Time: 02-12-2011 21:44 User: mstollhaus PubDate: 02-13-2011 Zone: KY Edition: 1 Page Name: A 8 Color: Black

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A8 | SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 13, 2011 | THE COURIER-JOURNAL FROM PAGE ONE & NATION | courier-journal.com KY-

PADUCAH | Short-term pollution measures weren’t intended to be permanent

Continued from A1 Bulk of work awaits
Still, officials acknowl-
while workers have taken edge that most of the work
stop-gap steps to reduce pol- lies ahead and that there may
lution threats, only a full be more contamination they
cleanup will protect people don’t know about.
and the environment over
Among the work yet to be
the long term. done:
The EPA has identified !Decontamination and
nearly 50 serious contami- demolition of hundreds of
nants on or near the plant, structures, including four
including pollutants that can
massive buildings that cover
cause liver, lung, thyroid and more than 100 acres and are
kidney damage, as well as still used by United States
cancer. Enrichment Corp. Winner
The short-term mea- has described some as
sures, such as taking a among the largest buildings
limited number of people off
in the world, and the Energy
their water wells and posting Department said in 2007
warning signs near a pollut- that their removal and clean-
ed stream, were never in-
up would extend to 2040. Of-
tended to be a permanent so- ficials say the cost could be
lution, said Ed Winner, who about $8.9 billion.
oversees the cleanup for the
!Stabilization, disposal
Kentucky Division of Waste or recycling of some 39,000,
Management. 14-ton containers of deplet-
“Problems deferred are
ed uranium hexafluoride
problems expanded — ex- that blanket 700 acres on the
panded in terms of impact Photos by Michael Clevenger, The Courier-Journal
site — a stockpile started
on the environment, risk to “As I project out in time, my certainty that the public will be protected drops significantly,” said Ed Winner, who coordinates the
when the plant began opera-
the public and costs to the cleanup of the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant for the Kentucky Division of Waste Management. tion in 1952. That effort re-
taxpayer,” Winner said. “As I cently passed a milestone
project out in time, my cer- that the government re-
tainty that the public will be Cleanup status at the plant placed his wells with treated
with construction of a facto-
ry that will extract an acid
protected drops significant- Issue Completed Remaining drinking water and have for sale and prepare the ura-
ly.” posted warning signs near
Environmental 15 square miles and 11,000 Continues into future nium for disposal as low-lev-
the creek that flows through el radioactive waste. That
Change in purpose monitoring sampled locations his farm.
Buried waste Interim capping on three burial Estimated 600,000 cubic yards of work has a price tag of
Uranium was enriched A former community ad-
areas buried materials under 72 acres $1.4 billion and may involve
for nuclear weapons at the visory board member, Lamb three crew shifts, working 24
plant from the early 1950s Decontamination and 22 inactive facilities 2.6 to 4.0 million cubic yards of said more delays aren’t a sur- hours a day for 25 years,
until the mid-1960s, when demolition of buildings, (200,000 square feet) building materials prise. “It can be expected
Knerr said.
the government decided it industrial facilities when you waited too long to “There’s 50 years of ma-
had accumulated enough Contaminated creeks, 36,000 cubic yards removed Remove contaminated admit your problems, and terial out there,” he said.
material for the weapons then let the treasury dry up,” Murphie, the Energy De-
program, said Reinhard M.
ditches and other surface sediments from five to six miles of he said.
water. creeks partment project manager,
Knerr, the Energy Depart- Others question whether asked for patience, and sug-
ment’s site leader at Padu- Contaminated soil 2,700 cubic yards removed Remove 100,000 to 200,000 the federal government has
cubic yards of contaminated soils spent money wisely on the gested that federal funding
cah. In the late 1970s and may still come through.
early1980s, the plant was up- Contaminated Treated 2.5 billion gallons water 5.9 billion gallons contaminated project. Energy Department “The Earth isn’t coming
graded to produce a higher groundwater treated with 15 tons TCE removed ground water officials said they have spent to an end here,” he said. “We
grade material for commer- Contaminated scrap metal 33,500 tons removed Complete about $2.1 billion since 1988 can’t predict what next year
cial reactors, he said. and are about 45 percent will bring. Congress may fix
Today, while the govern- Other waste 600,000 cubic feet removed Ongoing as wastes are identified through their 2019 commit- this problem.”
ment owns the property, it Source: Kentucky Division of Waste Management The Courier-Journal ments. Rep. Ed Whitfield, R-1st
leases operations in a large “They have spent so District, said he wasn’t
part of the plant to United much money,” said Mark aware that federal officials
States Enrichment Corp. PADUCAH PLANT Donham, a southeastern Illi- were counting on spending
The cleanup is in inactive !Only functioning uranium- nois resident who lives 16 increases this decade to
parts of the plant. enrichment facility in the U.S. miles from the plant and is a meet their commitments in
While the company can with active operations. former advisory committee Paducah.
continue to make fuel for as !Owned by U.S. Department chairman. “(But) the biggest “There is no easy answer
long as it wants, it isn’t clear of Energy; leased to United problems are yet to be ad- to this,” he said, noting that
how long it will. Its contract States Enrichment Corp. dressed. I don’t know what every step of the cleanup has
for massive amounts of elec- !Located on 3,400 acres the answer is, but I am not “taken much longer than
tricity from the Tennessee about 10 miles west of Paducah sure that throwing a bunch anyone originally said it
