Corps clean-up: Soil being trucked to Luckey site

By Press Staff Writer
Remediation work at the former Brush Beryllium site near Luckey continues with crews starting last week to transport soil from Perrysburg to the site.
Up to 40 dump truck loads per day are being transported to the site, according to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which expects this portion of the remediation to continue through the end of the summer.
The soil is being used to backfill four trenches where approximately 50,650 cubic yards of soil contaminated with beryllium, radium-226, thorium-230, and uranium-238 have been removed and transported off-site for disposal.
Under its Former Utilized Sites Remedial Action Program, the corps has identified the contaminated soil as needing to be removed.
In a May 5 press release, the corps said that as of April, it has excavated and disposed of 193,362 tons of contaminated material from the site. The clean-up of the site is about 75 percent complete and the fourth phase excavation area is about 53 percent complete.
The preferred route for the dump trucks – as stipulated by the Wood County Engineer’s Office – will have the trucks travelling northwest on Fremont Pike Road, south on Lime City Road, west on Dowling Road, southeast on McCutcheonville Road, and east on Middleton Pike Road, before entering the site. The portion of Luckey Road leading to the site will be cleaned with a street sweeper regularly to lessen the spread of dust.
The U.S. Department of Energy determined in 1992 the site was eligible for being cleaned up through the FUSRAP after finding it had residual radioactivity, beryllium and lead contamination.
The site was used to process beryllium in the early 1950s and the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission sent about 1,000 tons of radioactive scrap metal there for processing magnesium. Although it was never used, the scrap was stored on site. Records also indicate that beryllium scrap – some radioactive - from other AEC operations was sent to Luckey for reprocessing.
In 1959, the AEC contracted with Brush Beryllium Co. to close the facility. Two years later, the site was purchased by Aluminum and Magnesium, Inc. and in 1968 Goodyear Tire and Rubber Co. bought the site.
In 1987, the property was transferred to Motor Wheel Corp. Former Motor Wheel executives bought the site and formed Uretech International, Inc. in 1995.
The Corps of Engineers completed a field investigation in March 2010 that included soil sampling and radiological and topographic surveys at the site. Additional groundwater monitoring wells were also installed.