Detroit, Sep 20 (AP) 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 ?n Friday.

Since 2018, the US 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.

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

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

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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 September 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.

Canton Township Supervisor Anne Marie Graham-Hudak said she was unaware that Wayne Disposal was accepting waste from Ohio.

“That's good,” she 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. (AP)

(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)