Success Stories

Following are a few examples of how ORSSAB helped make a difference regarding environmental cleanup of the DOE Oak Ridge Reservation.

FY 2007

Melton Valley Closure
For many years the Melton Valley burial grounds posed the highest risk at the Oak Ridge Reservation to human health and the environment. As a result of more than 50 years of operation, production, and research activities at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, a legacy of disposal sites, contaminated facilities, and areas of secondary contamination were spread over 160 acres of the watershed’s 1062 acres. In the 1950s the area was also used as the Atomic Energy Commission’s Southeastern Regional Burial Ground, where largely uncharacterized radioactive wastes from over 50 other federal facilities were disposed.

DOE’s cleanup project for the valley included a wide array of complicated and difficult activities, such as hydraulic isolation through installation of multilayer caps; removal, treatment, and disposal of retrievable transuranic waste; and in situ grouting.

In March 2007, DOE completed remedial actions in the valley, bringing the project to a close and ending a decade of involvement and oversight by ORSSAB.

Beginning in January 1998 with its “End Use Recommendation for the Disposal Areas in Melton Valley,” the board made 20 recommendations to DOE related to various aspects of Melton Valley cleanup. An inestimable number of hours were devoted by the board members in studying, debating, and writing recommendations on numerous issues related to the project and the acceptable end state for the area.

The remediation work was a huge undertaking that addressed 219 release sites over the course of six years at a cost of $360 million. It could have cost as much as $1.6 billion had all the waste been removed and shipped off site, but the board played an instrumental role in the decision to leave some relatively short-lived contamination in place in order to save taxpayers millions of dollars.

Independent Verification
In early 2007 the fruits of an ORSSAB recommendation began to be realized. Millions are being spent at the East Tennessee Technology Park (ETTP) to dismantle scores of old buildings and prepare the site for eventual use as a private industrial park. But how receptive will industry be to locating in an area where DOE generated a plethora of hazardous and radioactive waste materials? Will companies be willing to invest in a site without assurance that the land and any remaining buildings available for lease are free of contaminants?

One way to assuage such concerns is to conduct an independent verification that cleanup requirements have been met and that the land and buildings are safe to use.

ORSSAB investigated the need and use of independent verification at ETTP and crafted a recommendation to DOE to employ the process at the site. DOE accepted that recommendation and contracted the Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education to do the work. DOE has recently approved the institute’s statement of work, as well as funding of $234,000 per year for three years.

Many in the community feel that reindustrialization is the key to success at ETTP, and through ORSSAB initiative an important step is being taken to help achieve that success.

Stewardship
Long-term stewardship of contaminated areas of the Oak Ridge Reservation following cleanup has been an ORSSAB priority almost since the board’s inception in 1995. In FY 2007 the board generated three more recommendations in a long series of recommendations on the topic, continuing its commitment to assuring that future generations are protected through the actions taken by DOE today.

• In its “Recommendation on Notices of Contamination and Future Land Use Limitations in Melton Valley” the board codified a process it has been developing for some time. For the past two years the board’s Stewardship Committee has been working with DOE to plan and implement a process for filing Notices of Contamination and plat maps with the Anderson County Register of Deeds and Property Assessor’s office. This process will also be extended to Roane County and the city of Oak Ridge.

The “Notice of Contamination and Future Use Limitations, and Intent to Provide Notations on Ownership Record in Melton Valley” is an important element of this process. At DOE’s request, the committee reviewed the notice, prepared some general comments on it, and rewrote the notice language to ensure that it will be understandable to the general public.

The committee revised the notice into a form it felt was more ‘user friendly’ and recommended that DOE consider using the style and format of the committee’s revision. The recommendation also asked DOE to publish a condensed version of the notice in local newspapers that would also be easily understood by the public.

