John Kuhl: “I rise to make the House aware of a serious problem in my Congressional district in upstate New York. The West Valley…”

“I rise to make the House aware of a serious problem in my Congressional district in upstate New York. The West Valley Demonstration Project, which is located here, was created by Congress in 1980 to solidify in glass the nuclear waste left over from a variety of sources, including defense atomic waste. This project successfully vitrified all of the high-level waste on the site over the next 2 decades, placing the waste in safe gas containers ready to store in a permanent storage facility. West Valley is unique in the Department of Energy system in that the site is owned by the State of New York, but the operation is funded 90 percent by the Federal Government and 10 percent by the State of New York. While there is little question that the waste is, in large part, Federal waste, the Federal Government is not owning up to its responsibility to completely clean the site so that it can be returned to the community of West Valley and reused for economic development opportunities. There is now a grave problem that threatens all of us. Some of the radiation has leaked into the ground water and formed a plume, as shown here on chart 2. The plume continues to grow and threatens streams on the site. These streams feed into larger tributaries which empty into the largest body of fresh water in the world. I repeat that: the largest body of fresh water in the world, the Great Lakes. Lake Erie's shores are only 25 miles away.”