Former Miamisburg, Ohio mayor and a founding member of the Energy Communities Alliance, Dick Church, has died at age 81, the advocacy group for Department of Energy localities said Friday.
Church “was a founding member that led the organization through transition and helped it grow from an idea into an organization that works for and assists municipalities around DOE sites,” Energy Communities Alliance (ECA) executive director Seth Kirshenberg said in a Friday press release.
Church was elected mayor in 1991 and retired at the end of 2019, the Dayton Daily News reported Friday. Church was Miamisburg’s new mayor when DOE first announced plans to close the Mound Laboratory Site, which then employed about 1,800 people. The DOE work at the site ended in 2003.
In 2010, following more than $1 billion of environmental remediation, the site was transferred to Miamisburg from DOE, Forbes reported in a 2018 feature on Church.
The Mound Site, located a mile from downtown Miamisburg, initially did Manhattan Project work on polonium-beryllium initiators used in early atomic weapons. It later branched into other types of nuclear and scientific research, according to DOE.
Church became a leading advocate for local governments adjacent to DOE nuclear properties and was active in issues such as environmental cleanup and reuse of former federal facilities, ECA said.
At the time of his death, Church was part-time administrator of the Mound Business Park, a 199-acre development site on the former DOE property.
“For over 15 years, Mayor Church visited Washington every six weeks to lobby for the clean-up of his community’s site and others across the nation,” Kirshenberg said.
