Shpack Landfill

File:Shpackphoto1 (2).jpg

Shpack site 1978

Shpack Landfill
Superfund site
Rusting chemical waste drums at Shpack Landfill site in May 2003.
Geography
Town	Norton
County	Bristol
State	Massachusetts
Shpack Landfill's location in Massachusetts
Information
CERCLIS ID	MAD980503973
Contaminants	Base/Neutral and Acid Extractable Compounds Dioxins/Dibenzofurans Halogenated SVOCs Inorganics Metals PAH PCBs Persistent Organic Pollutants Pesticides Radioactive waste VOCs
Progress
Proposed	October 15, 1984
Listed	October 6, 1986
List of Superfund sites

Shpack Landfill is a hazardous and radioactive waste site in Norton, Massachusetts. After assessment by the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) it was added to the National Priorities List in October 1986 for long-term remedial action. The site cleanup was directed by the federal Superfund program. The Superfund site covers 9.4 acres (3.8 ha), mostly within Norton, with 3.4 acres (1.4 ha) in the adjoining city of Attleboro. The Norton site was operated as an open burning dump accepting domestic and industrial wastes, including low-level radioactive waste between 1946 and 1965. The source of the radioactive waste consisting of uranium and radium was Attleboro-based Metals & Controls Inc. From 1940 through the 1960s Metals & Controls used radium to produce luminous, radium tipped aircraft switches and circuit breakers. Approximately seven curies of radium were removed from the Shpack site during its remediation. The Shpack site's predecessor, the Finberg Field town dump in Attleboro, was also found to be contaminated with radium-bearing aircraft switch components. After the Finberg Field dump closed in 1946 waste disposal began at the new Attleboro town dump and adjacent Shpack dump.

Uranium is the second radiological contaminant at the Shpack dump. It too came from Metals & Controls. In 1952 Metals & Controls became the first non-government owned facility to process enriched uranium for the Atomic Energy Commission. Metals & Controls early uranium work was performed by its General Plate division. General Plate was a large manufacturer of precision rolled gold plate, tubing, electrical contact material and clad metals. By 1954 forty of Metals & Controls two thousand employees were fabricating uranium. Metals & Controls early nuclear work included fabricating nuclear fuel for the Navy's first nuclear submarine, the Nautilus. After the Nautilus was launched in 1955 Metals & Controls went on to fuel the Navy's first ballistic missile firing submarine, the George Washington, the first Naval surface ship, the Long Beach and the first nuclear powered aircraft carrier, the Enterprise. By the mid-1950s Metals & Controls had also supplied fabricated uranium for General Electric's Nuclear Aircraft Propulsion Project and Atomic Energy Commission weapons contractors including the University of California's Lawrence Radiation Lab, Los Alamos National Laboratory and the Rocky Flats Plant.

In 1956 Metals & Controls built a 35,000-square-foot (3,300 m²) building to house its rapidly expanding nuclear division. Over the next five years this grew to have six times its original floor space. During the late 1950s and early 1960s Metals & Controls was the largest fabricator of enriched uranium submarine fuel for the U.S. Navy. Reactor vessels arrived at Metals & Controls by rail where they were loaded with fuel in a specially built high bay. Metals & Controls since 1952 had also been toll rolling of enriched uranium into foil, plate and shapes for the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission. In 1959 when Metals & Controls merged with Texas Instruments its Attleboro fuel plant employed one thousand people and was the largest such facility in the world.

Superfund sites

Shpack residence proximity to radioactive waste 1980

Metals & Controls success as an Atomic Energy Commission contractor was due in part to company co-founder, Vannevar Bush. Bush headed the US World War II atomic bomb program and was President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's nuclear policy adviser. Bush's World War II assistant, Carroll Wilson, was appointed the first General Manager of the US Atomic Energy Commission in 1946. As General Manager of the Commission Wilson was in charge of the day to day operation and expansion of all facilities built during World War II's bomb project. Wilson's uncle Frank J. Wilson was head of the US Secret Service from 1936 to 1946.In 1947 Frank Wilson became a security consultant to the Atomic Energy Commission.

After Carroll Wilson left the Commission in August, 1950 he joined Metals & Controls board of directors after Vannevar Bush gave him a proxy to vote his controlling stake in the company. In 1952 Bush rejoined Metals & Controls board six months after it had begun fabricating enriched uranium for the Commission. and Wilson was hired to oversee this newly created division. Two years later Wilson was promoted to Vice President and in 1956 he became Metals & Controls President based upon the rapid expansion the company's work for the Atomic Energy Commission.

The Shpack dump was shut down in 1965 by a court order after neighbors went to court to stop the burning of wastes. A series of spectacular chemical waste fires involving hundreds of barrels of chemicals at the adjoining Attleboro town dump was the basis for the neighbors legal action.

