More than 6,000 cubic yards of radioactively contaminated soil has been excavated from the Luckey Site in Ohio and shipped for disposal in Michigan, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said Monday.
North Wind-Portage in April began excavation of an anticipated 129,000 cubic yards of soil under a $100 million contract through the Army Corps’ Formerly Utilized Sites Remedial Action Program (FUSRAP). The soil is contaminated with beryllium, lead, radium-226, thorium-230, uranium-234, and uranium-238, left behind by a former beryllium production plant.
As of Oct. 19, North Wind had dug up 6,293 cubic yards of material from the southwest portion of the property 22 miles southeast of Toledo. That is roughly 15 percent of the amount to be retrieved in the first phase of cleanup and 4 percent of the total, according to an Army Corps announcement.
In those six months, 336 truckloads of soil were sent from Luckey to a US Ecology disposal site in Belleville, Mich., the Army Corps said. Each truck carried 15 tons of material.
Also, 315,448 gallons of water were pumped out of the dig zone and retrieved from drains, then processed through an on-site treatment system. Almost three-fourths of the treated water was used for dust suppression and the rest dumped into a ditch along Luckey Road.
FUSRAP is the Army Corps’ program for cleanup of sites contaminated by defense and civilian commercial programs managed by the Manhattan Engineer District and Atomic Energy Commission from the 1940s to the 1960s. The Luckey property was used by Brush Beryllium Co. (later called Wellman) for production of different forms of beryllium from 1949 to 1958 via an Atomic Energy Commission contract. About 1,000 tons of contaminated scrap metal were also brought to the site in 1951.
The total excavation project is expected to last a decade, spread over five phases, and to cost $244 million.
