Monday, September 3, 2012

An Abandoned sites deadly legacy comes back to haunt in Kiski Valley

I ride past this fenced in abandoned  property a couple times a month  in Kiskimere Pa. along River Rd. which runs along the Kiski River in Armstrong County Pa.  not much goes on there just a big open field with occasional turkeys  watched by a rent a cop in a rental trailer. That was till a few months ago when well armed Dept of Homeland Security Police  started patrolling the field and large  stone blocks where made into a wall around the trailer.
So whats going on  it starts in the 1950's during the cold war when a company known as NUMEC which was a spin off from Westinghouse Corp.  built 2 plants one plant in Apollo and other in Kiskimere to enrich uranium and make pellets for  nuclear reactors the company operated into 80's and was bought and sold several times ending up owned by Babcock & Wilcox when it was finally torn down and cleaned up and site monitored for any pollution .
During its time it seems the plant was poorly run with loose security and 427 Kilo Grams of highly  enriched material disappeared.
Rumors say it ended up in Israel to help them develop there bomb project.While the plant operators clam it was lost in all the processing thru the plant .Either way it is still considered  missing.  Numerous lawsuits about the poor handling conditions  causing hundreds of cases of cancer in workers and there family members and recent study's released  on the area have concluded the poor handling of materials was in fact a normal day to day occurrence . This  has now come to rear its ugly head one more time as efforts by the US Army Corp of Engineers to give the site a final clean up by removing of waste material from  trenches  from a 44 acre dump on the site for supposed low level materials has revealed much higher level contaminated materials than where expected .
This is now why armed DHS  police are watching the site as they try to determine the best way to properly clean and restore the dump site area which at time when it was disposed of was legal to do .
The residents near by are extremely worried and want the government to buy them out as there homes are now worth nearly nothing they contend   with the threat the dump poses to ground water and the environment.
One has to wonder why this place was allowed to operate in such a poorly run manner. Rules and regulations where in place and regularly discarded. But most of those responsible are now gone  having died from old age or cancer  and it has been left to others to clean up and carry on.
Hopefully lessons learned at this site will prevent it from happening to others. But this is not the only site in Pa. which is on the high hazard super fund  list the EPA keeps.
Radiation contamination  was also cleaned up in Cannonsburg Pa. where Madame Currie perfected uranium, as well as several other sites  with low level contamination suspected of causing clusters of cancer break outs. Study's have also come out where steel fabricating plants where contaminated by the shavings of certain steel products which where infused with radioactive beryllium.  One of those  Hepenstall Steel where I worked as a guard for CPP security after it was closed  is on the list.
Western Pa.  was and still is an area where many heavy industrial manufacturing processes where done and the soil and water here is all contaminated in one way or the other .

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