US resumes hazardous waste shipments to Michigan landfill from Ohio

VAN BUREN TOWNSHIP, Mich. — A federal agency said it has resumed sending hazardous waste to a Michigan landfill from Ohio while communities in suburban Detroit continue their legal fight to bar waste from a World War II-era site in New York.

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

The effort stopped last week when a Detroit-area judge signed an order that temporarily freezes plans for the landfill to accept low-level radioactive waste from Lewiston, New York.

Wayne County Judge Kevin Cox amended his order Tuesday to limit the decision to Lewiston and clear up any ambiguity. The next hearings are scheduled for early October.

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 have resumed safely shipping material” from Ohio to Michigan, said Avery Schneider, an Army Corps spokesman.

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

Nothing has been sent 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.