A federal magistrate judge in Ohio Thursday declined to force a resident near the Department of Energy’s Portsmouth Site to turn over information she collected over time with her own private air monitors.
That is according to an online notice of an order from U.S. Magistrate Judge Elizabeth Preston Deavers filed “without prejudice,” meaning it could conceivably be filed again by plaintiffs suing current and past DOE contractors at the Portsmouth Site in Pike County, Ohio.
As of Friday morning, the brief notice online did not yet include a full written order with any details on the magistrate’s decision.
Attorneys for lead plaintiff Ursula McGlone and several other residents living within 10 miles of the former uranium enrichment plant, asked the federal judge Monday to force Elizabeth Lamerson to share documents or information she has collected over time using her home’s air monitors that are similar to ones used by DOE.
The “motion to compel” filed Monday in U.S. District Court in the Southern District of Ohio said Lamerson, who holds an environmental biology degree from Ohio University, has not responded to repeated attempts from plaintiff lawyers for access information she collected on radioactive isotopes in air samples around her home.
“During this case, the attorneys for Plaintiffs have attempted to contact Ms. Lamerson on several occasions by telephone and email without success,” according to the filing. Then in July the lawyers representing the plaintiffs issued a subpoena for the information, which the attorneys say was previously provided to researchers for Northern Arizona University.
After Lamerson failed to comply with an August deadline to turn over the information, the plaintiffs followed up with a letter with a more threatening tone, saying noncompliance could lead to—“’you being forced to appear before a federal judge in Columbus and then being ordered under threat of detention to produce the documents in question. We wish to avoid this path,’” according to the document.
To date, “Lamerson has failed to produce the subpoenaed documents or communicate, in any way, with the attorneys for the Plaintiffs,” according to the motion to compel.
The case dates back to May 2019, not long after researchers from Northern Arizona University cited “hazardous levels” of enriched uranium inside the now-closed Zahns Corner Middle School in Piketon, Ohio. McGlone and the other plaintiffs accuse the current and former DOE contractors at Portsmouth for letting radioactive contamination escape outside the fence line and into the community surrounding the old gaseous diffusion plant.
