Correction — Ann Breslin, project manager for the Strube Inc. environmental cleanup project, is employed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Her place of employment was misidentified in the article below, posted on LancasterOnline Saturday.

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Radioactive materials that were stored for decades in warehouses in four Lancaster County municipalities have been removed, state officials said Friday.

The removal of about 400,000 World War II aircraft instruments containing radium, mercury and other hazardous materials was completed in December, said Ann Breslin of the state Department of Environmental Protection.

They had been stored in eight warehouses owned by Marietta-based Strube Inc. in Columbia, Marietta, Maytown and Mount Joy. Strube describes itself on its Web site as "a privately held, multifaceted aircraft instrument sales, overhaul, and repair; manufacturing; and research and development organization."

The cost of the cleanup to DEP was about $3.8 million. Breslin, project manager for the cleanup, said the agency will "try to cost-recover" as much as possible based in part on "ability to pay."

"It's not our job to put businesses out of business," she said. "We try to work with them."

The cleanup began in earnest last January, when Strube informed the government that it had the materials. Strube was responding to a new state law aimed at identifying institutions other than nuclear power plants that possessed radioactive materials.

Strube employees began sifting through warehouses, only to be dismayed when about a dozen EPA workers descended on the company in October 2007 to speed up the process. The agency cited fears of large-scale contamination in the event of fire or an act of terrorism. The agency and the company eventually worked out their differences.

"We have a pretty good working relationship with them now," Breslin said. "It's been a learning process for both of us. But they've been very cooperative in doing their portion of the cleanup."

In the warehouses, shelves were stacked with boxes with "probably about 400,000" items such as airplane altimeters, gyroscopes and similar gauges. There also were radium dots painted on screws, washers, light bulbs, countertops, "you name it," Breslin said.

Through the 1940s, many items, including aircraft dials and gauges and even wristwatch dials, were painted with glow-in-the-dark paint so they could be read at night. The paint contained low levels of radioactive materials.

"Think about flying over the South Pacific at night and needing to see something," Breslin said.

She said the instruments stored in the warehouse posed no hazard to neighbors.

"As long as there was no fire, it was fine," she said.

The removed items were placed in drums that are being taken to Tennessee and compacted until "they look like hockey pucks," Breslin said. The "pucks" will then be placed in 80-gallon storage units and sent to a landfill in Hanford, Wash.

"The radiation will decay away, so it is not a hazard to anybody," Breslin said.

The founder of Strube, now deceased, began purchasing large quantities of surplus military aircraft parts soon after World War II.

E-mail: lalexander@lnpnews.com