<DOC> [110th Congress House Hearings] [From the U.S. Government Printing Office via GPO Access] [DOCID: f:36143.wais] THE DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY'S SUPPORT FOR THE SAVANNAH RIVER ECOLOGY LABORATORY (SREL), PARTS I & II ======================================================================= JOINT HEARING BEFORE THE SUBCOMMITTEE ON INVESTIGATIONS AND OVERSIGHT AND THE SUBCOMMITTEE ON ENERGY AND ENVIRONMENT COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES ONE HUNDRED TENTH CONGRESS FIRST SESSION ---------- JULY 19, 2007 and AUGUST 1, 2007 ---------- Serial No. 110-45 and Serial No. 110-50 ---------- Printed for the use of the Committee on Science and Technology U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE 36-143 PDF WASHINGTON DC: 2008 --------------------------------------------------------------------- For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office Internet: bookstore.gpo.gov Phone: toll free (866)512-1800 DC area (202)512-1800 Fax: (202) 512-2250 Mail Stop SSOP, Washington, DC 20402-0001 ______ COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY HON. BART GORDON, Tennessee, Chairman JERRY F. COSTELLO, Illinois RALPH M. HALL, Texas EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON, Texas F. JAMES SENSENBRENNER JR., LYNN C. WOOLSEY, California Wisconsin MARK UDALL, Colorado LAMAR S. SMITH, Texas DAVID WU, Oregon DANA ROHRABACHER, California BRIAN BAIRD, Washington ROSCOE G. BARTLETT, Maryland BRAD MILLER, North Carolina VERNON J. EHLERS, Michigan DANIEL LIPINSKI, Illinois FRANK D. LUCAS, Oklahoma NICK LAMPSON, Texas JUDY BIGGERT, Illinois GABRIELLE GIFFORDS, Arizona W. TODD AKIN, Missouri JERRY MCNERNEY, California JO BONNER, Alabama PAUL KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania TOM FEENEY, Florida DARLENE HOOLEY, Oregon RANDY NEUGEBAUER, Texas STEVEN R. ROTHMAN, New Jersey BOB INGLIS, South Carolina MICHAEL M. HONDA, California DAVID G. REICHERT, Washington JIM MATHESON, Utah MICHAEL T. MCCAUL, Texas MIKE ROSS, Arkansas MARIO DIAZ-BALART, Florida BEN CHANDLER, Kentucky PHIL GINGREY, Georgia RUSS CARNAHAN, Missouri BRIAN P. BILBRAY, California CHARLIE MELANCON, Louisiana ADRIAN SMITH, Nebraska BARON P. HILL, Indiana VACANCY HARRY E. MITCHELL, Arizona CHARLES A. WILSON, Ohio ------ Subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight HON. BRAD MILLER, North Carolina, Chairman JERRY F. COSTELLO, Illinois F. JAMES SENSENBRENNER JR., EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON, Texas Wisconsin DARLENE HOOLEY, Oregon DANA ROHRABACHER, California STEVEN R. ROTHMAN, New Jersey TOM FEENEY, Florida BRIAN BAIRD, Washington MICHAEL T. MCCAUL, Texas BART GORDON, Tennessee RALPH M. HALL, Texas DAN PEARSON Subcommittee Staff Director EDITH HOLLEMAN Subcommittee Counsel JAMES PAUL Democratic Professional Staff Member DOUGLAS S. PASTERNAK Democratic Professional Staff Member KEN JACOBSON Democratic Professional Staff Member TOM HAMMOND Republican Professional Staff Member STACEY STEEP Research Assistant ------ Subcommittee on Energy and Environment HON. NICK LAMPSON, Texas, Chairman JERRY F. COSTELLO, Illinois BOB INGLIS, South Carolina LYNN C. WOOLSEY, California ROSCOE G. BARTLETT, Maryland DANIEL LIPINSKI, Illinois JUDY BIGGERT, Illinois GABRIELLE GIFFORDS, Arizona W. TODD AKIN, Missouri JERRY MCNERNEY, California RANDY NEUGEBAUER, Texas MARK UDALL, Colorado MICHAEL T. MCCAUL, Texas BRIAN BAIRD, Washington MARIO DIAZ-BALART, Florida PAUL KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania BART GORDON, Tennessee RALPH M. HALL, Texas JEAN FRUCI Democratic Staff Director CHRIS KING Democratic Professional Staff Member MICHELLE DALLAFIOR Democratic Professional Staff Member SHIMERE WILLIAMS Democratic Professional Staff Member ELAINE PAULIONIS PHELEN Democratic Professional Staff Member ADAM ROSENBERG Democratic Professional Staff Member ELIZABETH STACK Republican Professional Staff Member STACEY STEEP Research Assistant The Department of Energy's Support for the Savannah River Ecology Laboratory (SREL), Part I C O N T E N T S July 17, 2007 Page Witness List..................................................... 2 Hearing Charter.................................................. 3 Opening Statements Statement by Representative Brad Miller, Chairman, Subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight, Committee on Science and Technology, U.S. House of Representatives...................... 7 Written Statement............................................ 9 Statement by Representative Nick Lampson, Chairman, Subcommittee on Energy and Environment, Committee on Science and Technology, U.S. House of Representatives.................................. 10 Written Statement............................................ 11 Statement by Representative F. James Sensenbrenner, Jr., Ranking Minority Member, Subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight, Committee on Science and Technology, U.S. House of Representatives................................................ 