MURFREESBORO, Tenn. -- The Channel 4 I-Team has uncovered a state-endorsed program to dump low-level radioactive waste into ordinary landfills.

Video: State Rep. Surprised By Radioactive Dumping

It has been happening for almost 20 years in Murfreesboro, a growing city of around 80,000 people.

The process of the dumping is called Bulk Survey for Release, and it has been occurring since at least the early 1990s without any public hearing.

During this time, Tennessee has allowed low-level radioactive waste to go into Murfreesboro's Middle Point landfill.

Here's some of what Channel 4 News found:

In 1994, Middle Point landfill was approved for 200,000 to 400,000 pounds per month of spent ion exchange resin, pellets that filter radiation out of water

In 1999, 40,000 pounds a week of soil from an area where scrap thorium alloy parts were stored. Thorium is naturally radioactive, with a half-life of 14 billion years.

The dump took trash from a restricted area of a nuclear facility that included 4,800 tons a month of trash.

Loads of radioactive metal were taken to the dump, but it wasn't clear where it came from.

Also 400 tons a month of contaminated dirt came from the University of California at Los Angeles.

In one year's time, Middle Point went from nearly 166,000 pounds of low level waste in 2004 to more than 10 million pounds in 2005.

The dumping was the brainchild of the nuclear processing industry, a business home-grown in the state.

With a $30,000 annual license, companies can take what's left of old nuclear weapons or power plants and process it. They determine when it is safe and then send it out with the trash.

"The real problem is there is no safe level of radioactivity,” said Nuclear Information and Resource Service watchdog, Diane D'Arrigo.

"It doesn't require any containerization. It’s material at such low activities that there's no concern for contamination. It’s not of a radiation hazard,” said Eddie Nanney of the Tennessee Radiological Health Department.

"But if you went right up to it with instrumentation, could you get a reading?" asked reporter Demetria Kalodimos.

"If you had very, very good instrumentation, you might," said Nanney.

"I don't think we knew. I obviously didn't until this interview," said state Rep. Donna Rowland

Rowland said she has been to protests and countless meetings regarding the landfill and doesn't want her neighbors exposed to any unnecessary risk.

"The last time I looked, you had to have protective gear on to handle any radiation, but yet we’re putting it into our communities, near playgrounds where our kids play, near subdivisions that are built, near major interchanges. 'Practically not' radioactive … that's unacceptable,” said Rowland.

"I couldn't believe it. I mean were talking about hundreds of thousands of tons," said environmental consultant, Mark Quarles.

Quarles has analyzed dozens of troubled sites and he is most concerned about groundwater contaminatation. He said once the radioactive material is buried, the state does no further checking on the contents.

Quarles said the dump is close to a drinking water source that flows to Percy Priest Lake.

"You'd think once they started taking bulk survey waste in landfills they would at least start testing the groundwater for those contaminants," said Quarles.

At Middle Point, the landfill liner was once accidentally punctured, giving more concern to a possible leak of the radioactive material.

"Where is the authority for this state agency to let this radioactive material go out of control,” said D'Arrigo.

Nuclear watchdogs say Tennessee is overstepping its bounds by allowing a boutique industry to write its own rules, decide what is and isn't radioactive or harmful and impose additional risk on the public without asking.

A scientist who pioneered the Bulk Survey for Release process said Tennessee has something to gain from all of this.

"The state charges a penny and a half a pound of all material that goes through the process," said health physicist Mark McHugh.

But the state is considering new guidelines for this type of radioactive dumping.

"Will there be a public hearing on these rules or is this all be within the industry?" asked Kalodimos.

"Well it's not a rule and would not require a public hearing. There’s obviously a lot of interest in this process and we’ll take comments from anyone. Anyone who has an interest is welcome to submit comments to us," said Nanney.

The state said it deserves some credit for acknowledging that there is radiation, albeit at low levels, on this scrap material.

They said other states have no system at all for regulating the bulk survey business and only California has banned radioactive trash from landfills.