A federal magistrate judge set an Aug. 4 discovery hearing in a lawsuit about alleged radioactive contamination by current and former contractors at the Department of Energy’s Portsmouth Site in Ohio.
The U.S. District Court for Southern Ohio’s Thursday action will help determine what documentation Ursula McGlone and other plaintiffs living within seven miles of the shuttered Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant can expect from Centrus Energy, Fluor-BWXT Portsmouth and the other federal contractors in the case.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Elizabeth Preston Deavers is handling most pre-trial motions for chief U.S. District Judge Algenon Marbley.
McGlone and other plaintiffs claim the Portsmouth Site contractors failed to keep contamination from spreading beyond the fence and reaching the campus of Zahn’s Corner Middle School, which closed in May 2019 after an analysis from Northern Arizona University found enriched uranium and neptunium-237 at the school.
In recent court filings, lawyers for the plaintiffs said the defendant companies have been reluctant to provide much documentation beyond their contracts.
The plaintiff attorneys say they are looking to find out the extent of off-site contamination, the cause, whether the contamination was preventable and what attempts the contractors made to avoid release of contaminants. The defendants say these discovery requests are too broad and should be more specific about the type of documents sought. Defense lawyers also say plaintiffs waited too long to file litigation against certain contractors.
The DOE has said the contaminants found at the middle school were far too little to pose any risk to human health. Nevertheless, the DOE has appointed a special liaison, Candice Robertson, a senior aide to deputy secretary of energy David Turk, to deal with Portsmouth stakeholders about contamination and ongoing demolition of the X-326 Process Building at Portsmouth.