12 Statement by Representative Bob Inglis, Ranking Minority Member, Subcommittee on Energy and Environment, Committee on Science and Technology, U.S. House of Representatives.................. 14 Written Statement............................................ 14 Prepared Statement by Representative Jerry F. Costello, Member, Subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight; Member, Subcommittee on Energy and Environment, Committee on Science and Technology, U.S. House of Representatives.................. 18 Prepared Statement by the Honorable J. Gresham Barrett, Third Congressional District of South Carolina, U.S. House of Representatives................................................ 19 Panel I: Hon. John Barrow, a Representative of the State of Georgia, 12th District Oral Statement............................................... 20 Written Statement............................................ 23 Panel II: Dr. Paul M. Bertsch, Former Director, Savannah River Ecology Laboratory, University of Georgia; Georgia Power Professor of Environmental and Soil Chemistry [NOT HEARD] Panel III: Dr. Jerald L. Schnoor, Professor, Civil and Environmental Engineering; Co-Director, Center for Global and Regional Environmental Research, University of Iowa Oral Statement............................................... 25 Written Statement............................................ 27 Biography.................................................... 83 Dr. F. Ward Whicker, Professor, Radiological Health Sciences, Colorado State University Oral Statement............................................... 84 Written Statement............................................ 86 Biography.................................................... 93 Discussion Private Contractors Vs. SREL................................... 93 National Environmental Research Parks.......................... 94 The Value of Long-term Ecological Research..................... 94 National Laboratories' Overhead Costs.......................... 95 Radiation Hormesis............................................. 97 Competitive Grants and Peer Review............................. 99 Environmental Remediation Research Done By SREL................ 100 Fate and Transport Studies..................................... 101 The Department of Energy's Support for the Savannah River Ecology Laboratory (SREL), Part II C O N T E N T S August 1, 2007 Page Witness List..................................................... 104 Hearing Charter.................................................. 105 Opening Statements Statement by Representative Brad Miller, Chairman, Subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight, Committee on Science and Technology, U.S. House of Representatives...................... 111 Written Statement............................................ 113 Statement by Representative Nick Lampson, Chairman, Subcommittee on Energy and Environment, Committee on Science and Technology, U.S. House of Representatives.................................. 114 Written Statement............................................ 115 Statement by Representative Ralph M. Hall, Ranking Minority Member, Committee on Science and Technology, U.S. House of Representatives................................................ 120 Written Statement............................................ 122 Statement by Representative F. James Sensenbrenner, Jr., Ranking Minority Member, Subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight, Committee on Science and Technology, U.S. House of Representatives................................................ 116 Written Statement............................................ 118 Statement by Representative Bob Inglis, Ranking Minority Member, Subcommittee on Energy and Environment, Committee on Science and Technology, U.S. House of Representatives.................. 118 Written Statement............................................ 120 Prepared Statement by Representative Jerry F. Costello, Member, Subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight; Member, Subcommittee on Energy and Environment, Committee on Science and Technology, U.S. House of Representatives.................. 126 Panel I: Mr. Clay Sell, Deputy Secretary of Energy, U.S. Department of Energy Oral Statement............................................... 127 Written Statement............................................ 129 Biography.................................................... 130 Discussion SREL Funding Sources for Fiscal Years 2006 and 2007............ 131 Details of the Cooperative Agreement........................... 133 Does the Department of Energy Award Noncompetitive Funding?.... 135 Mr. Sell's Role in the Cooperative Agreement................... 135 New Funding Criteria for SREL.................................. 136 DOE Support for SREL........................................... 137 Who Knew About SREL Funding Changes?........................... 140 Who Will Fill SREL's Role?..................................... 141 Documents Provided By SREL..................................... 142 SREL Budget.................................................... 