NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- Another call has been made from out-of-state to stop land-filling low-level radioactive waste in Tennessee.

Video: Washington State Joins Radioactive Dumping Fight

People in Washington state said their health department allowed a backlog of illegally stored radioactive waste to be shipped here and buried.

One group said they would never be allowed to dump such waste in Washington and asked why it's being allowed here.

Think of the crates and canisters of low level radioactive waste as the leftovers that no one wanted.

A Washington company was paid to process and dispose of the waste, but went bankrupt before the job was done in 2001.

“We're talking a couple million pounds. … They really didn't work on it (and) let it languish for the most part, apparently did the processing on an as convenient basis and complained the original generators don't want to pay for reprocessing it or sending it somewhere else, and it just sat there,” said Executive Director and legal counsel for Heart of America Northwest Gerry Pollet.

Heart of America is a watchdog group for the most contaminated area in North America -- the Hanford Nuclear Reservation.

A second company, Pacific Eco Solutions, stepped in and promised to get rid of the leftovers by 2004.

By then, Heart of America was on the case.

“There was no effort under way to get rid of the waste, they were at that point two years overdue and nothing was happening,” Pollet said.

But the third time was the charm.

Late last summer, Permafix inherited the area and threw the state of Washington an idea to get rid of the waste once and for all in Tennessee.

“The Health Department sprung this on us as if we'd be pleased. … You should know that the waste, a big chunk of the waste, they didn't tell us how much, was removed as bulk release and sent to Tennessee. I had seen a clip of yours at that point and knew that this was a major issue and I said to the health officials in the room, ‘Did you send it to a municipal landfill?’ And they said, ‘We don't know where it went.’ I said, ‘What do you mean you don't know?’” Pollet said.

It is not known exactly what happened.

The company that took the trash, Impact Services, has dumped millions of pounds of treated low level waste into Middle Point Landfill in Murfreesboro for years now.

But they said this load didn't go there. They also would not say where the load went.

“We want to know which landfill and why they bothered to have it trekked all the way from Washington to here,” said Diane D'Arrigo of the Nuclear Information and Resource Service.

“Wastes that are of acceptable activity are disposed in landfills all across the country day in and day out and have been for years and years and years. … Nothing new,” said Eddie Nanney of the Tennessee Division of Radiological Health.

As they have in California, concerned groups in Washington state already saddled with Hanford are questioning why Tennessee has become the dumping destination for other states’ low-level radioactive waste.

“We've had situations here in the state where waste, radioactive waste, got sent by accident to a landfill and had to be exhumed,” Pollet said.

“It’s as if our state department of health in Washington said as long as it's out of site it’s out of mind (and) we don't care if it gets dumped in a way that's unacceptable if it happened here in the state of Washington,” he said.

“Tennessee officials ought to be asking themselves how much radioactive waste do they want in ground and surface waters in Tennessee from all over the country, and secondly, if it’s not OK to go in a garbage dump in Washington state, why should it go into a garbage dump in Tennessee?” Pollet said.

The Washington group said it’s concerned that there are no records of what exactly was in those containers.

It also said only the outside surfaces and not the contents were tested for radioactivity.

Without accurate records of who generated the waste in the first place, communities might be ultimately liable for damages down the road from contaminated municipal landfills.