Hundreds of residents on Wednesday raged against plans approved by Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s administration to bring tons of radioactive waste to a Wayne County landfill in the coming months.

“We don’t want it — story closed. Nobody wants it. They should’ve left it where it was,” Van Buren Township resident Sonia Devias told local, state, and federal officials who gathered for a town hall meeting at Wayne County Community College, WXYZ reports.

“When they get caught, the public uproar happens; the politicians pound their chest, and say, ‘We’re going to do what we can do to stop it.’ And nothing changes. We’re here to make sure we get changes,” resident Chris Donley said, according to CBS News.

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For many, it was déjà vu all over again, with the meeting coming about a year and a half after toxic waste from the East Palestine, Ohio train derailment was dumped in Van Buren Township’s Wayne Disposal facility, sparking public outrage.

“I understand there has to be a place to put this stuff, but why aren’t we talking about Montana, or the desert?” township resident Susan Stauch asked The Detroit News. “This is a highly populated area. Why would you put it here?”

Liz Browne, materials management division director for the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy, told the town hall that a sample of the 6,000 cubic yards of soil and concrete coming from a New York site used to develop atomic bombs during World War II is only slightly radioactive, and can be safely disposed of at the Wayne Disposal landfill off I-94.

About 25 semi-trucks per day are expected to haul the contaminated waste from a Niagara Falls Storage Site the Manhattan Project used to store radioactive leftovers from uranium ore processing, as part of a broader effort to clean sites across the U.S. involved in developing atomic weapons and energy.

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Browne noted the Army Corps is not required to notify the state about the work, but voluntarily contacted state officials about its disposal plans anyway.

“I know a lot of the concern is about notifications, there is no notification required to move this material,” Browne said, according to WXYZ. “It’s the only hazardous waste commercial waste facility in Michigan.”

“We want to be transparent,” Robert Burnham, commander of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Buffalo District, told the town hall. “We follow all Department of Transportation and EPA rules.”

In an email to U.S. Rep. Debbie Dingell, D-Ann Arbor, the Army Corps wrote the material “meets the waste acceptance criteria for disposal at the (Wayne Disposal) facility, and the facility routinely accepts similar material from commercial sites, as well as other (Manhattan Project cleanup) sites, for disposal,” according to The News.

Regardless, Wayne County Conservation District Executive Director Connie Boris argued it would be better to cap the contaminated waste in place at the Niagara Falls site, rather than haul it across public roads to Michigan.

“Do not disperse radioactive waste throughout the country,” Boris said.

Others who lined up to vent their frustrations to officials at the Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy, the Army Corps, and Republic Services, parent company for Wayne Disposal, want lawmakers to take action.

“I care about what this is going to do to my property values, as well as my health,” one woman said, according to CBS News.

Township resident Ta’I Loving told The News she lives three miles from the site and she’s concerned about contamination in her garden. She’s now considering moving elsewhere.

“When something happens, how is that going to affect us?” Loving said. “Why is it being moved?”

Wayne County Executive Warren Evans, who hosted the town hall with Dingell, is also concerned.

“When you talk about atomic waste and you talk about nuclear waste, that is a whole different gut reaction that we get,” Evans said.

Dingell and Detroit Democratic Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib honed in on the lack of state regulations for the toxic shipments, suggesting lawmakers on both sides of the aisle must come together to impose more stringent restrictions.

“So what you want is state law that regulates this,” Dingell said. “But that means we need bipartisan support to get state laws changed.”

“You all know it costs $13 to dispose of a ton of waste in a landfill in Wisconsin. Do you know how much it costs in Michigan? Thirty-six cents,” Tlaib said, according to CBS News.

Democrats who control both chambers of the Michigan Legislature opted against raising that fee when they approved a record-breaking $82.5 billion 2025 state budget this summer. Whitmer signed that budget into law in July.