Geology

The site's geology broadly comprises glacial deposits 3–5 metres (9.8–16.4 ft) deep overlying bedrock. Portions of the Shpack dump are also underlain by 1–2 metres (3 ft 3 in – 6 ft 7 in) of peat associated with long standing wetlands. Bedrock under the site belongs to the Carboniferous Rhode Island Formation and is part of the regional Narragansett Basin sequence. Basement beneath the Shpack site consists of folded and fractured sandstone, greywacke, shale and conglomerate. Groundwater in the area is produced from bedrock and shallow overburden aquifers. The water table is at or just below the surface of the Shpack dump and fluctuates seasonally. The area is generally low and swampy. Almost all wastes at the Shpack dump was below the top of the water table. Shielding provided by groundwater reduced surface radiation levels concealing most of the buried radioactive materials.

Geography

The Shpack dump consisted of 9.4 acres that straddled the border between Norton and Attleboro. Approximately 6.0 acres in Norton were owned by the Shpack family who operated it as an open burning dump. This land was purchased by the town's Norton Conservation Commission in 1981 using $16,000 donated by Texas Instruments. In 1981 the US Department of Energy designated the Shpack dump as the highest priority site for remediation in its Formaly Utilized Sites Program (FUSRAP).Approximately one third of the Shpack dump was located in Attleboro and operated as part of the Attleboro town dump. The site is bounded in the north by Peckham Street/Union Road, by Chartley Swamp in the south and east, and by the ALI landfill in the west.

History

The Shpack dump was on land owned by Isadore and Lea Shpack. Lea Shpack was from Canada and Isadore Shpack was a Russian immigrant and retired New York City municipal trash employee. Shpack allowed companies and individuals to dump wastes on his property in an effort to fill in the swamp. He salvaged scrap metals from the dump and planned to raise an orchard and cultivate vegetables on the reclaimed land. At the time Shpack operated his dump chemical and hazardous waste disposal was not regulated by the state of Massachusetts or the US Environmental Protection Agency. The disposal of radioactive waste, however, including uranium was regulated under the material licensing requirements of the Atomic Energy Act of 1954.

The owner and operator of the Shpack dump was never issued or applied to the Atomic Energy Commission for a source or special nuclear material uranium license. Shpack's lack of a Commission license made it illegal for him to receive, possess or acquire any type of uranium. NRC investigation report 078-154 documents that Metals & Controls and Texas Instruments workers brought up to half a dozen truck loads of waste per day to the Shpack dump from the company's nuclear fuel plant. Over the course of a decade many tons of uranium averaging seven percent enrichment were discarded at the unlicensed Shpack dump. The decade long use of the Shpack property to dispose of nuclear fuel manufacturing wastes contaminated with uranium residue posed a significant health, safety and environmental threat. Isadore Shpack and many of his neighbors all died of cancer.

The Shpack dump's unlicensed status meant uranium discarded there constituted an illegal transfer of nuclear material to an unlicensed party. These illegal transfers were historically significant. The former head of the US World War II atomic bomb project, Vannevar Bush, and the first General Manager of the US Atomic Energy Commission, Carroll Wilson, were both corporate officers of Metals & Controls when radioactive waste dumping occurred at the Shpack site.

completely unregulated dumping and is reported locally to have accepted any type of waste which was refused by the neighbouring municipal landfill.

The ALI landfill was originally Attleboro's municipal dump from the 1940s until 1975. In 1975 it was purchased by Attleboro Landfill Inc. which continued to use it as a landfill until 1995.

Discovery of contamination

In 1978 John Sullivan, a 20-year-old local resident and college student became curious about why snails in the area were losing their shells. As Sullivan worked on this project he suspected there was a significant environmental problem that was being buried beneath the rising mound of trash at Attleboro Landill

. Several months later a truck load of nuclear fuel skidded off the highway in Rhode Island during an ice storm. The shipment of nuclear fuel was going to Oak Ridge National Laboratory and had come from Texas Instruments in Attleboro. Six months later he visited the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission's public document room in Washington DC and spent a week reviewing thirty years of Metals & Controls and Texas Instruments files. The un-redacted documents included Atomic Energy Commission and Nuclear Regulatory Commission inspection reports, blue prints, waste disposal manuals, licenses and manufacturing flow charts. On his last day in Washington Mr. Sullivan phoned Hilbert Crocker from the public document room. Crocker was the Region I Nuclear Regulatory Commission's head of inspection and enforcement for fuel facilities. T

Crocker and Sullivan discussed the Shpack dump and Sullivan's belief that radioactive waste had been illegally discarded there. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission chief agreed to visit the Shpack dump within 90 days if Mr. Sullivan would send a letter requesting such a visit. One week later the state of Massachusetts ordered the town of Norton to clear the surface of the Shpack dump and coverit with two feet of clean fill. The town of Norton was given a thirty days to complete these actions.