• In “Reaffirmation of DOE Secretarial Policy to Provide Stewardship at Ongoing Mission Sites with Residual Contamination” the board recommended that DOE establish a national policy for commitment to long-term stewardship. Since a number of remediation projects have been completed on the Oak Ridge Reservation, ORSSAB felt DOE should reaffirm its commitment to long-term stewardship at sites with ongoing missions that contain residual contamination, such as the Y-12 National Security Complex and Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

• In its “Recommendation on the ‘Draft Legacy Management Strategic Plan’” the board stated that the strategic plan had no guidance for ongoing mission sites with residual contamination and that DOE’s Office of Legacy Management should state clearly that if it had no responsibility for ongoing mission sites it should identify who does have responsibility for them.

Public Involvement Plan
Both the Comprehensive Environmental Restoration, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA) and the “Federal Facility Agreement for the Oak Ridge Reservation” require DOE Oak Ridge to publish a Public Involvement Plan. The plan is updated every three years. The purpose of the plan is to communicate to the public its opportunities for participation in the decision-making process regarding the remediation of contaminated areas on the Oak Ridge Reservation. As such, the plan is one of the most important documents to citizens that the Environmental Management program prepares.

In 2007 DOE began working on an update of the 2004 plan. ORSSAB supplied numerous comments and suggestions, which were incorporated into the final document. Because of the board’s involvement, important additions and changes were made to better serve the community. DOE said in its response to the recommendation: “Thanks to the board’s knowledgeable input, we believe the document has been greatly improved since its previous update three years ago.”

Remediation Effectiveness Report/CERCLA Five-Year Review
DOE is spending hundreds of millions of dollars in Oak Ridge each year cleaning up environmental contamination left from decades of nuclear enrichment and other activities. But how do you know it’s working?

The answers lie in an annual report and a rigorous review that occurs every five years. The annual report is the Remediation Effectiveness Report, and every five years it is expanded to include the Five-Year Review that’s required under CERCLA.

While the annual report evaluates if the remedy is working as planned, the Five-Year Review evaluates whether that chosen remedy is still effective and appropriate under today’s conditions. It also reevaluates the protectiveness of the cleanup decisions.

Because the Five-Year Review is so important, ORSSAB issued its “Recommendations on Logistics for a Public Meeting on the 2006 Remediation Effectiveness Report and CERCLA Five-Year Review” in November 2006. The board made several general recommendations about conducting the meeting, as well as specific recommendations concerning the agenda and publicity. A primary suggestion was to use an ORSSAB monthly meeting as a forum for the public meeting.

DOE agreed and set the date for May 9, 2007. About 50 people attended the meeting, which gave local stakeholders an important forum to express their views on both the Remediation Effectiveness Report and the CERCLA Five-Year Review.

Oral History Initiative
In spring 2007, ORSSAB formed a subcommittee to explore the possibility of facilitating an oral history program for the Oak Ridge Reservation. This history contains invaluable information to the Environmental Management program when determining the scope and the data necessary to approach areas of the reservation requiring remediation or in determining if an area does not require remediation.

About 275 oral history interviews have been conducted to date with Oak Ridge scientists, engineers, community leaders, and residents, but there is no central location housing all of the existing tapes, and no mechanism exists to manage an active oral history program in terms of cataloguing and transcribing tapes, identifying and interviewing people, and providing access to material to researchers and other interested parties.

The subcommittee has begun looking into funding options and how other DOE sites similar to Oak Ridge have conducted or are conducting oral history programs. In addition, the subcommittee organized a workshop that will bring together many groups and individuals interested in preserving Oak Ridge history. The workshop, which was scheduled for October 11, 2007, was intended to help resolve several issues, including:
• What is the definition of an oral history?
• What are sources of funding?
• Should all oral histories be housed at one location along with the transcripts and other relevant files?
• Should a “permanent” administrative group/advisory committee be formed to oversee the oral history program, and if so, who?
• What existing regulations/legislative acts control or influence an oral history program?
• Who are the individuals who need to be interviewed in the near future?
• What format of the end product will be most desired and easy to access?
• What organization will handle transcribing oral histories that have not yet been transcribed?

