According to Hilltop C&D’s application to SC-DHEC, the proposed landfill property boundary encompasses 547 acres. The proposed landfill area, over time, is 292 acres
As posted in the above notice, DHEC also sought comments, with the deadline for these comments continuing through April 13, 2024.
Aiken resident, Lisa Smith, contacted Justin Koon, manager of DHEC’s Mining and Solid Waste Division requesting they accept additional comments, which he agreed to. Lisa Smith’s letter, published for public readership in the Aiken Chronicles, enumerates some of the citizen concerns and questions that have been raised over the past several weeks. She also raised this important point:
“The community is just beginning to become informed about the proposed landfill. “
Her letter, below, is integral to understanding the Rabbit Hill Landfill issue to date.
ABOVE: What lies buried in the former unregulated landfill? Is the green water algae or something else? The former clay pit area is where a new landfill is proposed and where a significant amount of groundwater exists. (Screenshots and information provided by Greg Bramlett on the Facebook page, Petition Rabbit Hill Landfill).
BELOW: The proposed Rabbit Hill Class 2 Landfill is outlined in red. The yellow arrow points to the historic Jefferson Elementary School, attended by some 539 children.
Click above to access the petition opposing the Rabbit Hill Landfill.
Rabbit Hill and Environmental Injustice
Dumps, landfills and polluting industries have historically been sited near marginalized communities, whose residents are given no choice but to bear the brunt of the variously chronic, acute, and epigenetic repercussions to health from these sites, along with the lost quality of life, devalued property, and lack of opportunity or ability to move away.
Environmental injustice has been a running refrain in Horse Creek Valley and, in particular, in the Langley-Bath-Clearwater area — the location of 9 of Horse Creek Valley’s 14 EPA Superfund sites — and the place upon which the City of Aiken and County have been relying to bear the almost the entire burden of waste.
“The just treatment and meaningful involvement of all people, regardless of income, race, color, national origin, tribal affiliation, or disability, in agency decision-making and other federal activities that affect human health and the environment so that people:
(i) are fully protected from disproportionate and adverse human health and environmental effects (including risks) and hazards, including those related to climate change, the cumulative impacts of environmental and other burdens, and the legacy of racism or other structural or systemic barriers; and
(ii) have equitable access to a healthy, sustainable, and resilient environment in which to live, play, work, learn, grow, worship, and engage in cultural and subsistence practices.”
– Executive Order 14096 – Revitalizing Our Nation’s Commitment to Environmental Justice for All
DHEC also factors environmental justice as part of decision-making processes. First on DHEC’s list of Environmental Justice Principles, which are part of their “mission of “improving the quality of life for all South Carolinians,” is this:
“Ensure that Environmental Justice Communities are Meaningfully Involved and Routinely Considered Throughout Decision-Making Processes.”
The specific demographics of the residents who would live proximate to the Rabbit Hill Class 2 Landfill are difficult to parse, because (as discussed in Part 1) the U.S. census no longer counts the unincorporated community of Bath as a discrete population. For most intents and purposes, the residents of Bath, Langley, and Clearwater are increasingly lumped in with Warrenville and, in some places, Beech Island.
Lacking census data, adequate inferences can be drawn from the local elementary schools in Gloverville, Bath and Clearwater, where 100% of the students in these schools are counted as low income.
The science of subterranean or underground landfill fires is still in its infancy. The learning curve on this is growing as more communities find themselves living next door to old landfills. There are an estimated ~400 of these per year, according to the article, “How Do You Put Out a Subterranean Fire Beneath a Mountain of Trash?” (see below), with some of them burning for months. Will this be the future of some of these poorly constructed dumps in the Valley?
The causes of the fires are often a mystery, started underground by unknown chemical reactions. These fires can happen in old limestone mines, and they can happen in landfills with special composite liners. These are not really fires as much as smoldering heat pockets that lack the oxygen to turn into full-fledged flames, so they merely smolder, emitting a stench-filled smoke that pervades throughout the area. Residents have no choice but to close up their houses and avoid going outdoors. For obvious reasons, selling their houses and moving isn’t an option.
There are a number of factors that can increase the risk for an underground landfill fire: inadequately compacted layers; inadequate layering of soil; settling in the landfill site; water percolating to a particular spot and triggering bacterial processes or a chemical reaction of the contents.
As has been shown in histories of the 1970s and 1980s, the old Huber pit dump (also an EPA superfund site) and the various iterations of Langley Landfills contain both unknown and questionable contents. What risk factors exist at this site for underground fires?
The questions regarding potential fires and other hazards are many, among them:
Questions about the visibly discolored pool (see photo earlier in the article) in one area of the landfill adjacent and the potential role of leaching as the cause.
Questions about the stability of hillsides and berms have drawn concern from one local engineer.