Sullivan lived a mile from the Shpack dump. After reviewing Texas Instruments and Metals & Controls documents in Washington he discussed his concerns with officials in Attleboro and Norton. Sullivan's father was Attleboro's Personnel Director and his mother was a city school teacher. Attleboro's Civil Defense Director at the request of the Mayor, lent Sullivan a Geiger Counter so he could check the Shpack dump for radioactivity before it was covered with clean fill. Sullivan went to the Shpack property and spoke with Lea Shpack. She gave him permission to enter the former dump site. Surface radiation levels hundreds of times higher than naturally occurring background were quickly found. Sullivan wrote to Hilbert Crocker at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and told him of the discovery. The Commission then carried out its own six month investigation that included a week spent at the Shpack site, numerous interviews and laboratory analyses of samples collected. Hilbert Crocker and his team confirmed more than 50,000 square feet of the Shpack dump's surface was contaminated with radioactive materials. The offsite release of nuclear materials documented at the Shpack site came close to meeting or met the NRC criteria defining an extraordinary nuclear occurrence. Extraordinary nuclear occurrences are the most serious type of accidents or nuclear events defined under US nuclear regulations.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission laboratory analyses confirmed the Shpack dump was extensively contaminated with radium and uranium. The types of uranium found included natural uranium, depleted uranium and and enriched uranium. Certain surface soil samples collected by the Commission were up to thirty percent uranium by weight. The conclusion of the Commission's investigation was that the most probable source of the radioactive materials found at the Shpack site was Metals & Controls work for the Atomic Energy Commission.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission's Shpack dump investigation was followed in 1980 by a complete site characterization performed by personnel from Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Like the Commission Oak Ridge found the Shpack site had widespread uranium and radium contamination. The types uranium found included Uranium-235, Uranium-236 and Uranium-238. Some samples collected by Oak Ridge had enrichment levels as high as 93%. Oak Ridge also found uranium at the Shpack site contained up to one half percent uranium-236. Uranium-236 is produced when uranium-235 absorbs a neutron during its use in a nuclear reactor. The Atomic Energy Commission reprocessed fuel from the reactors it operated to recover plutonium and uranium. The recovered uranium contained uranium-236 and was mixed with new uranium before being sent to the Commission's contractors engaged in uranium fabrication.

As a result of the Oak Ridge work the Shpack dump was designated the highest priority for remedial action under the U.S. Department of Energy's Formerly Utilized Sites Remedial Action Program (FUSRAP). FUSRAP is used to remediate or control sites "where radioactive contamination remains from the early years of the nation's atomic energy program."

Further surveys of the site uncovered extensive contamination with chemical wastes which had been dumped "in both bulk and containerized forms." The metal drums which originally contained the wastes had been emptied, burned and left on the surface of the site. Contaminants included volatile organic compounds (VOCs), heavy metals (e.g. nickel, cadmium, copper, lead and mercury), dioxins, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs).

Cleanup action

In 1980 the Department Of Energy conducted an emergency cleanup of the site and removed approximately 900 lb of radioactive waste. In 1986 the site was listed as a Superfund site by the EPA. Further studies of the site were carried out during 1992-1993 although no remediation action took place. During 2000-2002 the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers - which had taken over the FUSRAP program in 1998 - performed "fieldwork" to prepare for a radiological survey and in 2004 the EPA put forward a cleanup plan. The project, estimated to cost $43 million, proposed the removal and disposal of 35,000 yd³ (26,759 m³) of radioactive soil by the Army Corps of Engineers, with a second phase during which the EPA would remove the chemical wastes. Work was expected to begin in early 2005 and be completed by 2006.

Remediation eventually commenced in August 2005 but ceased in July 2006 due to lack of funds. During this time, the Army Corps of Engineers removed 2,700 yd (2,500 m)³) of contaminated soil.

Potentially Responsible Parties

On August 15, 2006 the EPA issued special notice letters to fourteen Potentially Responsible Parties (PRP). A PRP is "any individual or company potentially responsible for, or contributing to a spill or other contamination at a Superfund site." In 2009, the following parties signed a consent decree to undertake remediation at the site:

• City of Attleboro
• Avnet
• Bank of America (as trustee of the Lloyd G. Balfour Foundation)
• BASF Catalysts (formerly known as Engelhard)
• Chevron Environmental Management (for itself and on behalf of Kewanee Industries)
• ConocoPhillips
• Handy & Harman
• International Paper
• KIK Custom Products (formerly known as CCL Custom Manufacturing Inc.)
• Town of Norton
• Swank Inc.
• Teknor Apex (formerly known as Thompson Chemical Co.)
• Texas Instruments
• Waste Management of Massachusetts Inc.

Under the terms of the decree the PRPs would be responsible for funding the remainder of the cleanup at an estimated cost of $29 million. The Town of Norton would not be held financially liable for cleanup costs, but would instead provide access to the site.

Texas Instruments (TI) subsequently filed a complaint alleging that liability for the disposal of radioactive materials relating to its work for the Atomic Energy Commission was subject to indemnity by the Department of Energy. The U.S. Department of Justice then commenced a lawsuit against TI on behalf of the Corps of Engineers, which TI settled in November 2012. TI agreed to pay $15 million towards remediation of the site, without acknowledging liability. The payment went to the Corps of Engineers.

See also

• Agriculture Street Landfill
• Landfills in the United States
• Love Canal

External media

• Shpack Landfill Update (September 13, 2012) - Locally produced video from Norton Community Television studios.