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24 Groundwater pollution plumeAn estimated 5.9 billion gallons of groundwater are pollutedunder and near the plant. Map shows darker areas asheavier concentrations of trichloroethylene in atwo-pronged, roughly three-mile-long plume that expertssay likely has reached the Ohio River. The end of the plumeis denoted with question marks, indicating TCE is likelypresent but in lower concentrations. To remove the TCE,workers are heating the ground in the area of highestconcentration. As the pollutant vaporizes, it is drawn offand collected in tanks. TCE can cause nervous system andliver damage, among other medical problems.

Sources: US Department of Energy, Kentucky Division of Waste Manage-ment, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency

45isisisisisis Louisville

Area enlarged

PADUCAH, Ky.—The “moon suits”and radioactivitymonitors that workerswear while decontaminating long-idlebuildings speak to the dangers that re-main at the nuclear fuel factory outsidePaducah.

And theworries about radiation, tox-ic gases in old pipes and asbestos inbuilding materials extend beyond the

5.5-square-mile PaducahGaseousDiffu-sion Plant property.

“We all have health problems,” saidRonald Lamb, who lives twomiles fromtheplant,whichhasbeenon theU.S.En-vironmental Protection Agency’s Su-perfund list of most toxic places since1994. “That’s just part of living next to aplace like this.”

Yet, while a cleanup that began in1988 has made progress, buoyed by$79 million in 2009 economic stimulusfunds, that temporarymoney is running

out, and the U.S. Department of Energyiswarning that future budget cuts couldslow the project dramatically.

A 2019 deadline set eight years agofor the first phase of the massive reme-diationwill need to bepushedback to atleast 2032, the federal agency says —and asmany as 350 cleanupworkers arein jeopardy of layoffs this year.

That’s ahugedisappointment to resi-dents and state regulators, who say that

A protective suit is as much a tool of thetrade as a reciprocating saw for this cleanupworker at the Paducah Gaseous DiffusionPlant property.

PADUCAHCLEANUPWORK INJEOPARDY

By James Bruggersjbruggers@courier-journal.comThe Courier-Journal

Budget problems could slowprogress at nuclear fuel plant

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Before killing her three children and then fatal-ly shootingherself lastmonth,AmandaBennett ofAustin, Ind., posted comments on an Internet fo-rum about the breakup of hermarriage and its tollon her family.

ThepostingsonTopix.comattracteda stringofresponses, including several from people whoanonymously blasted her and accused her ofbringing the crisis on herself.

“Nowit’s time to take thepainaway,” she said inone posting. A final one, posted at 12:30 a.m. theday of the shootings, was apparently intended forher estranged husband, JohnBennett, saying, “yougot what you wanted no wife an (sic) no kids.”

Themessages, whichwere verified as AmandaBennett’s by Topix CEO Chris Tolles, might havegone unnoticed if it weren’t for the deaths. Butnow they have ramped up criticism of Topix, a so-cial networking website based in Palo Alto, Calif.,that iswildly popular inmany small towns, partic-ularly in Kentucky.

See TOPIX, A14, col. 1

Social network for smalltowns can be a harsh worldBy Grace Schneidergschneider@courier-journal.comThe Courier-Journal

S. Ind. deathsturn spotlighton Topix.com

For more than a decade, JoseMartin Cruz Del Porte says, heearned $10 an hour pouring con-crete for homebuilders in andaround Louisville.

But after an arrest in LaGrangeon misdemeanor harassment

charges that were later dropped,Del Porte, 40, was found to be inthe country illegally.

By June, he says, he had agreedtomoveback tohisnativeChiapas,Mexico.

Del Porte leaves behind an esti-mated 50,000workers inKentuckywho are here illegally, often earn-ing less than $10 an hour, clearingrestaurant tables, tending to race-

horses and other jobs that em-ployers say arehard to fill even in aweak economy.

And even in the midst of aneconomic downturn, employerssay they have little choice but tobring on immigrant workers whenfilling positions.

“All of us are in a position of

By Michael Hayman, The Courier-JournalYusleidy Perez-Gonzalez says Senate Bill 6has made her fearful, despite her legal status.

Illegal workers part of Ky. dilemmaMove to toughen immigration law targets key part of work forceBy Jere Downsjdowns@courier-journal.comThe Courier-Journal

See NEED, A17, col. 1

Editor’s note: Today TheCourier-Journal features thesixth of 12 Sunday storiesthat focus on Louisville-areaemployment.We’ll provide information onthe local job market and tipsto help workers find theirway. Also, the newspaper’semployment classifieds moveto the main news section onSundays and offer advicefrom experts at CareerBuilder.

