Camp Ross shuts down
Site near Fernald cause
of concern for Girl Scouts
By Kelly Lewis
The Cincinnati Enquirer
A 305-acre Girl Scout camp near the Fernald uranium processing plant in northwest Hamilton County has been closed because of Scout leaders’ environmental concerns.
The Great Rivers Girl
scout Council board of trustees told troop leaders they are closing Camp
Ross
Trails, located in adjacent
Butler County and about two miles from the Feed Materials Production Center
at Fernald.
“Government agencies haven’t been able to give us any assurances of the long-term environmental safety at Camp Ross Trails,” Barbara Bonifas, executive director of the council, said Wednesday.
Bonifas would not comment
on the uranium plant and would not specify what type of environmental
hazard the board was
concerned about.
She would say only that the board was concerned because “the citizens in the area are very concerned.”
Lisa Crawford, a spokeswoman for a group of area citizens called Fernald Residents for Environmental Safety and Health (FRESH), said the uranium plant warrants concern.
Feed materials spokesman Bob Walker said Wednesday, “We have absolutely no scientific evidence or other evidence that we would be a source of any environmental or health danger to Camp Ross Trails.”
The plant, managed by
Westinghouse Materials Co. of Ohio and owned by the U.S. Department of
Energy, processes radioactive
uranium metal for use in the government’s nuclear weapons program.
Vicky Dastillung, a Girl Scout troop leader and FRESH member, said troop leaders have been given vague explanations for the closing. “I’m hoping they’ll reconsider the decision,” she said.
Crawford said parents called her before the camp reopened last summer... “If I were a parent, I wouldn’t want my child to go there.”
Last year, leaks of cancer-causing uranium from Fernald increased compared with 1986 but still did not reach levels that threatened health, the Department of Energy reported in May.
The leaks into the air, water and soil around the plant included 1,694 pounds of uranium spilled in the Great Miami River, a 68% increase compared with 1986. But of 4,083 environmental samples taken from test wells, air monitors, fish and other sources, 95% were ... by the Department of Energy and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
(... Parts of this article are missing due to a blurred copy of the original article.)