144 Guaranteed Funding Sources..................................... 145 Article From the University of Georgia......................... 146 Competition for Tasks Performed By SREL........................ 147 Environmental Characterization Without SREL.................... 147 More on SREL Competition....................................... 148 Environmental Responsibility to Local Communities.............. 149 Budget Allocations............................................. 150 More on SREL Funding........................................... 151 May 20th Memo.................................................. 152 Government Versus the Private Sector........................... 152 Panel II: Dr. Paul M. Bertsch, Former Director, Savannah River Ecology Laboratory, University of Georgia; Georgia Power Professor of Environmental and Soil Chemistry Oral Statement............................................... 154 Written Statement............................................ 156 Biography.................................................... 161 Ms. Karen K. Patterson, Chair, Savannah River Citizens Advisory Board Oral Statement............................................... 162 Written Statement............................................ 163 Biography.................................................... 167 Discussion Conversation About Reduced DOE Funding......................... 168 Playing Mr. Allison for a Chump................................ 169 July 2005 Newsletter Quote..................................... 169 Competing in the Work Done for SREL............................ 170 Understanding SREL Funding From the DOE in 2007................ 170 University of Georgia SREL Funding............................. 171 Broadening SREL's Funding Base................................. 172 SRS Funding for SREL and Jill Sigal............................ 172 Savannah River Ecology Laboratory Long-term Funding............ 174 More on Broadening SREL's Funding Base......................... 176 Office of Science Grants....................................... 176 Ms. Sigal and Mr. Anderson..................................... 177 More on University of Georgia Funding.......................... 178 SRS Environmental Research..................................... 178 SREL Peer Review............................................... 179 Community Relationship With SRS Without SREL................... 179 More on Ms. Sigal and Mr. Anderson............................. 180 Credibility of For-profit Contractors Versus SREL.............. 180 Panel III: Mr. Charles E. Anderson, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary, Office of Environmental Management, U.S. Department of Energy Oral Statement............................................... 182 Written Statement............................................ 189 Biography.................................................... 190 Mr. Jeffrey M. Allison, Manager, U.S. Department of Energy-- Savannah River Operations Office Oral Statement............................................... 191 Written Statement............................................ 192 Biography.................................................... 193 Mr. Mark A. Gilbertson, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Engineering and Technology, Office of Environmental Management, U.S. Department of Energy Oral Statement............................................... 194 Written Statement............................................ 195 Biography.................................................... 195 Ms. Yvette T. Collazo, Assistant Manager for Closure Project, Savannah River Operations Office, U.S. Department of Energy Oral Statement............................................... 196 Written Statement............................................ 198 Biography.................................................... 199 Discussion 2005 SREL Cooperative Agreement................................ 199 Rejection of Tasks Submitted to the DOE........................ 201 Mr. Allison's Background With SREL and the DOE Agreements...... 202 Mr. Anderson's Involvement With the SREL Funding Issue......... 204 Dr. Bertsch and the Agreement.................................. 204 Mission Critical Work.......................................... 206 Amphibian Mutations............................................ 207 More on Mr. Anderson's Background.............................. 208 Nature of the Agreement........................................ 209 More on Ms. Sigal.............................................. 209 SREL Becoming Self-funded...................................... 210 General Background From Mr. Gilbertson......................... 210 More on Mr. Anderson........................................... 212 Future Projects in the Community............................... 213 Decision to Eliminate SREL's Budget............................ 