US stops hazardous waste shipments to Michigan from Ohio after court decision

DETROIT — The federal government has stopped sending hazardous waste to a Michigan landfill from Ohio, a ripple effect after a judge intervened in a different matter and suspended plans for waste shipments from New York state, officials said Friday.

Since 2018, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has been trucking material from Luckey, Ohio, where beryllium, a toxic metal, was produced for weapons and other industrial uses after World War II.

Wayne Disposal in Van Buren Township, 25 miles (40.23 kilometers) west of Detroit, is one of the few landfills in the U.S. that can handle certain hazardous waste.

“We are not currently shipping” from Ohio, said Avery Schneider, an Army Corps spokesman.

He said operations were paused after a Detroit-area judge temporarily stopped plans to send low-level radioactive waste from Lewiston, New York, to Wayne Disposal. Four nearby communities said they're concerned about the risks of what would be placed there. A court hearing is set for Sept. 26.

The Army Corps also manages the Lewiston site. In reaction, it decided to halt waste shipments from Ohio “while we assess the judge's order," Schneider said.

“The material that has been shipped includes beryllium, lead, uranium and thorium-contaminated soils, along with various building debris,” he said.

The elected supervisor in Canton Township, one of the communities suing Wayne Disposal, said she was unaware that the landfill was accepting waste from Ohio.

“That's good,” Anne Marie Graham-Hudak said of the pause.

Republic Services, which operates the Michigan landfill, said it meets or exceeds rules to safely manage hazardous materials.

Nothing has been trucked yet to Michigan from New York. Tainted soil in Lewiston is a legacy of the Manhattan Project, the secret government project to develop atomic bombs during World War II.