Certain indoor close quarters work at the West Valley Demonstration Project remains on hold until infection rates in Western New York drop, a manager with the Jacobs-led contractor said Wednesday during an online meeting of the Citizen Task Force for the cleanup site.
The area of Western New York where the state-owned West Valley Demonstration Project is located has an infection rate of more than 300 coronavirus infections per 100,000 people, said Kelly Wooley, the deputy general manager at the site for CH2M-BWXT West Valley.
“That is considered a high-risk region,” Wooley said.
The rate probably needs to drop below 200 per 100,000 people before West Valley gets the go-ahead from the Department of Energy to resume some “close contact work” at the site, Wooley said.
The work was suspended in November 2020 and remains on hold so far in 2021. The tasks being delayed include removing contamination on the surface of concrete as part of decontamination at the Product Purification Cell-South and various other inside work, according to Wooley’s slide presentation.
West Valley is implementing additional COVID-19 precautions mandated by the Joe Biden administration, which includes double-masking in some interior areas and establishing an on-site indoor occupancy goal of 25% of the normal capacity during the pandemic, Wooley said.
The DOE and its contractor do not require that employees be vaccinated for COVID-19, although the workers are encouraged to do so, Wooley said. Emergency and first responders at Well Valley have been vaccinated. In the general workforce at West Valley, “a significant number have elected to get it,” Wooley said.
Wooley also praised two on-site rapid COVID testing clinics conducted by the Cattaraugus County, N.Y., Health Department during the winter 2020 holiday season. The testing sessions, one after Thanksgiving and another after Christmas, both attracted about 100 workers for testing, he said.