214 Raising Money for SREL......................................... 216 Dr. Raymond L. Orbach, Under Secretary for Science, U.S. Department of Energy Oral Statement............................................... 217 Written Statement............................................ 218 Discussion Background on the Involvement of the Office of Science......... 219 Confidence in SREL............................................. 221 More on SREL Funding........................................... 221 Peer Review of SREL Tasks...................................... 221 SREL Competition............................................... 222 Office of Science Funding Process.............................. 223 Why Was SREL Funding Zeroed Out?............................... 223 Cutting Environmental Remediation Sciences Program Budget...... 224 How the Office of Science Provides Funding..................... 225 SREL Funding Decision.......................................... 226 Prioritizing Surface and Subsurface Contamination.............. 226 SRS Complying With Environmental Laws Without SREL............. 227 Congressional Funding for SREL................................. 228 More on Subsurface Versus Surface Contamination................ 229 Discussion..................................................... 230 Appendix: Additional Material for the Record Cooperative Agreement No. DE-FC09-07SR22506 for Operation of the Savannah River Ecology Laboratory (SREL) Program, December 1, 2006........................................................... 234 Material produced by Dr. Paul M. Bertsch, Former Director, Savannah River Ecology Laboratory, University of Georgia at the request of Jill Sigal, then-Assistant Secretary for Congressional and Intergovernmental Affairs, May 2005.......... 364 THE DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY'S SUPPORT FOR THE SAVANNAH RIVER ECOLOGY LABORATORY (SREL), PART I ---------- TUESDAY, JULY 17, 2007 House of Representatives, Subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight, Subcommittee on Energy and Environment, Committee on Science and Technology, Washington, DC. The Subcommittees met, pursuant to call, at 10:05 a.m., in Room 2318 of the Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Brad Miller and Honorable Nick Lampson [Chairman of the Subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight] presiding. <GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT> joint hearing charter SUBCOMMITTEE ON INVESTIGATIONS AND OVERSIGHT and the SUBCOMMITTEE ON ENERGY AND ENVIRONMENT COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES The Department of Energy's Support for the Savannah River Ecology Laboratory (SREL), Part I tuesday, july 17, 2007 10:00 a.m.-12:00 p.m. 2318 rayburn house office building Purpose: The purpose of the hearing is to examine the past and current work of the Savannah River Ecology Laboratory (SREL), its relationship to the Savannah River Site and the Communities bordering the Site, and the events leading to the Department of Energy's decision to withdraw funding for the laboratory in fiscal year 2007. Background: SREL was established in 1951 to track the ecological changes and environmental consequences of establishing nuclear weapons production facilities on the Savannah River Site (SR or SRS). It is unique within the DOE complex because it is the only lab that is not ``owned'' by DOE. Rather, the University of Georgia founded the lab and has always had a relationship with DOE that has allowed them to be present on the site and funded by the Department (and the Atomic Energy Commission before DOE was established). SREL has been a very productive scientific lab with a distinguished record of publication and an amazing amount of unbroken data sets on the ecology of the site. While the site itself was a center for weapons production and contains enormous amounts of waste, with ongoing waste processing that will stretch out for a generation or longer, it is also an enormous physical site--much of which includes pristine environmental conditions. Largely untouched by development, the Savannah River site hosts the most diverse and complex ecology in North America and contains all representative ecosystems of the southeastern U.S. Recognizing these unique features of the site, in 1972 the Atomic Energy Commission created the first National Environmental Research Park (NERP) located within the DOE complex at Savannah River. There are seven NERPs located at DOE sites around the country. SRS has 30 set- aside areas where no development of any kind is allowed to go forward. SREL has monitored the ecology in these set-asides ever since they were established. Another facet of the SREL work in the NERP is that they are a major way that the Savannah River Site carries out its ``stewardship'' responsibilities--to show to the Nation that they are caring for the site in a way that justifies their occupation of the land at these sites. The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) established environmental protection as a mission of all federal agencies. SREL has carried out this function through very successful public education