LANSING – Governor Rick Snyder on Monday directed that a panel of experts be convened to review the state’s current standards for disposals of landfill wastes that are radioactive at low levels, but critics charged Snyder should take steps to ban the waste.

Snyder took the action after stories last week revealed that as much as 40 tons of sludge from oil and natural gas hydraulic fracturing operations in Pennsylvania would be shipped to a Detroit-area landfill. The sludge has low-level radioactive contaminants and has been refused in both Pennsylvania and West Virginia.

In his announcement, Snyder said the current standard was set in 1996 by the Low-Level Radioactive Waste Regulatory Advisory Committee, before hydraulic fracturing, commonly called fracking, was more widespread. The standard was set to recommend safe levels of radioactive materials to allow into the state, and it was affirmed by the U.S. Department of Energy in a study in 1999.

The materials in question are technically referred to as “technologically enhanced naturally occurring radioactive materials.” Each state allows for the disposal of such materials in landfills, but each also sets their own standards for the material allowed in those landfills.

In making the announcement, Snyder said the panel was being formed to ensure the state’s current standards are both strong and sufficient to protect the public.

“We remain deeply committed to protecting public health and Michigan’s precious water resources,” Snyder said in a release. “We believe the standard in Michigan remains protective of our people and our natural resources, but this advisory group of diverse experts, similar to the assembly that developed our standards, can provide an important, science-based and current review to make sure that’s still the case.”

The Department of Environmental Quality will form the group, which is to include members from the health/physics field, academia, the medical field, environmental groups and environmental consultants, the waste disposal industry, the oil and natural gas industry as well as an official from the radiological protection section of the DEQ and a member of the public.

Snyder did not put a timetable to when the group should report on its findings, but Snyder said the examination of the state’s current standards is an “imperative effort.”

But critics charged Snyder was delaying instead of acting on the controversial situation.

Mike Berkowitz, legislative director of the Michigan chapter of the Sierra Club, said that if the state has standards Snyder should be able to take action to bar the materials coming into Michigan.

Creating the group is more about “public relations” than taking action on the situation, Berkowitz said, and if Snyder will not take action now to bar the materials coming into Michigan, then the Legislature should do so.

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