The emergency removal of thousands of World War II aircraft parts with radioactive radium paint from eight warehouses in Columbia, Marietta, Maytown and Mount Joy is now almost half complete.
Slightly more than $1 million has been spent so far to send 777 drums containing the waste owned by Marietta-based Strube Inc. to a federal nuclear-waste burial ground in Hanford, Wash. An eighth shipment is scheduled for today.
So far, all the material has come from three warehouses near residential areas in Columbia, the top priority for removal by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Two of the three warehouses have been emptied of the slightly radioactive material.
Strube Inc. is responsible for removing additional instruments containing mercury, a toxic substance, and decommissioning the warehouses once all material has been removed.
EPA has said that the public has not been exposed to any radiation and that radioactivity is low. But the material needs to be removed because a fire could possibly release radiation to the environment.
After the Columbia warehouses are cleaned, EPA says it will begin packaging and removing items in a warehouse in Mount Joy.
There are an estimated 70,000 dials with radium mixed in with some 58 million uninventoried components in the various warehouses, according to documents from Strube.
The founder of Strube, now dead, purchased large quantities of military surplus parts from the U.S. Department of Defense, beginning shortly after World War II.
The current owner, which has turned the business into an aircraft instrument and refurbishment contractor for clients, including the federal government, was required to remove the material.
Though Strube is paying for security and a fire watch on the warehouses, and other cleanup costs, the bulk of the $1.9 million cleanup is being funded through the federal Superfund program.
Will Strube have to repay any of the federal costs?
"Whenever we do a cleanup, the intent is always to do a cost inventory," said Roy Seneca, an EPA spokesman. "But the cost-recovery process is long," he said.
There is an issue of whether since the radioactive material was purchased from the federal government, whether the government shares some responsibility for removing it.
From the beginning, Strube Inc. officials have criticized the state Department of Environmental Protection for being overly heavy-handed and jeopardizing the company's existence.
"I can tell you the problem is it's very difficult to survive, if we can survive. The company is really teetering," Strube Inc. owner Craig Dallmeyer said this morning.
"We are going to cooperate with DEP and EPA and get this resolved in the most expedient and timely manner possible," Robert. B. Burns, Strube's attorney, said.
The cleanup, which began in March, is expected to take 12 to 18 months.
• Staff writer Ad Crable can be reached at
acrable@LNPnews.com or 481-6029.
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