The Energy Department said Friday it has finished upgrading a facility that cleans up off-site contaminated groundwater at the former Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant near Paducah, Ky.

“Equipment at the C-612 Northwest Pump-and-Treat Facility that had reached the end of its service life or no longer had available replacement parts was replaced with newer equipment to allow the facility’s continued operations,” DOE said in a press release.

The facility was placed in service in August 1995 to cut down on off-site groundwater contamination by using the air stripping process through which the liquid is punped to treatment gear, DOE said. Trichloroethene, and to a lesser extent other contaminants, are separated from water being pumped into the plant. Until the early 1990s trichloroethene was used to clean equipment when the plant was conducting uranium enrichment. 

“More than 2 billion gallons of water have been treated since operations began at the northwest groundwater contamination plume. An additional 1.5 billion gallons of water have been treated from another part of the plume at a separate pump-and-treat facility at the northeast side of the plume,” the release says. “Overall, these operations have removed almost 4,200 gallons of TCE. Pump-and-treat operations, optimized in 2010 with the installation of additional withdrawal wells, and other efforts to remove contamination sources have reduced the plumes offsite by more than 20 percent.”