Contaminated sand from Gulf War to pass through Longview

Tuesday, April 15, 2008 2:44 AM PDT

A ship carrying 6,700 tons of sand contaminated with low levels of hazardous waste at a U.S. Army base in Kuwait during the first Gulf War will be unloaded at the Port of Longview on April 22.

The vessel BBC Alabama is delivering 306 containers of the sand, which contains low levels of uranium, to the port, which will then be loaded onto trains bound for a disposal site in Grand View, Idaho, said Doug Averett, the port’s director of operations.

A cleanup contractor packaged the contaminated sand in bags designed to hold hazardous waste and then placed them in a container, said Chad Hyslop, project manager for Idaho-based American Ecology, the company responsible for disposing of the material.

Longshoremen will not directly handle contaminated material — only the containers holding it, according to the port.

The shipment is safe, Hyslop said, because the concentration of uranium in the sand is so low — about 10 parts per trillion. That concentration — about 0.00000000001 percent — is about five to 10 times higher than the concentration of uranium found in concrete or wall board, he said.

"We’re talking about levels that you see in nature," Hyslop said.

American Ecology was required to get permission to dispose of the sand from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The sand contains "unimportant quantities of source material," according to a Sept. 13 letter from the agency to the U.S. Army that The Daily News obtained from the port.

Mike Wilcox, vice president of the International Longshoremen’s and Warehousemen’s Union local 21, said he initially was concerned about the safety of longshoremen and the entire community when he heard a shipment of depleted uranium was coming into Longview.

"You hear ‘depleted uranium,’ and I don’t know what it is, but it’s dangerous," Wilcox said.

His fears were allayed after meeting with port officials Monday and learning the radiation levels are so low, Wilcox said. In his 12 years as a longshoremen, Wilcox said he’s never seen a shipment of hazardous materials.

And he hopes it’s a one-time thing.

"We don’t really want it again," Wilcox said.

Longshoremen are receiving further instruction later in the week on how to handle the cargo, Wilcox said. American Ecology was required to file a spill-response plan with the government for transporting the material, Hyslop said.

The Port of Longview was chosen because of its proximity to Idaho, easy access to rail lines and its professional staff, Hyslop said.

Amiercan Ecology’s disposal site in Grand View, Idaho, is licensed to accept low-level radioactive waste.

The sand in Kuwait became contaminated following a fire at Camp Doha in Kuwait in 1991 during Operation Desert Storm. An ammunition carrier holding depleted uranium rounds caught in the fire, contaminating the ground, according to Hyslop.

Any contamination on foreign lands must be shipped back to the United States for disposal, Hyslop said.

American Ecology already disposed of contaminated metal from the Camp Doha site in 2005, Hyslop said. That material had a higher concentrations of depleted uranium, he said.