Compensation for nuclear plant damage a pittance, say leaders
ship, the Scioto Valley School District, and the Pike County Career Technology Center. The communities near a Community leaders con- former uranium enrichment sider the payments a pittance plant in Pike County and the compared to the damage the nearby landfill that will store site has caused. The surroundits waste are asking the U.S. ing communities have expe- Department of Energy for rienced higher-than-normal more money. cancer rates, and a school
The federal government near the plant was shuttered provides the municipali- when radioactive isotopes ties surrounding the former were found in nearby air, soil Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion and vegetation.
Plant in Piketon with around
$47,000 a year to offset the loss of taxable land. The com- pensation is known as a “payment in lieu of taxes” or PILT, and is divided between the
Pike County commissioners,
Seal Township, Scioto Town
Difficult for Pike County to overcome stigma of nuclear past
The Pike County towns consider themselves victims of the lingering toxic legacy of the Cold War. Uranium was enriched for nuclear weap“Landfills like this are a ons at the Piketon plant from deterrent to private invest1954 to 2001. In a request to ment. In the past when com- renegotiate the PILT com- munities have faced these pensation, community lead- kinds of issues, (the energy ers argue that they’ve lost department) compensates valuable industrial land and the community with special believe their residents sufburden payments.” fered from the radioactive The energy department material left at the site. declared the land agricultural
“It’s difficult for communi- when the site was built in the ties to overcome that stigma,” 1950s and still relies on that said Jennifer Chandler, coun- designation, but Zack Space, cilwoman for the village of president of the Sunny Creek Piketon and the president Horizons advocacy group of the Scioto Valley-Piketon and communications firm, Area Council of Governments. said farmers can no longer use the land.
The annual payme n ts are “woefully inadequate given this is the best industrial ground in the county,” Space said.
Feds: Radiation from former uranium plant not a threat
Open-air demolition began in May over the objections of the surrounding communities.
Zahn’s Middle School, which is downwind of the former enrichment plant, sits empty and unused after radiation was detected near the school. Radioactive isotopes were found in groundwater near the plant between 2017 and 2019.
Federal officials said last year that the radiation was not a threat to the middle school.
The Pike County communities have allies in U.S. Rep. Tim Ryan and Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown, who wrote to the energy department asking the agency to increase its payments to the Pike County towns near the clean-up site.