After months of delay, the U.S. Department of Energy released its annual environmental report for the former Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant on Friday.
“More than 10,000 environmental samples, including air, surface, flora and fauna’’ in and around the site ”show results significantly below regulatory safety limits and no radioactivity detected above naturally occurring levels,” said Jessica Szymanski, a DOE spokeswoman.
The release of the Annual Site Environmental Report comes after The Dispatch repeatedly asked the agency about its status and questioned Energy Secretary Dan Brouillette about its delay during his recent visit to Columbus.
“I’ll have to get back to you on that. I don’t know the answer off the top of my head,” he said.
More than a week later, the agency cited COVID-19 as the reason for the holdup. Records show the report is often released in March.
The timing is important because the Scioto Valley Local School District has petitioned the Ohio Facilities Construction Commission to replace Zahn’s Corner Middle School with a new school.
The middle school was shuttered by the district in May 2019 after neptunium-237, which is radioactive and poisonous, was detected by DOE air monitors across the street from the school.
Enriched uranium was detected inside the school during an inspection. The Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant, less than 2 miles from the middle school, operated from 1954 until 2001.
The monitors began detecting contamination when disposal of radioactive materials at the plant began in 2017, according to the district’s letter.
“The Department of Energy did not inform the district of detections in 2017 until two years later, and only recently disclosed a 2018 detection of americium, another radioactive isotope,” the letter states.
Zahn’s Corner students will be divided and moved among the district’s elementary and high schools when classes resume in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic. The district initially plans to return students to the classroom in shifts, but the added middle school students likely will make social distancing more difficult.
“The district’s classrooms are filled to capacity, and it has been forced to use closet space as makeshift administrative offices,” according to the district’s letter to the facilities commission.
A commission spokesman, J.C. Benton, said the district’s application was submitted for the “exceptional needs’’ program in late May and is still under review. He declined to say when a response is expected.
The state program allows the commission to fund school buildings “based on the seriousness of the environmental contamination, whether the contamination violates applicable state and federal standards, and whether the facilities are no longer suitable for use as school facilities,” according to the commission’s website.
Architects and engineers will review the district’s application. That could result in site visits to measure health, safety, structure, heating/ventilation, electrical systems and student density.
The commission’s next meeting is scheduled for Aug. 13 and will be held online. It’s unclear whether it will decide on the application then, but even if approved it would then be submitted to the state Controlling Board for its approval.
The Appalachian community includes many families who do not have access to the internet, which means students are unable to learn remotely. That places the district in a challenging position.
“I don't know that I have any advice for the school district. I mean, these decisions are going to be made locally, with local officials as well as state officials,” DOE Secretary Brouillette said during his recent visit.
“For that particular school, we have made every effort to ensure that that school is safe. They called us very early. They told us about the event. We sent what we refer to as a rapid strike team that we pulled from our national laboratories and nuclear experts,” he said. “There has been no contamination that we can find in the school system.”
However, the DOE’s own monitors as well as independent tests did find contamination.
The DOE continues to say there is “no radioactivity detected above naturally occurring levels, and thus no cause for public health concern.”
The district has pushed back on that.
“The public will not accept sending their children to a school building they believe poses a risk of radioactive exposure,” according to the district’s letter to the commission. “However, the district lacks the current funds to undertake such a project.”
Brouillette went on to say, “We stand ready to assist the school system in any way that they would see fit. Our door remains open. We will continue to support their activities.”
District superintendent Wes Hairston said he hasn’t seen that support.
“We consistently get blown off by them,” he said.
Even with the release of the federal report Friday, a third-party assessment, funded by the DOE, remains pending.
The department has allocated $4 million for that assessment, “which will provide for the primary sampling portion expected to begin in the near future, as well as the data validation and risk evaluation planned for next year,“ Szymanski said.
Hairston said the independent assessment will be “the critical point in the process.”
For generations, Piketon residents worked at the plant to help build America's nuclear stockpile to combat threats abroad and later transitioned to enriching uranium for nuclear power plants.
“This is a very rural, very poor area. It's just unfair because people sacrificed for national security purposes to help this country,” Hairston said. “It's a shame we get ignored. I think they're just hoping we will go away.”
“All we really want is a school,” he said. “I don't think that's too much to ask.“
This report was provided by The Columbus Dispatch, part of the USA TODAY Network.
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