Clean up at PA nuclear waste site to cost $350 million

Susan Phillips

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Susan Phillips tells stories about the consequences of political decisions on people's every day lives. She has worked as a reporter for WHYY since 2004. Susan's coverage of the 2008 Presidential election resulted in a story on the front page of the New York Times. In 2010 she traveled to Haiti to cover the earthquake. That same year she produced an award-winning series on Pennsylvania's natural gas rush called "The Shale Game." She received a 2013 Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Journalism Award for her work covering natural gas drilling in Pennsylvania. She has also won several Edward R. Murrow awards for her work with StateImpact. In 2013/14 she spent a year at MIT as a Knight Science Journalism Fellow. She has also been a Metcalf Fellow, an MBL Logan Science Journalism Fellow and reported from Marrakech on the 2016 climate talks as an International Reporting Project Fellow. A graduate of Columbia School of Journalism, she earned her Bachelor's degree in International Relations from George Washington University.

January 6, 2015 | 12:02 PM

An aerial view of the Parks Township site via U.S. Army Corps of Engineers

The bill for cleaning up a nuclear waste site in western Pennsylvania has jumped from $44 million to $350 million, according to a report by the Associated Press. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers says the project will take more than 10 years to remove all the hazardous waste from a site in Parks Township, which includes highly radioactive materials like uranium and plutonium. More from the AP:

The site was once owned by Nuclear Materials and Equipment Corp., which operated fuel plants for nuclear submarines in Parks and nearby Apollo. NUMEC owned the dump site from 1957 until the 1980s, but Babcock & Wilcox Co. most recently owned the land.

The Army Corps already spent $62 million on the cleanup, meaning the final cost will be $412 million – nearly 10 times the original amount.

“Presuming that this this goes forward – and barring any other sidesteps at the political or legal levels – I am hoping that all agencies that are involved will work in concert to effectuate a safe and comprehensive cleanup of this site,” said Patricia Ameno, a 63-year-old local environmental activist who has led the fight to clean up the related waste dump since 1988.

Ameno spearheaded litigation over airborne pollution from the nuclear plants that has led to $92 million in legal settlements from Atlantic Richfield Co. (NUMEC’s parent for part of the time the plants operated) and Babcock & Wilcox, for scores of nearby residents who claimed they developed cancer.

The Army Corps of Engineers says the remediation is planned to begin in 2016.