Fernald Preserve Wildflowers

I took a lovely tour of a former uranium processing facility (for those not familiar with the stuff, uranium is essential for nuclear weapons). Weird, right? Who would want to tour that? The Sierra Club, actually.

The Fernald Preserve in Hamilton Ohio is located on the former Feed Materials Production Center that produced high-purity uranium metals for the creation of nuclear weapons. They were active from 1951 to 1989. Now, at a cost of $4.4 billion to clean up the radiation, they are a wildlife sanctuary. The visitor's center was amazing. I could have spent hours in there reading the history of the facility and the life of the people that lived nearby and worked in the plant. The exhibits tell the site's story starting with the Native Americans, then the settlers and the farmers, through to the government acquisition of the land and construction of the facility, up until today, finishing with the clean up process and the restoration to its natural environment.

Our visit included a walk on some of the trails, highlighting the wildflowers, wetland areas, and prairie grasses. We were told that the site has been cleaned up to EPA's standards for its intended purpose, which means clean enough for nature, not clean enough for residence... yikes! Well, the birds don't mind. I read in one of their brochures that over two hundred species of birds have been observed there, and nearly one hundred different species have been documented as nesting there.

Definitely worth a visit is you are a history buff or a birder and are in the areas. http://www.lm.doe.gov/fernald/Sites.aspx