SUNDAY PRINT EXCLUSIVE

JOBS FOR THE FUTURE PART 6 OF 12

See PUDUCAH, A8, col. 1

U.S. Department of Energy photo

Emilio Morenatti/Associated PressA woman reads a newspaper Saturday in Cairo’sTahrir Square, a focal point of the successfulupheaval. She and others search for answers aboutEgypt’s future. Some have been addressed by themilitary, but many others remain. A12

WHAT NOWFOR EGYPT?

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while workers have takenstop-gap steps to reducepol-lution threats, only a fullcleanup will protect peopleand the environment overthe long term.

The EPA has identifiednearly 50 serious contami-nants on or near the plant,includingpollutants that cancause liver, lung, thyroid andkidney damage, as well ascancer.

The short-term mea-sures, such as taking alimitednumber of people offtheirwaterwellsandpostingwarning signs near a pollut-ed stream, were never in-tendedtobeapermanentso-lution, said Ed Winner, whooversees the cleanup for theKentucky Division of WasteManagement.

“Problems deferred areproblems expanded — ex-panded in terms of impacton the environment, risk tothe public and costs to thetaxpayer,”Winner said. “As Iproject out in time, my cer-tainty that the public will beprotected drops significant-ly.”

Change in purposeUranium was enriched

for nuclear weapons at theplant from the early 1950suntil the mid-1960s, whenthe government decided ithad accumulated enoughmaterial for the weaponsprogram, said Reinhard M.Knerr, the Energy Depart-ment’s site leader at Padu-cah. In the late 1970s andearly1980s, theplantwasup-graded to produce a highergrade material for commer-cial reactors, he said.

Today, while the govern-ment owns the property, itleases operations in a largepart of the plant to UnitedStates Enrichment Corp.The cleanup is in inactiveparts of the plant.

While the company cancontinue to make fuel for aslong as it wants, it isn’t clearhow long it will. Its contractformassive amounts of elec-tricity from the TennesseeValley Authority expires inMay 2012. The company an-nounced in January that itwas taking steps to extendoperations beyond that, butcompany spokesman PaulJacobson also has said itsability to keep running de-pends on securing a benefi-cial deal. Some 1,100 com-pany jobs are at stake.

The cleanup at the Padu-cah plant began in 1988 afterradioactivity and other con-tamination was found in thedrinking water wells of resi-dences near the facility.

For years, residents, theEnergy Department andstate regulators fought overthe extent of the contamina-tion and what to do about it,reaching an accord in 1998.Kentucky and the EnergyDepartment followed withan “expedited” agreement in2003 that established the2019 cleanup deadline.

But with the nationaldebtbecomingan increasingfocus in Washington, Ken-tucky regulators have beentold that promised budgetincreases for the cleanup areunlikely for the foreseeablefuture.

The debt, which hastopped$14 trillion, “is a hugeissue for the country, andweare not going to be exempt,”saidWilliamE.Murphie, thePaducah project managerfor the Energy Department,during a recent tour of theplant.

Adding to the project’sbudget problems is the factthat a Uranium EnrichmentDecontamination and De-

commissioning Fund, creat-ed by Congress in 1992 tohelp pay for cleanups at Pa-ducah and two other sites,expired in 2007. That meansutilities have stopped payinginto it, leaving Congress tofill its coffers. The Paducahcleanup has received an av-erage of $107 million a yearfrom the fund since 2005.

Winner said flat federalfunding specifically threat-ens cleanup of radioactivewaste, oil and other pollutedmaterials that were dumpedin the ground decades agowith no environmental pro-

tection. Also slowed wouldbe the cleanup of two, three-mile-long groundwater pol-lution plumes that have like-ly reached the Ohio River,and the further decontami-nation and demolition ofsome other idle buildingsand facilities.

And the tighter budgetsalso might limit choices inthe future, officials acknowl-edged.

For example, the plantmight have asmuch as 4mil-lion cubic yards of contami-nated waste— enough to al-most fill the Louisiana Su-

perdome. Disposal optionsrange from putting it in apossible mountainous land-fill on plant property, to themore expensive choice ofshipping it out of state fordisposal.

Residents’ concernsThe reactions from near-

by residents range fromalarm to resignation.

“We are very concernedwe are going to lose all themomentum and all the pro-gresswe havemade over thelast couple of years,” saidRalph Young, a retired engi-neer and member of theplant’s community advisoryboard who lives in Paducah.“When you start going out20 more years from today,that’s, ‘Oh, my gosh.’ Youhate to pass this along toyour children and grandchil-dren.”

