Emergency crews complete drill at Parks Township nuclear waste site

Around a half dozen vehicles from the Parks Township Volunteer Fire Department and Vandergrift EMS drilled for a potential emergency at a nuclear waste dump on Wednesday.

Operated by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the 44-acre Parks Township site is entering what’s projected to be a yearslong remediation period.

Wednesday’s emergency drill was an effort to test various emergency protocols and train first responders at the site, according to Army Corps Project Manager Steve Vriesen.

“This is basically a rehearsal,” he said.

The emergency scenario involved first responders arriving at the scene of a hypothetical fire involving heavy equipment, Vriesen said. At the scene, he said crews would also practice aiding a worker with minor burns and another with a back injury.

The Nuclear Materials and Equipment Corp. (NUMEC) operated on the site in the 1960s and early ’70s, leaving behind enriched uranium and other harmful substances from the production of materials primarily for nuclear-powered submarines and power plant fuel.

Owned by BWX Technologies Inc., the site is now known as the Shallow Land Disposal Area by federal agencies.

Altogether, there’s about 33,000 cubic yards of materials in 10 trenches at the site.

The materials will be packed into containers and moved by truck to a facility in Wampum, Lawrence County, about 60 miles northwest of Parks Township. From there, they’ll be loaded onto a train and taken for permanent disposal in Utah.

Remediation is expected to take about seven years and cost more than a half-billion dollars. It will begin later this year.

Planning for cleanup of the site began in 2002, when the property was added to the federal Formerly Utilized Sites and Remedial Action Program (FUSRAP), which is aimed at cleaning up toxic sites that had been used by the federal government or companies working for the government.

The Army Corps has been holding public sessions to detail the project and answer questions. Residents have expressed concern that government contractors can do the work without harming the community.

The next public information session will be Wednesday, Nov. 5 at the Parks Township Fire Department, 1119 Dalmation Drive, Vandergrift. A time was not immediately released.