A nonprofit with just three staff members has become a central player in turning the former Portsmouth uranium enrichment plant near Piketon into a hub for new industry, with more than 350 acres of federal land now transferred into local hands, according to the U.S. Department of Energy, reported by the Scioto Valley Guardian. The Southern Ohio Diversification Initiative, known as SODI, has received the land since its founding in 1998 — nearly 10 percent of the site’s footprint, according to the Department of Energy.
The transfers are part of a broader push to convert the Cold War-era gaseous diffusion plant into what federal officials are calling an American Energy Hub, anchored by more than $33 billion in planned investment, according to the Department of Energy. Earlier this year, SoftBank and AEP Ohio announced a public-private partnership to redevelop Department of Energy land, modernize energy infrastructure, and build advanced computing capacity in southern Ohio, according to the Department of Energy.
“The location of the Portsmouth Site was originally chosen for its secluded, rural nature and proximity to resources and infrastructure needed for industry,” Portsmouth Paducah Project Office Strategic Planner Greg Simonton said in a statement released by the Department of Energy. “These same features are an asset in reindustrialization as the site still contains infrastructure beneficial to industry. SODI has been key in recognizing and promoting the site to industry partners and creating interest in reindustrialization,” Simonton said in the Department of Energy statement.
SODI operates with a staff of three and a volunteer board of 15 local leaders who meet monthly, according to the Department of Energy release reported by the Scioto Valley Guardian. With help from Ohio University’s PORTSFuture program, the nonprofit built its recruitment plans around community feedback after uranium enrichment ended at the site, the release said.
“We have known since the site ended uranium enrichment that the desire of the community is for the site to be cleaned up and made available for new industry,” SODI Legal Counsel Kevin Shoemaker said in a statement released by the Department of Energy. “There were years of reaching out to developers to tell them about the benefits of building at the Portsmouth Site both for its valuable infrastructure and its capable workforce before it all started to come together. Now people are reaching out to us because the value of the site is well known,” Shoemaker said in the statement.
SODI Executive Director Steve Shepherd said the organization has invested millions across the four counties surrounding the site. “We have developed industrial parks, a GIS system, workforce training programs, a business incubator, and an entrepreneur loan fund to improve the quality of life for Jackson, Pike, Ross and Scioto counties through economic diversification, development of underutilized land and facilities on the Portsmouth Site, and continued support of local industry,” Shepherd said in a statement released by the Department of Energy.
According to the Department of Energy, SODI’s funding comes through two channels: asset recovery, in which surplus site material is donated, resold, or recycled locally, and property transfers, in which federal land is evaluated and, with board approval, sold to industry for reindustrialization. What happens next is more of that slow conversion — land evaluated, transferred, and marketed parcel by parcel — as cleanup and redevelopment proceed side by side at a site that employed generations of Scioto Valley workers and is now being positioned, in Simonton’s words in the Department of Energy statement, to create “new jobs for generations to come.”