Valley Authority expires in !Began operations in 1952 more money is the answer.” would take. … There has al-
May 2012. The company an- !Has produced enriched Donham said he’s espe- ways been what I could call a
nounced in January that it uranium for military and com- cially worried about con- shortage of funds.”
was taking steps to extend mercial purposes. The enriching taminated or radioactive Robert Steurer, spokes-
operations beyond that, but process increases the proportion dust blowing into neighbor- man for Sen. Mitch McCon-
company spokesman Paul of uranium atoms that can be ing communities when nell, the Senate Republican
Jacobson also has said its “split” by fission to release buildings are demolished. leader, said his boss has
ability to keep running de- energy — usually in the form of The Energy Depart- helped secure about
pends on securing a benefi- heat — that can be used to ment’s most recent annual $1.2 billion for the cleanup
cial deal. Some 1,100 com- produce electricity. report for the site describes since 2000 and believes “the
pany jobs are at stake. !Process can use as much as only minimal pollution risks federal government has a re-
The cleanup at the Padu- 3,000 megawatts of electricity, to the public. “There has sponsibility to the people of
cah plant began in 1988 after enough to power more than 2 been a lot of progress in the McCracken County.”
radioactivity and other con- million homes. last several years,” Murphie “Senator McConnell re-
tamination was found in the said. mains committed to ensur-
drinking water wells of resi- Even so, state officials say ing DOE keeps its focus on
dences near the facility. perdome. Disposal options they can understand the cleaning up the facility,”
For years, residents, the range from putting it in a frustration with the pace of Steurer said.
Energy Department and possible mountainous land- progress. The project is so One option that McCon-
state regulators fought over fill on plant property, to the massive, and mountains of nell and Whitfield are look-
the extent of the contamina- more expensive choice of preliminary work needed to ing into is whether some of
tion and what to do about it, shipping it out of state for be done, they said. In fact, the depleted uranium could
reaching an accord in 1998. disposal. the project’s documents be reprocessed, raising
Kentucky and the Energy housed in Frankfort would money for the government
Department followed with Residents’ concerns fill a small moving van. to help pay for cleanup. A
an “expedited” agreement in The reactions from near- “It took years to charac- 2008 Government Account-
2003 that established the “It took years to characterize the contamination and develop by residents range from terize the contamination and ability Office report estimat-
2019 cleanup deadline. remediation plans,” said Tony Hatton, director of the Kentucky alarm to resignation. develop remediation plans,” ed the value of depleted ura-
But with the national Division of Waste Management, who is shown with files on the “We are very concerned said Tony Hatton, director of nium at Paducah and a sister
debt becoming an increasing nuclear fuel factory. “Now we’re starting to do the work.” we are going to lose all the the Kentucky Division of facility in Portsmouth, Ohio,
focus in Washington, Ken- momentum and all the pro- Waste Management. “Now at $7.6 billion, but it said
tucky regulators have been commissioning Fund, creat- tection. Also slowed would gress we have made over the we’re starting to do the Congress may need to pass a
told that promised budget ed by Congress in 1992 to be the cleanup of two, three- last couple of years,” said work.” law allowing its sale.
increases for the cleanup are help pay for cleanups at Pa- mile-long groundwater pol- Ralph Young, a retired engi- So far, that’s included Sen. Rand Paul, who cam-
unlikely for the foreseeable ducah and two other sites, lution plumes that have like- neer and member of the demolition of an incinerator paigned for a balanced fed-
future. expired in 2007. That means ly reached the Ohio River, plant’s community advisory and smelter, removal of eral budget in one year,
The debt, which has utilities have stopped paying and the further decontami- board who lives in Paducah. 30,500 cubic yards of con- which would require hun-
topped $14 trillion, “is a huge into it, leaving Congress to nation and demolition of “When you start going out taminated scrap metal, de- dreds of billion dollars
issue for the country, and we fill its coffers. The Paducah some other idle buildings 20 more years from today, contamination of two large worth of cuts, is calling for
are not going to be exempt,” cleanup has received an av- and facilities. that’s, ‘Oh, my gosh.’ You buildings, demolition of sev- elimination of the Energy
said William E. Murphie, the erage of $107 million a year And the tighter budgets hate to pass this along to eral small buildings, installa- Department, among other
Paducah project manager from the fund since 2005. also might limit choices in your children and grandchil- tion of a system that heats federal agencies. His press
for the Energy Department, Winner said flat federal the future, officials acknowl- dren.” groundwater to vaporize office declined to answer
during a recent tour of the funding specifically threat- edged. Lamb said he fears the de- and extract solvents, and questions about the future of
plant. ens cleanup of radioactive For example, the plant lay will lead to more illness cleaning drainage ditches the Paducah plant cleanup.
Adding to the project’s waste, oil and other polluted might have as much as 4 mil- among people who live near that Winner said “were ma-
budget problems is the fact materials that were dumped lion cubic yards of contami- the plant. jor flow paths for contami-
Reporter James Bruggers can be
that a Uranium Enrichment in the ground decades ago nated waste — enough to al- Although “you can’t nation leaving the site.”
reached at (502) 582-4645.
Decontamination and De- with no environmental pro- most fill the Louisiana Su- prove anything,” he noted

