Piketon, Ohio, Mayor Billy Spencer did not get a meeting with Energy Secretary Rick Perry last week, but still hopes to persuade the Energy Department to drop plans for an on-site disposal cell for waste from decommissioning of the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant.
Perry visited DOE’s Portsmouth Site on Friday, but “time constraints” during his short stay prevented a meeting with Spencer, Robert Edwards, manager of DOE’s Portsmouth/Paducah Project Office, told the mayor by email Thursday.
Spencer said Monday he had hoped to give the energy secretary some information about local opposition to the $900 million On-Site Waste Disposal Facility (OSWDF), which would hold material from the continuing cleanup of former uranium enrichment operations at Portsmouth. “I wasn’t going to ambush him or anything,” he said.
The Piketon mayor, however, said he does have an Oct. 18 meeting scheduled with the speaker of the Ohio House of Representatives, Cliff Rosenberger, a Republican who represents Pike County, where the village of Piketon is located.
In recent months, the village of Piketon, Scioto Valley School District, and Seal Township have all passed resolutions opposing on-site disposal. Among the concerns are the potential for waste to seep through the bedrock below the site and the inability to put that land to other uses.
Spencer said he hopes state officials might be receptive to concerns of the lightly populated communities near the complex. “A full cleanup is imperative to the future economic development at this site and the Village of Piketon fully supports the effort with one exception: we want the DOE to ship all D&D waste off-site instead of building a nuclear dump,” he wrote in a Sept. 29 letter to Perry.
