As part of the continuing cleanup at the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant in Piketon, LATA/Parallax Portsmouth has demolished three unused buildings.

The buildings were an environmental monitoring station, an environmental storage building and a waste oil storage building.

“This represents an important project,” said project manager Paul Kreitz. “The removal of these facilities will mean a reduction in long-term surveillance and maintenance costs for the Department of Energy.”

The DOE owns the plant and leases it to the United States Enrichment Corp. LATA/Parallax Portsmouth is a DOE contractor that is cleaning the site of waste materials. It took over cleanup operations from Bechtel-Jacobs in 2004. The LATA/Parallax contract runs through September 2009.

Two more buildings, a fire training building and the liquid effluent control building are scheduled for demolition next month.

All five buildings had been abandoned for several years and were no longer needed. They were built in the 1980s and were not historically significant, according to the Ohio Historic Preservation Office.

The environmental monitoring station was small masonry block building on the east side of the plant.

The environmental storage building was a temporary steel building and was used for general and soil sample storage. It was later used as an air monitoring station.

The waste oil storage building housed 55-gallon drums of waste solvents and oils. The DOE closed it under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act in the mid-1990s. The Ohio Environmental Protection Agency officially accepted the closure in 1998.

It was the largest of the three buildings which have been demolished.

The shipment of all debris from the buildings is expected to be completed by the end of the month.

JEFF BARRON can be reached at (740) 353-3101, ext. 236.