Reports on ’07 zoo attack say tiger likely provoked

By Jason Dearen
and Marcus Wohlsen
Associated Press
SAN FRANCISCO — A
female Siberian tiger killed
in a hail of police gunfire
after mauling a man to death
at the San Francisco Zoo on
Christmas Day 2007 likely
was provoked into leaping
and clawing out of its enclo-
sure, a federal investigator
said in documents obtained
by The Associated Press.
The tiger, named Tatiana,
killed 17-year-old Carlos
Sousa Jr. and injured his
friends, brothers Paul and
Kulbir Dhaliwal, leaving
claw marks etched in the as-
phalt and claw fragments in
the bushes outside its pen.
Claw marks were also
found near the top of the en-
closure wall, which was low-
er than federal safety stan-
dards dictate, showing that
the big cat was able to get
enough leverage to pull itself
out.
“It appears the tiger was
able to jump from the bot-
tom of the dry moat to the
top of the wall and gain
enough purchase over the
top to pull herself out over
the moat wall,” wrote Laurie
Gage, a tiger expert who in-
vestigated the scene for the
U.S. Department of Agricul-
ture’s Animal and Plant
Health Inspection Service,
which oversees the nation’s
zoos.
“With my knowledge of
tiger behavior I cannot imag-
ine a tiger trying to jump out
of its enclosure unless it was
provoked,” Gage wrote in
the Dec. 27, 2007, draft of her
report.
That statement was
stricken from the final ver-
sion of the report because it
was “irrelevant from an Ani-
mal Welfare Act enforce-
ment standpoint,” said Da-
vid Sacks, a spokesman for
APHIS.
Whether the tiger was
provoked has long been a
point of contention.
After sitting with its prey
for a short time, Gage wrote
that Tatiana likely followed
the Dhaliwals’ blood trail for
about 300 yards to where it
resumed attacks.
Photographs show blood-
smeared asphalt where the
tiger apparently dragged
Sousa’s body.
“After a kill, I find it inter-
esting the tiger would leave a
kill to go after something
else unless there were a
compelling reason,” Gage
wrote. “The tiger passed ex-
hibits with warthogs, which
it ignored as it followed (the
blood trail?) of the two
brothers to the Terrace Cafe
outside the dining area.”