A citizen's group will hold a public meeting Monday to discuss the proposal from state environmental officials for cleaning up radioactive waste dumped in an Estill County landfill in 2015.
Members of Concerned Citizens of Estill County will explain their preferred methods of dealing with the waste at the Blue Ridge Landfill and answer questions.
The Kentucky Energy and Environment Cabinet has released the Corrective Action Plan submitted to them by the landfill and provided a public comment period on their preferred alternative for protecting the citizens of Estill and surrounding counties. The citizen's group points out that the landfill is located about 3,300 feet from the Kentucky River, the source of drinking water for multiple counties downstream.
The proposed plan calls for dealing with the waste, on site, not excavating and transporting it to another location. It also calls for $60,000 to go to the Estill County Public Schools to monitor and mitigate naturally occurring radon.
The meeting is 1:30 p.m. Monday at the Estill County Fair Barn, 38 South Irvine Road (U.S. 89). According previous reporting by the Ohio Valley ReSource and the Center for Public Integrity, in the summer of 2015 trucks arrived in Irvine leaving 400 tons of low-level radioactive waste in the Blue Ridge Landfill, a facility not engineered or permitted to accept that sort of material.