Lambsaidhe fears thede-lay will lead to more illnessamong people who live nearthe plant.

Although “you can’tprove anything,” he noted

that the government re-placed hiswells with treateddrinking water and haveposted warning signs nearthe creek that flows throughhis farm.

A former community ad-visory board member, Lambsaidmoredelays aren’t a sur-prise. “It can be expectedwhen youwaited too long toadmit your problems, andthen let the treasury dry up,”he said.

Others question whetherthe federal government hasspent money wisely on theproject. Energy Departmentofficials said they have spentabout $2.1 billion since 1988and are about 45 percentthrough their 2019 commit-ments.

“They have spent somuch money,” said MarkDonham, a southeastern Illi-nois resident who lives 16miles from the plant and is aformer advisory committeechairman. “(But) the biggestproblems are yet to be ad-dressed. I don’t know whatthe answer is, but I am notsure that throwing a bunchmore money is the answer.”

Donham said he’s espe-cially worried about con-taminated or radioactivedust blowing into neighbor-ing communities whenbuildings are demolished.

The Energy Depart-ment’s most recent annualreport for the site describesonly minimal pollution risksto the public. “There hasbeen a lot of progress in thelast several years,” Murphiesaid.

Even so, state officials saythey can understand thefrustration with the pace ofprogress. The project is somassive, and mountains ofpreliminary work needed tobe done, they said. In fact,the project’s documentshoused in Frankfort wouldfill a small moving van.

“It took years to charac-terize thecontaminationanddevelop remediation plans,”saidTonyHatton, directorofthe Kentucky Division ofWaste Management. “Nowwe’re starting to do thework.”

So far, that’s includeddemolition of an incineratorand smelter, removal of30,500 cubic yards of con-taminated scrap metal, de-contamination of two largebuildings, demolition of sev-eral small buildings, installa-tion of a system that heatsgroundwater to vaporizeand extract solvents, andcleaning drainage ditchesthat Winner said “were ma-jor flow paths for contami-nation leaving the site.”

Bulk of work awaitsStill, officials acknowl-

edge that most of the workliesaheadand that theremaybe more contamination theydon’t know about.

Among theworkyet tobedone:

!Decontamination anddemolition of hundreds ofstructures, including fourmassive buildings that covermore than 100 acres and arestill used by United StatesEnrichment Corp. Winnerhas described some asamong the largest buildingsin the world, and the EnergyDepartment said in 2007that their removal andclean-upwouldextend to2040.Of-ficials say the cost could beabout $8.9 billion.

!Stabilization, disposalor recycling of some 39,000,14-ton containers of deplet-ed uranium hexafluoridethat blanket 700 acres on thesite — a stockpile startedwhen the plant began opera-tion in 1952. That effort re-cently passed a milestonewith construction of a facto-ry that will extract an acidfor sale and prepare the ura-nium for disposal as low-lev-el radioactive waste. Thatwork has a price tag of$1.4 billion and may involvethree crewshifts,working 24hours a day for 25 years,Knerr said.

“There’s 50 years of ma-terial out there,” he said.

Murphie, the Energy De-partment project manager,asked for patience, and sug-gested that federal fundingmay still come through.

“The Earth isn’t comingto an end here,” he said. “Wecan’t predict what next yearwill bring. Congress may fixthis problem.”

Rep. Ed Whitfield, R-1stDistrict, said he wasn’taware that federal officialswere counting on spendingincreases this decade tomeet their commitments inPaducah.

“There is no easy answerto this,” he said, noting thatevery stepof the cleanuphas“taken much longer thananyone originally said itwould take. … There has al-waysbeenwhat I could call ashortage of funds.”

Robert Steurer, spokes-man for Sen. Mitch McCon-nell, the Senate Republicanleader, said his boss hashelped secure about$1.2 billion for the cleanupsince 2000 and believes “thefederal government has a re-sponsibility to the people ofMcCracken County.”

“Senator McConnell re-mains committed to ensur-ing DOE keeps its focus oncleaning up the facility,”Steurer said.

One option that McCon-nell and Whitfield are look-ing into is whether some ofthe depleted uranium couldbe reprocessed, raisingmoney for the governmentto help pay for cleanup. A2008 Government Account-abilityOffice report estimat-ed the value of depleted ura-nium at Paducah and a sisterfacility in Portsmouth, Ohio,at $7.6 billion, but it saidCongressmay need to pass alaw allowing its sale.

