The Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge Office of Environmental Management (OREM) has turned over for eventual private use parcels of land that once held two gaseous diffusion facilities at the Oak Ridge Reservation in Tennessee.
The sites of the K-31 and K-33 buildings cover about 215 acres in what is now the East Tennessee Technology Park (ETTP). The Department of Energy has transferred about half of the 2,200-acre site out of its liability.
The Community Reuse Organization of East Tennessee (CROET), which will oversee the reindustrialization of the land, now holds most of the transferred property that was once the Oak Ridge Gaseous Diffusion Plant.
Cathy Hickey, of CROET, said some of the land has been transferred to the federal General Services Administration for the construction of a regional airport. Other parcels were given to the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency for conservation and recreation.
Several hiking trails around the ETTP have been created from the land transfer and are in use today.
“That’s something that doesn’t exist anywhere else,” Ken Rueter, president and project manager for Oak Ridge cleanup prime URS-CH2M Oak Ridge, said of the multipurpose land turnover.
In addition to the conservation areas, the Department of Energy is working with the National Park Service to build a museum honoring the plant’s contributions during the Manhattan Project and the Cold War.
“You wouldn’t normally conclude that people who do environmental cleanup for a living would be able to do this,” Rueter said at a formal launch celebration for the museum Thursday.
Other areas on the property that could not be reindustrialized have been turned into solar farms.
K-31 and K-33 were among five onetime uranium enrichment facilities demolished between 2006 and 2016. At an Oak Ridge Site Specific Advisory Board meeting last week, OREM quality and mission support chief Dave Adler said the two parcels will likely be of high interest to developers because of their flat terrain, proximity to the interstate, and access to train and river transportation routes.
OREM spokesman Ben Williams said the Energy Department expects this year to finalize the transfer of another 182-acre parcel that includes portions of a once-contaminated area called Duct Island.
UCOR began cleaning up the site in 2011 under a contract valued at more than $2.5 billion through 2020, including all options. It replaced a previous DOE arrangement with Bechtel Jacobs.
Williams said there are about 100 buildings left to demolish at the East Tennessee Technology Park, and the contractor is on track to finish cleaning up the site 2020. By that point, the Department of Energy should have transferred the entirety of the ETTP.