programs to bring the public and students to the site and show them the unique qualities of the ecology there. SREL also collects data that is used by the site to demonstrate its compliance with a number of environmental laws. IF SREL does not provide these data as part of their base work, the site will have to hire a contractor to collect that information. The communities that border the site in Georgia and South Carolina and that are located downstream from the site also rely on the lab to be a trusted, independent voice that will tell them the truth about the nuclear wastes on the site, the remediation activities on the site, and the safety of being near or downstream from it. DOE Funding and Cooperative Agreement with SREL and University of Georgia: The Bush Administration's budget requests for SREL have varied considerably, but with a general downward trend since FY 2002. The first budget they composed, for FY 2002, included a 30 percent cut in the request for the lab by Environmental Management (EM). Then in FY 2003 and FY 2004, the lab's funding line was moved to the Office of Science accounts and did well (requests of around $8 million). In FY 2005 the budget request eliminated all funding for the lab. The Georgia and South Carolina delegations secured funds in the FY 2005 appropriation to reverse this decision. These delegations met with DOE and an agreement was made that the Administration would fund the lab at $4 million in FY 2006 with $1 million coming from Science and $3 million coming from DOE. It is with that deal that the path to closing the lab begins. What follows is largely based on the documentary record provided to the Subcommittees by the Department of Energy, SREL and the University of Georgia (UGA). Negotiations Begin on a New Cooperative Agreement--May 2005: SREL and UGA's existing cooperative agreement was to expire in July, 2006. In May 2005, the Department hosted a meeting involving then-Assistant Secretary for Congressional and Intergovernmental Affairs, Jill Sigal, other DOE staff, representatives from the University of Georgia and SREL, and representatives from the Georgia and South Carolina delegations. The Department did not want to face an ongoing string of appropriations earmarks and the delegations wanted some agreement that the lab would be supported. That meeting led to an agreement that in FY 2006 the Department would provide $4 million (plus some money from the National Nuclear Security Administration--NNSA) and in FY 2007 it would provide at least $1 million from EM accounts. There is disagreement about whether $1 million was a cap or a floor, but there was ample discussion at that meeting about the perceived need for the SRS to use SREL to further their mission. Director Bertsch said that as long as he could pursue money from the programs on the site in addition to EM funding he would be able to keep the lab going. Jill Sigal requested that Dr. Bertsch put together a plan to show how he would do that, and so the day after the meeting, Dr. Bertsch forwarded a business plan that included the work SREL would undertake that was needed by the site. He was never told the plan was unacceptable. In fact, a subsequent memorandum from the Principal Deputy for Environmental Management, Charlie Anderson, directed the SR site manager for DOE to negotiate a new five-year cooperative agreement. The memo drew extensively from Dr. Bertsch's business plan. The Director of the SRS, Jeff Allison, then informs Bertsch that he has been directed to negotiate a new cooperative agreement. Bertsch and Allison work on this for over a year. In March of 2006, even as negotiations continue, Mr. Allison tells Dr. Bertsch to budget for $4 million at SREL from SRS/EM in the FY 2007 budget. When they reach agreement on a new cooperative agreement, it provides for $4 million a year from 2007 through 2011 with a 2.5 percent escalator to allow for inflation. The agreement is sent up to DOE Headquarters for notification in August of 2006 and then again (due to an imperfection in the process) in September 2006. If Headquarters had approved it, Allison would have been authorized to sign the agreement. However, the agreement was never approved at Headquarters. The Cooperative Agreement is Not Approved and Negotiations Begin Again--September 2006 Instead negotiations are re-opened with new criteria for the cooperative agreement. Deputy Secretary, Clay Sell, was briefed and he determined--supposedly with the approval of the Secretary--that the new agreement would provide $1 million of guaranteed funding in FY 2007 plus additional funding on a task-by-task basis. The initial reaction from SREL was that this offer would lead to the closure of the lab, but the SR Site Director, Jeff Allison, assured SREL their work was needed by the site and he would fund their tasks using funds the site Director has discretion over to award for site- based projects. DOE Headquarters was aware of the assurance provided by Mr. Allison to SREL. SREL then enters into negotiations once again to secure a new cooperative