Questions, long asked and unanswered, on the landfill’s contents from the 1970s-1980s and the allegations of illegal dumping.
Questions on the potential for underground fires in the older landfills, given the specifics of this site’s history.
Questions on the fairness of subjecting this small community to such a preponderance of waste storage, diesel engine traffic, methane emissions, and other accompanying hazards and risks, including fires, of living near a landfill.
Questions on the effects and the risks to the school children at the nearby Jefferson Elementary School.
In Closing….
Today, Horse Creek Valley is coming back to life. The creek, once biologically dead, has been revived. The fish and the plants have returned. Parks have opened. Swimming holes and beaches have been created. Old mills, closed for decades, are being opened back up to possibility.
This is the future of Horse Creek Valley if given time, vision and an ongoing determination to leave the waste, dumps and destruction in the past.
___________________
Wendell, Debby, “Val-Chem Housewife’s Target,” Aiken Standard, May 15, 1975.
Higgs, Eric “Steps Taken to Correct Water Supply Contamination,” Aiken Standard, February 13, 1976
Lawrence, Kay, “Authorities Continue Search for Chemical That Fouled Water.” The Augusta Chronicle, October 23, 1975
Smithwick, Lin, “Valchem Residents Complain; Merchants Say it Smells Like Money,” Aiken Standard, March 5, 1976.
Smithwick, Lin, “Residents Upset at Val-Chem Smell,” Aiken Standard, March 14, 1976
DOE/SRS contract official unable to address timeline for removal of surplus plutonium from the Savannah River Site.
Twenty-five years after issuing its first decision pertaining to the nation’s 50 metric ton (MT) surplus plutonium stockpile, the Department of Energy’s (DOE) disposition program continues to, as SRS Watch has described, limp along and remain characteristically uncertain. Three weeks ago the head of DOE’s Savannah River Site’s (SRS) primary operating and management contractor could not provide a timeline for processing and removal of 9.5 MT of plutonium from storage at SRS to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) plutonium waste repository in New Mexico.
At the current rate of processing, the site will not be able to meet its 2037 deadline for removing 9.5 MT of surplus plutonium per the “Plutonium Settlement” agreement between the Federal Government and the State of South Carolina, and some materials could remain well past the 50-year long-term storage period selected by DOE in 1997.
by Don Moniak May 19, 2024
Savannah River Nuclear Solutions (SRNS) is the primary management and operations contractor at the Department of Energy’s (DOE) vast Savannah River Site (SRS), where more than ten tons of plutonium (Pu), of which more than 90 percent is surplus to U.S. nuclear weaponry needs, is presently stored within the site’s repurposed, seventy-year old K-Reactor building; now referred to as K-Area.
There were approximately 11.5 Metric Tons (MT) of plutonium within ~5,000 containers stored at K-Area in 2019 (Figure 1), of which 10.5 was surplus material shipped to SRS from other sites (1). DOE asserts that 1.0 MT of material was removed since then, leaving 9.5 MT of plutonium that must be removed by 2037 under the terms of the 2020 DOE/State of South Carolina “SRS/Plutonium Settlement.”
The surplus plutonium disposition portion featured an uninspiring report on the slow pace of plutonium disposition at SRS. Since fully implementing a program known as “dilute and dispose,” in 2021, only 0.123 metric tons (MT) of the ~10.5 MT of surplus Pu stored at SRS has been processed into a waste form and sent to DOE’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in New Mexico for disposal.
Less than 0.3 metric tons per year are currently being processed at K-Area; much of it awaiting approval for shipment to WIPP. The processing pace is not expected to pick up until after 2030, and only if an $800 million project to add two glovebox processing lines is completed.
At the end of the surplus plutonium discussion, State Senator Tom Young (R-Aiken) asked Mr. Carr a simple question that proved to be the most difficult of the meeting:
“Do you know the projected timeline when all the (surplus plutonium) material will be disposed of?”
Mr. Carr’s answers were, in order:
“I don’t.” “It is beyond my knowledge base. “We will have to get back to you.”
No other DOE official stepped up to the podium to assist with an answer. Nor did any other member of the Advisory Council ask a followup question.
The lack of answers and absence of additional questions were intriguing and astounding for two reasons; both of which involved omissions of important information.
First, the $600 million Plutonium Settlement reached in August, 2020, between the federal government and the State of South Carolina mandates a removal date of 2037 for the 9.5 Metric Tons (MT) of the surplus plutonium that was shipped from other DOE sites and is currently stored at SRS (1). If the deadline is not reached, DOE will face a new set of hefty fines from the State of South Carolina. The lack of additional questions suggests that the settlement agreement is increasingly less of a priority issue for the advisory council or DOE/SRS.
