The mayor of Piketon, Ohio, says February flooding in the area reinforces his point that the Department of Energy should not build the planned On-Site Disposal Cell for waste from ongoing cleanup at the Portsmouth Site.
Heavy rains forced the Pike County Board of Commissioners to declare a state of emergency Feb. 11 due to flooding of the Scioto River and flash flooding that washed out roadways, Mayor Billy Spencer noted by email last week.
The county typically gets about 44 inches of rain annually, but it received roughly 60 inches in each of the past two years, Spencer said. “My point is as we have always been saying, it is just too wet here for a hundred-acre nuclear dump.”
Area residents fear potential contaminated runoff from the cell during such heavy rains could pollute local tributaries or have other environmental impacts.
The Energy Department wants by 2022 to complete the $900 million cell to store 2 million cubic yards of contaminated waste resulting from demolition of buildings once used for uranium enrichment at Portsmouth.
With concurrence of the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency, DOE issued the final record of decision (ROD) laying out plans for the cell in June 2015. Piketon and other local governing bodies have been unable to persuade the agency to reopen the ROD, which found the cell posed no major environmental risk and is a good way to dispose of waste with low levels of contamination.
Spencer said he is undaunted by the fact that site preparation work on the disposal cell is well underway: “They are continuing to work. We are continuing to fight.”
