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 leaves 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 that would see the work extended to 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.
The White House requested just under $35 million for Moab for fiscal 2017. The House’s version of DOE’s 2017 budget would provide $37 million. The Senate’s 2017 bill does not break out funding for Moab, which is included in a roughly $85 million account called Small Sites.