Figure 2: “3013” Plutonium storage containers. All plutonium stored in the cans meet DOE’s 3013 Standard. Monitoring by SRNS and oversight by the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB) has not yielded any significant, chronic safety issues with the 3013 containers. DOE/SRS contractor SRNS has asserted at SRS-CAB meetings that, in its present state, surplus Pu can be safely at SRS past the 50-year long-term storage goal.
As described in Feds Propose Moving ~27 tons of Plutonium to SRS, the latest Surplus Plutonium Disposition EIS process explored the impacts of disposing of 27-34 metric tons of surplus plutonium currently stored within the sealed nuclear explosives components known as “plutonium pits,” as well as surplus plutonium metal not within pits. There is an estimated 11,000 to 14,000 surplus pits presently in storage at the Pantex Nuclear Weapons Plant near Amarillo, Texas.
The preferred alternative involved four subalternatives to disassemble the pits and convert Pu metals to a powder in a modern Pit Disassembly and Processing Plant (PDP), process the powder into a transuranic waste form via the dilute and dispose method, and then ship the waste to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) for underground disposal.
Within the preferred alternative, DOE/NNSA EIS considered four different alternatives to accomplishing that goal: two versions of processing at both Los Alamos and SRS, an all-in-one Los Alamos processing program, and an all-in-one SRS processing program. WIPP and dilute and dispose were the only constants. (A “No-Action” alternative received only cursory, gratuitous review, as the U.S. remains committed to converting its plutonium stockpile into a waste form that inhibits, but does not prevent, re-use of plutonium for our nuclear arsenal.)
The Record of Decision was more of an indecision amounting to the federal government continuing to not do much with surplus plutonium, other than keep it in storage. Most notably, DOE/NNSA failed to select a processing sub-alternative, leaving the preferred alternative as more of a theoretical than real pathway. (Figure 3).
DOE/NNSA further kicked the surplus plutonium program further down the road by formally announcing a previous decision, first reported by Savannah River Site Watch in October 2023, to delay the Pit Disassembly and Processing plant by at least one decade, writing,
“Increased capacity for producing plutonium oxide, which NNSA evaluated as part of the Preferred Alternative in the SPDP EIS, will therefore be delayed. This decision will extend the timeline for the full 34 MT disposition mission.”
FIgure 3: DOE/NNSA schematic of the surplus plutonium disposition program for plutonium pits and “non-pit” metals. There has been no decision on a final plan. The PDP is being delayed by at least ten years.
In short, the DOE/NNSA plutonium disposition program will continue to limp along at a relatively glacial pace of about 1 MT every 3-4 years.
What this means for the Central Savannah River region, as well Americans along the transportation route from Los Alamos, is far less surplus plutonium being shipped to SRS than if a PDP was constructed; and a greatly reduced likelihood of another Pu processing facility being located at SRS. Depending on an individual’s outlook on the prospect of more plutonium processing at SRS, the indecision and facility delay can be either good or bad news.
In the absence of an answer from DOE/NNSA to Senator Young’s question, the following letter estimating the rate of Pu removal from SRS was sent to Senator Young via email the day after the Nuclear Advisory Committee meeting. The letter was later forwarded to the SRS Citizens Advisory Board.
Dear Senator Young,
Regarding your unanswered question on the timeline for surplus plutonium disposition posed to SRNS President Dennis Carr during the Nuclear Advisory Council meeting on Monday: “Do you know the projected timeline when all the (surplus plutonium) material will be disposed of.”
There is no good answer, which might be why Mr. Carr could only answer “I don’t,” and “it is beyond my knowledge base.” I do not think there will be a good answer, either, because:
a. Ultimate removal from SRS is entirely dependent upon the availability of WIPP, and that is not under the control of SRS; and
b. Removal in a manner that meets the Pu settlement mandate of 9.5 MT by 2037 is heavily dependent upon DOE/NNSA’s commitment to the $800 million program to increase plutonium dilution to TRU waste production rates by adding three more gloveboxes by FY 2031.
Even if WIPP were not an issue, at the current rate of work at K Area, it would take DOE/SRS 19-20 more years to remove 9.5 MT of surplus Pu; assuming a steady increase in production rates and an absence of accidents, budget cuts, and other unforeseen circumstances.
These estimates are based upon the following:
1. Under the Pu storage settlement agreement, DOE/SRS is required to remove 9.5 MT of surplus Pu by 2037. (This will leave ~1.0 MT of nonsurplus Pu in place, which was the approximate SRS non surplus Pu inventory before shipments from other sites began in 2002).
2. At the end of 2019 there was an estimated ~11.5 MT at SRS. DOE/SRS reports accomplishments in terms of 3013 storage containers (aka cans) which contain an average of 2.3 KG of Pu per container. So the best way to track this is by number of storage containers, of which there were ~5,000. (This graphic was presented to the SRS CAB in July 2022).