agreement. From September 2006 through November 2006, Dr. Bertsch was working with SRS assistant managers to identify the projects the site would fund to meet $3 million in identified needs. At the same time, DOE Headquarters officials were scrutinizing the language of the cooperative agreement. Headquarters was insisting on highlighting language that emphasized funds were subject to ``need, merit and availability of funds.'' They also included a provision that any funds could be subject to a ``technical peer review.'' Bertsch believed this would be the kind of review his programs had been through many times in the past--where evaluators look at the sweep, mix and quality of science being done by the lab. However, DOE had something else in mind that was not made clear to the lab until months after the agreement was signed on December 1, 2006. New Funding Criteria are Established by Headquarters and Funding is Denied--February 2007 In January of this year, Dr. Bertsch and SREL believed they had a new cooperative agreement that made them financially stable. The site Director repeatedly assured SRS that they needed the SREL's work and he had the money to fund it (his budget for FY 2007 had $4.1 million identified for SREL). However, in February, DOE Headquarters announced there would be a task-by-task peer review process for all of the items that SREL has proposed. The standard for this ``peer review'' was established by Headquarters--tasks must be deemed ``mission critical in FY 2007.'' As it turns out, almost nothing meets this standard at Environmental Management. EM's primary mission is clean-up. Establishing a metric for a project that requires progress on clean up within six months--because by April or May of 2007, the fiscal year is half-over--ensures that no projects done by a research lab will meet the criteria. On May 7, SREL is informed that only $800,000 of its proposed $3 million in work would be funded. This process was led by Headquarters in the sense that HQ invented the review process and established the standard. The site was left to carry out the directions of Headquarters. The Department asserts they were living up to the terms of the cooperative agreement of providing $1 million plus projects deemed to be ``needed.'' The Department also embarks on a campaign of lies and distortions that can be tracked in the letters sent to Mr. Barrow and to the Subcommittee Chairmen. DOE portrays the lab management as having been lazy for not seeking out more non-DOE funding and the University as neglectful of management at the lab. There are rumblings that EM may ask for an IG audit of the books at SREL. As to whether the lab closes or not, the Department says that is entirely up to the University and the Department has nothing to do with that--as if their funding decision and prior promises were irrelevant to the situation at the lab. Subcommittees of the Committee on Science Begin Their Investigation-- May 2007 The Subcommittees sent a letter to DOE within 10 days of Dr. Bertsch receiving notice that funding was not to be continued. The University of Georgia announced it was extending lab personnel's salaries through the end of June--even though DOE money would run out at the end of May. The University decided not to formally close the lab, but 40 people had their last day at the lab on June 29--some who had been there over 20 years. Approximately 30-40 more are being moved back to the University campus in Athens, GA in one capacity or another. The remaining 30-40 will stay on site to carry out work funded through grants already in place from other agencies. The future of the lab and the long-term data sets it maintains is unclear unless DOE restores funding for its work. Without that core funding, the lab cannot continue to operate. Dr. Bertsch was asked to resign by the University at the request of the Secretary of Energy, Mr. Bodman. Bertsch's ten- year run as Director ended because it appears the Department resented efforts by SREL to explain to the Congress and the public that they were on the edge of being closed. Witnesses: Panel I Representative John Barrow (GA) represents the Georgia communities that border the Savannah River Site. Panel II Dr. Paul Bertsch is the former Director of the Savannah River Ecology Laboratory. Dr. Bertsch is a fact witness to every major action regarding this lab from May 2005 until his forced departure in June 2007. Panel III Dr. Jerry Schnoor, University of Iowa, is an expert in sub-surface science and engineering. He is Editor of the Journal of Environmental Science and Technology and a member of the National Academy of Engineering. Dr. Schnoor will testify to the quality of the work done at SREL on remediation and sub-surface fate and transport of pollutants. Dr. Ward Whicker, Colorado State University, is a radio-biologist and the winner of the Department of Energy's prestigious Lawrence Prize. He has done research on the Savannah River site and is very familiar with the importance of SREL's research to the wider scientific community and to State