ORSSAB’s work on the oral histories program is an important step in bringing cohesion to the various interests in the community on an issue of importance not only to the public but to the DOE Environmental Management program as well.

Uranium Hexafluoride Cylinders
During gaseous diffusion activities at the K-25 Site (now known as ETTP), depleted uranium hexafluoride was packaged in approximately 7,000 cylinders and placed in six outdoor storage yards. After diffusion activities at K-25 were shut down in 1987, the condition of the cylinders deteriorated, posing a potential threat of release of radioactive and toxic contaminants to the environment and a risk to onsite workers and offsite public. In addition, surveillance and maintenance of the cylinders contributed heavily to K 25’s already significant landlord costs.

Since 2001 ORSSAB had expressed concern about the condition of the cylinders, making their expedited removal from the site a priority. When DOE’s Accelerated Closure Program was put in place at the Oak Ridge Reservation, the board weighed in with its “Recommendation Concerning the Depleted Uranium Hexafluoride Disposition Program at ETTP” in July 2003, and again in January 2004 with its “Comments on the Draft Environmental Impact Statements for Depleted Uranium Hexafluoride Conversion Facilities.”

The board’s goals were finally met in December 2006 when the acres of cylinder storage yards were finally emptied. Almost 5,000 separate shipments of cylinders were required to transfer the cylinders to DOE’s Portsmouth, Ohio, site where a uranium hexafluoride conversion facility is being constructed.
 

FY 2006

ORSSAB Presented with Prestigious National EPA Award

In June 2006 ORSSAB and its Stewardship Committee were presented with the Citizens Excellence in Community Involvement Award. The national honor is given annually by EPA to recognize an individual or community group for outstanding achievement in the field of environmental protection. The award was presented at EPA’s 2006 Community Involvement Conference in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

The award recognizes two major achievements by the ORSSAB Stewardship Committee between October 2004 and September 2005.

The first achievement was development of the Stewardship Education Resource Kit, which was created to provide local educators with materials to teach students about environmental cleanup and long-term stewardship issues (see “Teacher’s Workshop” story).

The second achievement focuses on maintaining information about contaminated land. In 2004 the Stewardship Committee worked with Anderson County to test a system where plat maps of contaminated land would be placed in the county geographical information system. The test was successful, so in 2005 the board recommended that DOE standardize its language for land with notices of contamination so they could be easily found by anyone doing land searches in the county land records. DOE adopted the recommendation and is standardizing its language when filing notices of contamination with Anderson County. The county also sends the same information to the City of Oak Ridge. A similar effort is underway for Roane County.

ORSSAB Hosts Teacher’s Workshop on the Stewardship Education Resource Kit

In February 2006 ORSSAB sponsored a two-day workshop on how to use the board’s Stewardship Education Resource Kit in the classroom. The event was attended by twenty-four ecology and environmental science teachers representing public and private high schools in Knox and Anderson counties.

The kit, which was completed in March 2005, contains lesson plans, videos, a fictional case study based on actual cleanup operations, an appendix of supporting materials, and a video CD on the background and use of the kit.

During the workshop, held February 9 and 11, ORSSAB members and facilitators from the University of Tennessee explained how to use each lesson, showed videos included with the kit, and demonstrated the use of support materials and related Internet sites. The teachers participated in group activities and listened to a panel discussion on stewardship that included representatives from ORSSAB, DOE, and the state of Tennessee.

Kit materials are available on the ORSSAB website at www.oakridge.doe.gov/ em/ssab/stewardship-kit/kit.htm. Organizations that have an interest in stewardship and the environment may request a version of the kit.
 

Stewardship Education Resource Kit

FY 2004

Student Summary of ORR Stakeholder Report on Stewardship
ORSSAB published the second volume of its two-volume “ORR Stakeholder Report on Stewardship” in 1999. As time passed, though, it became apparent that the report was too detailed for some audiences—notably the high school students the board was trying to reach through its public outreach program.