3. Assuming 9.5 MT = 4,130 cans, at the current rate of processing Pu into a diluted Transuranic Waste (TRU) form, it would take DOE/SRS ~20 years to complete the conversion process. This assumes that WIPP will be able to accept the waste at the same rate, which is a whopper of an assumption. The rest of this estimate relies on the rosy assumption of gradual increases in production from current rates.
a. Since 2022, when downblending into a TRU waste form began, the 5,000 can inventory has been reduced by 321 cans (91 in 2022, 110 in 2023, and 120 expected in 2024), leaving ~4,700. If one assumes that all of the converted Pu was part of the 9.5 MT, then ~3820 cans remain to be processed to meet the Settlement Agreement.
b. Processing is limited by equipment, and currently there is only one glovebox line available. The goal is to increase rate of production by 10 pct each year, with the FY 2024 goal of 120 cans. If production were increased by 10 pct each year, which is a rosy forecast, production might look like this:
FY 2025: 132 cans
FY 2026: 145 cans
FY 2027: 160 cans
FY 2028: 176 cans
FY 2029: 194 can
FY 2030: 213 cans
So under the current goals of ten percent increase per year, another 1020 cans might be processed through FY 2030, barring accidents, budget cuts, and/or other unforeseen circumstances.
That will still leave 2,800 cans that would require processing by 2037.
c. Without any new production capability, it will take another 13 years at the 2030 rate of 213 cans/year to complete the processing of 9.5 MT. So the 9.5 MT of Pu, under the most optimistic scenario, would not be removed until 2043 at the earliest. (Since only 1 MT was removed before 2020, that would still leave 1.0 MT at the site.)
d. The limiting factor that DOE does not like to stress is that one-third of the stored Pu is in a metal form. This metal requires conversion to an oxide powder suitable for the dilution process. That metal to oxide conversion cost is never included in the cost estimates, and at the SRS CAB briefings that process has never been discussed.
4. Any significant production rate increase is not expected until installation of three additional gloveboxes is completed in 2030 at the earliest (The Critical Decision to begin operations is not anticipated until FY 2030).
Assuming the best case scenario of three new gloveboxes going operational in 2031 (decision to go operational expected in 2030), and an associated 3X increase in production, then ~500 cans per year would be processed per glovebox line at current rates.
Only then will DOE/SRS be able to remove the 2800 cans remaining (under optimistic scenarios) by 2037.
Conclusion:
Without the new glovebox line, DOE will never make it by 2037. Since the 1997 DOE Record of Decision for long-term storage at SRS was for 50 years, removing it before 2047 would meet DOE’s goals, but not the Settlement Agreement mandate of 2037.
DOE/NNSA is more likely to limp along at the current rate and then renegotiate the Settlement Agreement in the early 2030s than it is to spend $800 million to improve the removal rate of surplus Pu by 15-20 years; especially since the great uncertainties surrounding WIPP could delay the program even with the addition of the three glovebox lines.
I hope this helps. I am perfectly willing to be corrected on these estimates, but only DOE/NNSA can do that. Please feel free to submit this to DOE/SRS.
Thank you,
Donald Moniak
Footnotes
(1) The decision to consolidate long-term storage of 11-15 MT metric tons of plutonium metals and oxide powders, also referred to as “non-pit” plutonium, at SRS was made in January 1997. The long-term storage period is “up to fifty years.”
Prior to consolidation, the condition of the plutonium had to meet what is known as the 3013 Standard, which “provides criteria for stabilization of plutonium-bearing materials at DOE facilities to safe and stable forms and packaging for storage with minimal surveillance for up to 50 years.” Efforts to meet this standard prior to shipment to SRS took place in the late 1990’s to early 2000’s at the now-closed Rocky Flats Plant in Colorado and the Hanford nuclear reservation in Washington State.
DOE intended to have the “cleanest” of these Pu materials converted to commercial nuclear fuel known as “Mixed Oxide Fuel,” or MOX.”
As a result of the stabilization and shipments, SRS currently has between ~4,300 to 5,000 containers known as “3013 cans;” referred to as such because they meet the requirements of DOE’s Standard 3013.
After the multi-billion dollar program to convert the materials to a commercial “Mixed Oxide” plutonium fuel fizzled in the the mid 2016’s, DOE turned to the “dilute and dispose” process.
Dilute and dispose involves “downblending” plutonium oxide powder with a mix of classified “adulterants” and other inert materials to create a new waste product containing about three percent plutonium. The waste product is then packaged and shipped to DOE’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in New Mexico, where it is buried in the nation’s only operational transuranic waste repository.
(2) The Nuclear Advisory Council meeting can be viewed by going to the South Carolina Legislature video archives, and scrolling down to the April 29th Nuclear Advisory Council meeting.
