Strong opposition voiced to waste disposal cell

PIKETON - A very upset Sherry Johnson quickly summed up in a matter of seconds what it took those in the rest of the cafeteria at Piketon High School nearly three hours to do Saturday.

"It's time to tell the Department of Energy to go to hell," Johnson said to a loud round of applause. "We are going to tell every elected official that did not show up here from the State of Ohio (that) we don't need you and we don't want you." 

Johnson, whose husband has worked on the Department of Energy site in Piketon for four decades, was referring to officials on both the state and federal levels representing Ohio who residents feel have not taken their concerns about a planned on-site waste disposal cell seriously enough.

She was not the only one angry among the more than 100 people gathered Saturday at the meeting put together by the newly formed Citizens Against Radioactive Dump (CARD) in Pike County. Nearly a dozen audience comments were heard following presentations from a panel that included Piketon Mayor Billy Spencer, Waverly Mayor Greg Kempton, Pike County Auditor Erica Snodgrass, consultant Karl Kalbacher and Kelsie Farmer, widow of Piketon graduate and baseball standout Zach Farmer.

What came out of the three hours of remarks was a consistent and unified message — that the geology of the Piketon site would put groundwater under such a disposal facility at risk, that DOE and the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency have not been truthful with their analysis of the site, that county commissioners from across the region who have endorsed the disposal facility need to change their minds and that residents need to present a very loud voice in opposition to the plans.

Ground is currently being leveled and cleared on the DOE property for creation of the disposal site, which DOE and lead site contractor Fluor-BWXT have stated would house non-contaminated and low-level contaminated debris from the demolition of the former Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant. Flour-BWXT Site Director Dennis Carr said during a plant tour Thursday that the first material going into the disposal facility likely wouldn't be deposited there until early in 2021 and that the only material allowed into the cell would be that which met stringent guidelines for disposal of such waste.

Both Piketon and Waverly village council's have passed resolutions opposing the disposal facility as things stand now, requesting that DOE and Ohio EPA reopen a Record of Decision that allowed the work to go forward. Other townships and the Scioto Valley Local Schools have added their voices to that opposition, as has the Site Specific Advisory Board made up of citizens selected by DOE.

Spencer, like many others on the afternoon, pulled no punches in his remarks. He questioned claims made by DOE that the cell's liner will be secure for 1,000 years, expressed displeasure over the amount of time it has taken DOE to respond to letters sent with concerns about the issue, accused the agency of lying to the public and expressed doubt that anyone will want to redevelop land around the site if what he called a nuclear waste dump is located there.

He also called on the Pike County commissioners to change their position supporting the disposal site, saying that while he believes their intentions were good, they are not representing the will of their constituents. Two of the three commissioners, Fred Foster and Tony Montgomery, sat with the panel in the front of the room. The third commissioner, Blaine Beekman, was not at the meeting and was criticized by a couple of the speakers for his absence.

"They have to get on board with this," Spencer said. "You have to, guys, this is wrong. If the people don't want it, and the people don't want it ... you're elected to represent the people."

Commissioners, including those in surrounding counties who have offered support for the cell, were not the only officials called out. Ohio House Speaker Cliff Rosenberger, Gov. John Kasich and members of Ohio's congressional delegation also received criticism for what residents feel has been a lack of response to their concerns.

Piketon Village Council, in conjunction with the Scioto Valley Local Schools, hired Washington, D.C.-based The Ferguson Group to review thousands of pages of DOE data and analysis used to justify the decision to use the present site. Kalbacher, who conducted the research, shared some of his findings with the crowd Saturday. Among that data were several areas where fractures in the bedrock were found to be deeper than expected excavation for the cell's liner and several areas where groundwater too shallow to allow the 50 feet of space required by the Toxic Substances Control Act between the bottom of the cell's liner and groundwater.

In fact, he said the amount of water in the area of the disposal cell alone should have eliminated that site from consideration, noting that there's a reason so much radioactive waste is shipped to the "high and dry" areas out west of the Mississippi River.

Nobody from DOE appeared at Saturday's meeting.

During Thursday's plant tour, Frank Miller, project director for the on-site disposal facility, talked about how the liner was designed with several safeguards. Among those will be use of 2.4 cubic yards of soil in the cell for every one cubic yard of waste, a leachate transmission and treatment system to collect and treat water that comes into contact with the waste, a double pipe containment system for the leachate water, a horizontal monitoring well at the bottom of the liner, several barrier layers of different materials like compacted clay, a couple of layers of barrier materials like bentonite and a high-density polyethylene plastic and a leak detection system.

"Remember, any waste that's brought for disposal obviously has to meet the waste acceptance criteria and one of those criteria is that it's not a free-standing liquid," Carr said. "So you cannot have liquid in the waste."

Part of the role of the bentonite, Fluor officials noted, is that it expands rapidly to create a seal if, for instance, any rainwater were to penetrate that far into the layers of materials that make up the liner.

As work continues to prepare the site after DOE reviewed Kalbacher's findings and decided not to reopen the Record of Decision for further study, those in attendance Saturday vowed to continue the fight, flooding their elected officials with phone calls and emails pushing for the project to be stopped.