Sen.RandPaul,whocam-paigned for a balanced fed-eral budget in one year,which would require hun-dreds of billion dollarsworth of cuts, is calling forelimination of the EnergyDepartment, among otherfederal agencies. His pressoffice declined to answerquestionsabout the futureofthe Paducah plant cleanup.

Reporter James Bruggers can bereached at (502) 582-4645.

PADUCAH | Short-term pollution measures weren’t intended to be permanentContinued from A1

Photos by Michael Clevenger, The Courier-Journal“As I project out in time, my certainty that the public will be protected drops significantly,” said Ed Winner, who coordinates thecleanup of the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant for the Kentucky Division of Waste Management.

“It took years to characterize the contamination and developremediation plans,” said Tony Hatton, director of the KentuckyDivision of Waste Management, who is shown with files on thenuclear fuel factory. “Now we’re starting to do the work.”

Cleanup status at the plant

The Courier-JournalSource: Kentucky Division of Waste Management

Completed15 square miles and 11,000sampled locationsInterim capping on three burialareas22 inactive facilities(200,000 square feet)

36,000 cubic yards removed

2,700 cubic yards removed

Treated 2.5 billion gallons watertreated with 15 tons TCE removed33,500 tons removed600,000 cubic feet removed

RemainingContinues into future

Estimated 600,000 cubic yards ofburied materials under 72 acres2.6 to 4.0 million cubic yards ofbuilding materials

Remove contaminatedsediments from five to six miles ofcreeksRemove 100,000 to 200,000cubic yards of contaminated soils5.9 billion gallons contaminatedground waterCompleteOngoing as wastes are identified

IssueEnvironmentalmonitoringBuried waste

Decontamination anddemolition of buildings,industrial facilitiesContaminated creeks,ditches and other surfacewater.Contaminated soil

ContaminatedgroundwaterContaminated scrap metalOther waste

2,700 cubic yards removed Remove 100,000 to 200,000cubic yards of contaminated soils

Contaminated soil

PADUCAH PLANT!Only functioning uranium-enrichment facility in the U.S.with active operations.!Owned by U.S. Departmentof Energy; leased to UnitedStates Enrichment Corp.!Located on 3,400 acresabout 10 miles west of Paducah!Began operations in 1952!Has produced enricheduranium for military and com-mercial purposes. The enrichingprocess increases the proportionof uranium atoms that can be“split” by fission to releaseenergy — usually in the form ofheat — that can be used toproduce electricity.!Process can use as much as3,000 megawatts of electricity,enough to power more than 2million homes.

SAN FRANCISCO — Afemale Siberian tiger killedin a hail of police gunfireaftermauling aman to deathat the San Francisco Zoo onChristmas Day 2007 likelywas provoked into leapingand clawing out of its enclo-sure, a federal investigatorsaid in documents obtained

by The Associated Press.The tiger, namedTatiana,

killed 17-year-old CarlosSousa Jr. and injured hisfriends, brothers Paul andKulbir Dhaliwal, leavingclawmarks etched in the as-phalt and claw fragments inthe bushes outside its pen.

Claw marks were alsofound near the top of the en-closurewall, whichwas low-er than federal safety stan-dards dictate, showing that

the big cat was able to getenough leverage topull itselfout.

“It appears the tiger wasable to jump from the bot-tom of the dry moat to thetop of the wall and gainenough purchase over thetop to pull herself out overthe moat wall,” wrote LaurieGage, a tiger expert who in-vestigated the scene for theU.S. Department of Agricul-ture’s Animal and Plant

Health Inspection Service,which oversees the nation’szoos.

“With my knowledge oftigerbehavior Icannot imag-ine a tiger trying to jump outof its enclosure unless it wasprovoked,” Gage wrote intheDec. 27, 2007, draft of herreport.

That statement wasstricken from the final ver-sion of the report because itwas “irrelevant from an Ani-

mal Welfare Act enforce-ment standpoint,” said Da-vid Sacks, a spokesman forAPHIS.

Whether the tiger wasprovoked has long been apoint of contention.

After sitting with its preyfor a short time, Gage wrotethat Tatiana likely followedthe Dhaliwals’ blood trail forabout 300 yards to where itresumed attacks.

Photographs showblood-

smeared asphalt where thetiger apparently draggedSousa’s body.

“After a kill, I find it inter-esting the tigerwould leaveakill to go after somethingelse unless there were acompelling reason,” Gagewrote. “The tiger passed ex-hibits with warthogs, whichit ignored as it followed (theblood trail?) of the twobrothers to the Terrace Cafeoutside the dining area.”

Reports on ’07 zoo attack say tiger likely provokedBy Jason Dearenand Marcus WohlsenAssociated Press

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