regulators. Dr. Whicker will also discuss the importance of the surface science work involving animal populations on the site done by the lab. Chairman Miller. Good morning. This hearing will come to order. This is a hearing of both the Subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight and the Subcommittee on Energy and Environment of the Science and Technology Committee. We will have another hearing that is a joint hearing of the two Subcommittees on Thursday of this week. Today's hearing is entitled The Department of Energy's Support for the Savannah River Ecology Laboratory, Part I. An enormous amount of effort has gone into undermining support for a very small but very important independent laboratory. The Savannah River Ecology Lab, housed at the Savannah River Nuclear Site since 1931, and run by the University of Georgia, has an impressive record of scientific contributions to environmental sciences. Headquarters staff the Department of Energy, right up to the former head of Congressional and Intergovernmental Affairs, the current Deputy Secretary, and the Secretary himself, have all played a role in trying to eliminate funding from the Department of Energy for the lab. The overall budget of the Department of Energy is $26 billion. The total funding for the laboratory has been about $4 million. I certainly don't want to say that $4 million is too little an amount for the Executive Branch to sweat. We certainly want them to be concerned about amounts of that size, but to give you a benchmark or a point of comparison, a few weeks ago we heard that the Administrator of NASA spoke to the Inspector General's staff and told them not to bother with investigations except investigations into fraud and only investigations in fraud that would result in savings of at least a billion dollars. Less of that just wasn't worth the trouble. So it is curious that the Department of Energy, with a $26 billion a year budget, has spent so much attention on an independent lab that receives about $4 million a year in funding. And why, the question becomes, why? The question could also be asked by this committee. Why are we holding this hearing, and it is Part I. There will be further hearings on this laboratory, and the reason for our interest is that we care that, although the lab is small, the amount being expended is small relative to the federal budget, the scientific importance of the lab has been enormous. It has certainly been enormous in the work that they do in radiation measurements and detecting the effect of radiation at a time when we are worried about a dirty bomb as the most likely form of a terrorist attack. It is certainly important when we are looking at almost certainly relying more on nuclear energy in the near future than we have. The importance of a lab that does ecological research into the effect of radiation is very important. Scientific research has been the core mission of the lab for most of its 51 years. It is hard to put a price tag on the value of the lab's research. The lab has contributed to the mission of the Department of Energy on the site in very direct ways. The documents that we will enter into the record today and the story of the former Director, Dr. Paul Bertsch, will tell, the story they will tell will make it abundantly clear that the Department managers at the site value the lab for all of its contributions. And the lab does play an essential role in the Savannah River Site's need to meet environmental regulatory compliance requirements. Compliance requirements of the actual Environmental Policy Act, the Endangered Species Act, the Comprehensive Environmental Response Compensation Liability Act, the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, and the lab has also helped the Savannah River Site, a national environmental research park, through public education and tour efforts. The lab conducts environmental outreach programs that, for the Department of Energy, give the site more credibility in the eyes of folks in the community around the site because it is independent, and they think they can trust what the lab has to say. In all those ways and more, the lab is essential to the functioning of the Savannah River Site, and certainly appears to be worth every bit of the $4 million dollars the Department of Energy has spent on it in the recent past. But the folks at the Department of Energy's headquarters believe differently. They thought that the best face to put on the conduct for the Department of Energy over the last several months has been that they directed the local site manager, Jeff Allison, and his staff to negotiate with the lab in bad faith to change the rules, to change the purposes, to change the objectives frequently and to leave the lab dangling without funding to continue. They never told the lab exactly what was happening, but they stepped in. The headquarters, DOE headquarters, stepped in to guarantee the lab would not receive the resources necessary to keep it operating. Headquarters' actions left the University of Georgia halfway