One of the largest environmental restoration projects in history has been completed ahead of schedule. The former Fernald, Ohio, uranium production plant had been the focus of a massive cleanup program since 1992. Though early estimates projected completion in 2019, at a projected cost of $12.2 billion, the project was finished last October, at a cost of only $4.4 billion.

Fluor Fernald, the general contractor for the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)—who owns the 1,050-acre plant—hired MHF Logistical Solutions, Inc., to assist in cleanup efforts.

“They brought in the right people and the right assets to get the job done in a timely manner, and with skill and innovation,” says Project Director Con Murphy. “That made a difference to us.”

Among the many technical innovations it brought to the project, MHF designed, fabricated, installed, and operated a customized mechanical loading and packaging system to package approximately 135,000 cubic feet of hazardous cold metal oxides—including arsenic, cadmium, chromium, selenium, and thorium-230, a byproduct of uranium decay—from inside the Fernald site’s Silo 3.

In 1989, the site was shut down by the DOE to concentrate on environmental compliance and waste management. EPA placed the site on its Superfund list that same year, but the cleanup project officially didn’t begin until three years later, after formal congressional approval and after Fluor Fernald (then FERMCO) won the remediation contract.

During the cleanup process, 320 buildings have been demolished and 1.5 million tons of waste have been shipped to a disposal site in Utah. The remaining 4.7 million tons of building debris, low-level waste and contaminated soil will remain onsite in a fenced-off pile, sealed inside thick liners and caps made of synthetic materials, and covered with clays, rock and prairie grass.

N BA Executive Committee Member Named Chair of ECOS
The Illinois Environmental Protection Agency announced in October, the appointment of IEPA Director Doug Scott as 2007 Chair of the Environmental Council of the States (ECOS) Air Committee.

A member of the N BA Illinois Chapter Executive Committee, Scott replaced Robert W. Golledge, Jr., former commissioner of the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection, who chaired the committee for the last year. The committee addresses air, climate, energy, and related issues, and chose the incoming chair at their annual meeting.