Southerly Waste Water Treatment Plant

["Karam, Andrew" <Andrew_Karam@URMC.Rochester.edu>]

The risk posed by the Southerly Plant was minimal.  While working with the
State of Ohio I calculated a maximum possible dose (assuming a person was
lying on the hottest spot located continually from the date of deposition
until they died of old age) of 14 rem.  The max credible dose was less than
one rem.  At one meeting I attended and NRC representative suggested taking
no actions because the remaining Co-60 would remain under institutional
controls for at least another 50 years and the risk did not justify the cost
of remediation.  Nevertheless, the decision was made to perform some
remediation that ended up costing Southerly about $2 million.  I am not
exactly sure why this decision was reached; it was after I left ODH.

The site was discovered by accident during a flyover survey for a
neighboring U-contaminated site (Chemetron, for anyone who's interested).
Until that survey, in 1990, I think, nobody had any idea that the Co was
there.  After reviewing all of the NRC licensees in the Southerly service
area, Picker (then Advanced Medical Systems) was determined to be the only
licensee who possessed enough Co-60 to have caused this problem.  My
recollection is that we decided some of it was likely released during one
incident and some of as permitted discharges over time.  One sanitary sewer
manway near the Picker plant had relatively high rad levels inside, although
I can't remember how high. Multiple mr/hr, perhaps higher.

I'm not sure what happened at Picker or AMS prior to 1990 or after 1992,
when I left ODH.  However, I am quite sure that the money spent did not
appreciably improve public health and safety.  In addition, I think it's
safe to say that, even though Picker's discharges were not physically
harmful, they ended up being financially harmful to Southerly.  

Andy

Andrew_Karam@urmc.rochester.edu
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