Portage Inc. on Tuesday laid off 31 employees at the Energy Department’s Moab site in Utah, where the company recently received a follow-on contract for uranium tailings cleanup work, a local public radio station reported.
The layoffs leave 80 people on the job at Moab, the station, KUER 90.1, reported. A Portage spokesperson Wednesday declined to either confirm KUER’s report, or to comment further about the layoffs the radio station described at the site.
DOE awarded Portage a five-year, $121.2 million contract in November 2011. The department announced on April 20 that Portage would get a five-year, $156 million follow-on through Sept. 30, 2021. As of Oct. 1, 2015, DOE and its contractor had disposed of just under 8 million tons of uranium tailings, or half of the site’s total tailings by weight, according to the agency’s fiscal 2017 budget request.
The tailings are hauled to a disposal facility in Crescent Junction, Utah, from nearby the Colorado River and Arches National Park. However, the number of shipments per week has also been halved, from four to two, according to the KUER report.
Mill tailings, which look like sand, are a radioactive byproduct of the Cold War-era uranium ore processing at the former Atlas facility about 3 miles outside of Moab. The facility provided uranium for defense programs, and later for commercial use. Nearly a third of the 430-acre site is covered by tailings, according to DOE’s cleanup contract with Portage. [Should this be Portage?] FIXED -dl
The White House requested just under $35 million for Moab cleanup for fiscal 2017, or about a 10-percent cut from current levels. The House’s version of the DOE budget would provide $37 million for the budget year beginning Oct. 1. The Senate’s 2017 bill does not break out funding for Moab, which is included in a roughly $85 million account called Small Sites.
With the exception of a rock slide that halted work at the site for two months between late 2014 and early 2015, the cleanup has been more or less smooth under Portage.
Meanwhile, in a letter dated April 25, Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) implored Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz to reconsider the job cuts.
“I would urge the Department to realign its priorities by providing sufficient funding for the UMTRA Project and reverse its decision to reduce the workforce,” Chaffetz wrote. “Removal of these tailings from the former national defense site will eliminate a massive hazard from the doorsteps of Moab residents and the 25 million downstream water users in places such as Las Vegas and Los Angeles.”
UMTRA refers to the cleanup effort’s formal name, the Moab Uranium Mill Tailings Remedial Action project.
Without commenting on the layoffs or the substance of Chaffetz’s complaints, a spokesperson for DOE’s Office of Environmental Management in Washington, D.C. wrote in an email Thursday “the Department has received the congressman’s letter and is reviewing it.”
