The Oak Ridge Reservation is situated in East Tennessee, in and adjacent to the city of Oak Ridge. The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) operates three sites on the reservation: the East Tennessee Technology Park (formerly the K-25 Site), Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and the Y-12 National Security Complex. The three sites are government-owned, contractor-operated facilities; under DOE guidance, private companies manage the day-to-day operations of the sites according to federal laws, DOE orders, and state laws and regulations.

Government-sponsored activities on the reservation date back to the Manhattan Project and continue to the current day. Both past and current activities involve hazardous chemicals and radioactive materials. The DOE requires that an annual report be published to describe the effect that these activities have on the reservation and its surroundings. Data for the report are gathered by effluent monitoring (collection and analysis of samples of various media prior to contaminant release) and environmental surveillance (sampling of various media to obtain direct measurements subsequent to contaminant release).

The Oak Ridge Reservation Annual Site Environmental Report (ASER) is published annually in three volumes.

• The ASER with its appendices is about 300 pages and presents many maps, figures, data summary tables, charts, and graphs and is an inclusive treatise on that year's environmental monitoring activities, including interpretation of results and how well we complied with federal, state, and local requirements.
• The small ASER Summary document (under 25 pages) is written with the help of high school students specifically for the general public. It presents discussions and summaries of the important activities for the year.
• The Data Volume is a large document that contains the "raw data" from which the ASER is generated. This document is useful only to those who analyze data and wish to do their own calculations. The Data Volume is also available on CD ROM.

The following ASER documents are currently available on the World Wide Web.

• DOE Albuquerque Office
• DOE Headquarters
• DOE Oak Ridge Operations
• East Tennessee Technology Park
• ORNL Environmental Sampling and Data Evaluation
• Oak Ridge National Laboratory
• Oak Ridge Reservation Environmental Monitoring Plan
• Y-12 National Security Complex

If you have any questions or comments about the ASER documents, or wish to provide review comments or suggestions for improvement, contact David Page, DOE-ORO, at pagedg@oro.doe.gov.