Environmental activist who tirelessly fought for her Apollo community
Mad junkyard dog. Big mouth. Tough and smart. Decorated Navy veteran.
Patty Ameno, 72, of Hyde Park, Westmoreland County, had been called many things, but she was best known as a community and environmental activist who fought for the cleanup of a nuclear waste dump in ParksTownship, Armstrong County.
Born Oct. 17, 1951, Ms. Ameno, 72, died May 10 at a hospice in Butler County, according to family. They did not have a cause of death.
“I’m heartbroken,” said her wife, Nedra Ameno, of Hyde Park.
She left a public legacy of fighting for health and safety in the region for more than 30 years, in Pennsylvania’s Armstrong and Westmoreland counties.
Her efforts garnered more than $80 million in a federal lawsuit settlement for several hundred cancer victims in Armstrong County and more than $74 million in compensation from a federal entitlement program for nuclear workers there.
Ms. Ameno served in the U.S. Navy for 11 years, from 1971-1982. She was the Navy’s first female boatswain’s mate and served in the Armed Forces Courier Service, according to the U.S. Navy Memorial. Ms. Ameno received the Navy
and Marine Corps Commendation Medal.
Her resume also includes time as a federal investigator for the U.S. Department of Defense.
Her activism led to nationally prominent attorneys filing federal lawsuits for alleged injury and property damage from emissions from the former Nuclear Materials and Equipment Corporation (NUMEC), which developed and produced nuclear fuel in Apollo and Parks Township plants for submarines and commercial nuclear power plants.
Ms. Ameno initiated the federal lawsuits benefitting area residents with attorneys who represented the late nuclear activist Karen Silkwood.
Several hundred plaintiffs settled with NUMEC’s successors, BWX Technologies/Babcock & Wilcox and the Atlantic Richfield Co. for more than $80 million around 2011.
The companies always maintained that their operations did not cause illnesses and property damage to residents.
Ms. Ameno also pushed for the federal government to award special status to former NUMEC employees in 2007 to collect more than $74 million for cancers and medical expenses from the federal Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program, according to the U.S.Department of Labor.
”Patty was very well schooled from a legal standpoint and a tactical standpoint, on what was best for the people affected by higher than normal cancer rates in the area,” said Bill Kerr, of Kiski Township, an Apollo High School classmate of Ameno’s who graduated with her in 1969.
Mr. Kerr is a former mayor of Apollo as well as a former Armstrong County Commissioner, and a onetime superintendent of Apollo-Ridge School District.
Ms. Ameno challenged him on some issues in high school when he was class president, Mr. Kerr said. “I felt no ill will. She just stood up for what she believed. Who can fault someone who stands by their principles?”
Growing up across the street from NUMEC, Ms. Ameno had an understanding of the history of the town, the people and the negative effects of the plant on
Apollo, Mr. Kerr said.
“There was a whole group of people who questioned what was going on,” he said.
The other side of NUMEC is it provided jobs and contributed to national defense by providing fuel for nuclear submarines during the Cold War, he said. “With industry, there always comes a price to pay, whether pollution or in this case, high rates of emissions that had an effect on health.”
After the military, Ms. Ameno returned to her hometown of Apollo and earned a bachelor’s degree in criminology from Indiana University of Pennsylvania in 1986.
Her father asked her to check out environmental issues at the nuclear fuels plant plunked down in the heart of the small town along the Kiski River.
Ms. Ameno spearheaded lawsuits taking on NUMEC’s successors because she and others believed there was a high rate of cancer in the area. She turned to Bill Silkwood, the father of the late Karen Silkwood, who worked at the Kerr-McGee plant in Oklahoma and died mysteriously in 1974.
Ms. Silkwood’s father led Ms. Ameno to Steven Wodka, of Little Silver, N.J., who previously worked for the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers’ Union and investigated Ms. Silkwood’s allegations of contamination issues at Kerr-McGee’s plutonium plant.
work for Fred Baron’s law firm in Texas, which pioneered mass tort litigation in asbestos. Mr. Baron represented Ms. Silkwood’s estate and filed a lawsuit against Kerr-McGee for her exposure to plutonium that eventually settled for $1.38 million.
Ms. Ameno called Mr. Wodka in 1992, and he visited Apollo. “I knew that this was something bigger than I could handle,” said Mr. Wodka, who took the case to Mr. Baron and worked with him on it.
“There is no question that you needed someone like Patty Ameno to pull those people together in that community and demonstrate there was definitely something wrong,” he said.
In 1998, a federal jury awarded plaintiffs in eight test cases $36.5 million for their cancers caused by radioactive emissions from the former NUMEC plant. Although that case was overturned, it paved the way for the settlement, Mr. Wodka said.
“There’s no question that it was precedent-setting. The whole thing wouldn’t have happened if not for Patty.”
While working on the lawsuit for residents, Ms. Ameno also pushed for the cleanup of NUMEC’s nuclear waste dump, known as the Shallow Land Disposal
Area, in Parks Township, Armstrong County.
After the federal Nuclear Regulatory Agency agreed to the company’s plan to leave the waste there, Ms. Ameno petitioned the late U.S. Rep. John Murtha, D-Johnstown, to dig up the nuclear waste and ship it off-site.
The dump contains waste from NUMEC’s Apollo plant including Uranium-235, plutonium and other dangerous contaminants buried in shallow trenches.
Given that the half-life of U-235 is 700 million years, according to the CDC, Ms. Ameno wanted the materials removed for future health and safety.
Mr. Murtha moved the project to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in 2002, under the Formerly Utilized Sites Remedial Action Program, which handles contamination from the nation’s early atomic energy program.
“Patty took on battles that appeared to be impossible and won them,” said Diane D’Arrigo, radioactive waste project director for the Nuclear Information and Resource Service in Takoma Park, Md.
“She had more and better information than the NRC about the nuclear sites in her community — in Apollo and Parks Township,” Ms. D’Arrigo said. “Patty was a powerful presence and a completely inspiring dynamo.”