QUEHANNA WILD AREA, Pa. -- The federal government will pay $7 million to clean up radioactivity fouling an abandoned manufacturing plant in northeast Clearfield County.
But there are no agreements about who will pick up the much larger tab to finish the job, demolish the building and, potentially, build a replacement plant for one of the remote region's major employers.
"This will get the bad stuff out of there," Ronald Ruman, spokesman for the state Department of Environmental Protection, said yesterday of the $7 million.
No timetable is set for the cleanup.
The contaminated building, deeded to the state four decades ago, was abandoned late last year by all but security workers. Its radioactivity is a legacy of the 1960s, when Martin-Marietta Corp., a federal defense contractor that did research there, was the tenant.
Martin-Marietta is gone now, but by DEP's reckoning, the federal government, as Martin-Marietta's employer, should pay the estimated $40 million for cleanup and related tasks.
The government, though, wanted to see if it could sue Martin-Marietta's successors or others to raise the money, a legal chase that DEP opposed, figuring it could take years.
With the release of the first $7 million, RedZone Robotics Inc. of Homestead can begin to clear out strontium-90 now confined to a sealed room. The job is so hazardous, it will be left to RedZone's robots, and save for the robots' operators, no other humans will be allowed in the plant.
But that money won't pay for later work, including demolition of the plant, removal of the contaminated remains or building a replacement plant.
For two decades, PermaGrain Inc. operated there, employing up to 100 people to make heavy-duty wood flooring. The job -- bonding acrylic to wood -- required a radioactive process far less potent than anything Martin-Marietta had used.
When PermaGrain folded at the end of last year, a southern Virginia competitor, Gammapar Inc., bought what remained of the company, with plans to put 55 people back to work in a pair of PermaGrain buildings several miles from the contaminated plant.
While other types of flooring can be made in one of the buildings, neither has facilities for the low-grade radioactive process used to turn out the acrylic-wood bond, a PermaGrain mainstay that was a big seller for high-traffic shopping malls and hotels.
For Gammapar to resume that production, it will need a new building, an estimated $8 million project that state officials promised four years ago would be built nearby. But the plan remains in limbo until government officials come up with more funds.
State Rep. Camille "Bud" George, D-Clearfield County, vowed last month that the replacement building will be built.
Ruman was less definite, saying yesterday that the replacement facility "is still one of the goals."
Tom Gibb can be reached at tgibb@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1601.
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