Here is what we know.
A foreign-owned corporation — majority Australian, with Canadian partners — has been handed 665 acres of public Kentucky wildlife land to build a uranium enrichment facility adjacent to one of the most contaminated Superfund sites in the country.
They received a federal contract. A federal grant. And an incentive package from McCracken County — whose terms our own Judge Executive refuses to disclose, because he signed a nondisclosure agreement with a foreign corporation before anyone in this community knew what was being negotiated.
McCracken County citizens never voted on any of it.
Here is what we don't know.
Here is what the land already carries.
How much of our public money has been committed to this project. What form that commitment takes. How long it lasts. What happens to our county if the company fails to deliver — or simply leaves.
We don't know, because the deal was made in secret.
The DOE left us a Superfund site with radioactive technetium-99 in the groundwater with a half-life of 200,000 years. PFAS contamination still migrating and not under control. PCBs in the creek tributaries that flow to the Ohio River. The federal government is spending $17 billion to clean it up. They won't finish until 2065.
Now a foreign corporation wants to build a uranium enrichment facility right next door — on land that was public wildlife property until last year — and the same contaminated federal site is being marketed to private developers for a data center and a nuclear reactor.
Here is what the math shows.
GLE's $1.76 billion "investment" is their cost of building a commercial enterprise that will generate profit for Australian and Canadian shareholders for decades. McCracken County doesn't receive that money. GLE profits from it.
What McCracken County actually receives: approximately $6.75 million in occupational tax over 15 years from the confirmed uranium enrichment jobs — before accounting for the tens of millions in tax exemptions, the $38 million in payroll tax intercepts, and whatever is hidden in the NDA.
For every dollar McCracken County receives, it pays out at least four. Probably eleven. Nobody knows for certain — because of the secret deal.
No independent environmental study
of what all of the combined projects
mean has been conducted.
No one has been required to do one.
Here is what we are asking.
Three things. All of them reasonable. None of them radical.
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An immediate moratorium on permits, site plan approvals, and development applications for this project until the public has answers.
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An independent, cumulative environmental and economic impact assessment of all current and proposed development on and adjacent to the Superfund site, funded by the applicants, not the county. A $20 billion company can afford to pay for the study that evaluates its own project's impact on our community.
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Full public disclosure of the nondisclosure agreement between McCracken County and GLE before any further approvals are granted.
A planning commission is a public body. It should not be approving any development whose financial terms have been proactively kept from the community by the very official elected to represent it.
This is not anti-development.
This is pro-Paducah.
We are not opposed to economic growth. We are opposed to secret deals, foreign profits, and public risk — on land that is still being cleaned up from the last time someone made promises here and didn't keep them.
Paducah has already paid for one nuclear promise. We are not prepared to pay for another.
Stand With Us
No secret deals. No permits without answers. No more nuclear and industrial development adjacent to an active Superfund site without an independent, cumulative environmental study. Sign below to add your name to the record.