Man who had radioactive waste hauled to Kentucky landfill sentenced
A business owner who pleaded guilty in connection with illegally hauling radioactive waste to a Kentucky landfill has been sentenced to five years on probation.
The sentence for Cory David Hoskins includes six months on home detention with electronic monitoring, according to the court record.
Hoskins pleaded guilty in federal court to two charges of shipping hazardous, low-level radioactive waste without proper labels on the trucks.
He also was originally charged with mail fraud, but those charges were dropped as part of a plea agreement.
Hoskins formerly operated a company called Advanced TENORM Services in West Liberty, in Morgan County, according to court documents.
TENORM stands for “technologically enhanced naturally occurring radioactive material.” It is a waste product of drilling to recover oil and natural gas.
Hoskins contracted to haul waste from a West Virginia processing company to the Blue Ridge Landfill in Estill County in 2015.
Hoskins acknowledged he told the West Virginia company he was an expert on testing such waste for radioactivity, but didn’t test it; didn’t tell truckers he hired to haul the waste that it was radioactive; and didn’t have the trucks labeled properly.
Trucks that haul hazardous waste are supposed to have a special safety permit and the material and trucks hauling it are supposed to be marked with notices that the material is hazardous.
One reason is to let workers, police, firefighters or others who might come into contact with the material know that it is hazardous.
Hoskins arranged to ship well over 500 tons of the waste to the Estill County landfill, which was not rated to handle it, according to court documents.
The dumping caused concern in Estill County about potential health problems and environmental damage.
State officials said in 2016 that the waste did not represent an imminent threat to health.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Tashena A. Fannin said in a recent sentencing memorandum that testing so far has not shown any damage from the sludge.
But because of the long life of radioactivity in the sludge, “the landfill, the workers who hauled it or worked around it, and the residents of Estill County are left with concerns about whether harm will manifest in the future,” Fannin wrote.
The federal court record shows Hoskins also agreed to pay $25,000 to the state Cabinet for Health and Family Services.
U.S. District Judge David L. Bunning sentenced Hoskins on Wednesday.
