The Army Corps of Engineer’s Formerly Utilized Sites Remedial Action Program’s (FUSRAP) cleanup of the Shallow Land Disposal Area (SLDA) site in Armstrong County, Pa. will cost approximately seven times more than previously thought and take an additional 20 months to complete, according to the Record of Decision amendment released yesterday. The Corps needed to amend its original ROD from 2007 after a large amount of unanticipated complex material was found on site when active remediation began in 2011. The cost of the cleanup increased to $350 million, up from the initial $44.5 million estimate, and once active remediation begins, the cleanup is expected to last 46 months, up from the planned 26 months. “The scope of this activity for the proposed ROD amendment also reflects the variety of the type sand quantities of waste materials in the trenches, the difficulty in characterizing these materials, and the additional time required to complete the work,” the ROD amendment said. “Previous experience has resulted in an increased awareness of the level of effort required for nuclear criticality safety and non-radiological safety, such as beryllium health and safety. The associated level of effort will be increased far beyond what was originally estimated in the ROD.”
The SLDA site is one of the larger Formerly Utilized Sites Remedial Action Program projects. Through 2014, approximately $78 million has already been allocated for the cleanup, and in the Corps’ Fiscal Year 2015 budget request, FUSRAP asked for an additional $20 million. Sen. Robert Casey (D-Pa.) has been applying pressure to speed up the cleanup process, especially after a report last year from the NRC Inspector General concluded that that the Corps’ remediation plan for the SLDA site “grossly underestimates” how much radioactive material remains on site while a lack of documents inhibits the government’s ability to know exactly what is buried on site. Following the release of the ROD amendment, the Corps anticipates issuing a Request for Proposal for remediation at the site in 2015.