through a fiscal year to figure out whether to close the lab or let it limp along to fill out remaining federal grants from other agencies. And the Department washed its hands of the outcome and misrepresented everything they have done to anyone who has asked--the public, the press, and Congress. These conclusions are not based on hearsay. They are not based on speculation. They are based upon a review of the documents of the Department's own materials, and many of those materials are being made public today, and public scrutiny for the Department of Energy's conduct with respect to the Savannah River Lab is long overdue. Just as an example, the tasks that the Department of Energy asked the lab to submit in February went through what was called a technical peer review. Among other places in a letter to Representative Barrow and a statement from a Department of Energy spokesman that was prominently placed in local news, supposedly went through scientific peer reviews. But no peer review of any kind ever occurred. The Department of Energy staff now concedes that. A different kind of review was done at the behest of the headquarters, one that seems unprecedented and invented solely for the occasion and solely to produce the outcome of closing the lab. The headquarters instructed the site to evaluate each task on whether it met a mission-critical need in 2007, this year. No one at the lab knew what that meant, and most of the research that they have done over their 51 years has been long-term research, not research designed to bring an immediate result. And it appears the Department of Energy meant by that only research done to do immediate cleanup, and no other research performed at the lab was worth funding. The process appears to be designed to reach a result and, the result was to close the lab. No science lab in the country does research that pays dividends in the next six months. That is just not what science is about. A handful of people at headquarters really eviscerated the lab, a lab that is internationally renowned for work that has saved the taxpayers millions, maybe billions of dollars, and the question is, why? Why have they worked so hard to close a lab that has received $4 million a year? Is it really about the $4 million? We will hear from the Department at our next hearing. Mr. Clay Sell has agreed to appear. He agreed to appear today, but his schedule and personal circumstances have made that impossible, so we will hear from him at a later date. I know there are some folks from the Department of Energy here today observing the hearing. We welcome you, and we hope that we do receive all the documents that we have requested in time to review them thoroughly before Mr. Sell does testify. And we look forward to hearing the Department to explain their side of events. I would now like to recognize Mr. Nick Lampson, distinguished Chairman of the Energy and Environment Subcommittee. [The prepared statement of Chairman Miller follows:] Prepared Statement of Chairman Brad Miller An enormous amount of effort has gone into undercutting the support for a very small, but very important lab. The Savannah River Ecology Lab, housed on the Savannah River nuclear site since 1951 and run by the University of Georgia, has an unparalleled record of scientific contributions to the environmental sciences. Headquarters staff at the Department of Energy, right up to the former head of Congressional and Intergovernmental Affairs, the current Deputy Secretary and the Secretary himself, have all played a role in trying to eliminate funding from the Department for the lab. Why would any of these figures spend even one minute worrying about a $4 million a year lab when they have to manage a $26 billion a year enterprise? The question could just as easily be put to the Committee: why do we care about the loss of such a small lab? The answer is easy: We care because while the dollar impact of the lab is small, the scientific importance of the lab has been enormous. Scientific research, and that was the core mission of the lab for most of its fifty-one years, is not about a return on an investment today but about giving us understanding that will guide our actions tomorrow. It is hard to put a price tag on such knowledge. The lab certainly contributed to the mission of the Department of Energy and the site in very direct ways. The documents we will enter into the record today, and the story that the former Director, Dr. Paul Bertsch, will tell makes it abundantly clear that the Departmental managers at the site valued the lab for all its contributions. The lab plays an essential role in the Savannah River site's need to meet environmental regulatory compliance requirements under the National Environmental Policy Act, the Endangered Species Act, the Comprehensive Environmental Response Compensation and Liability Act, and the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act. The lab also has helped manage the SRS National Environmental Research Park through public education and tour efforts. The lab conducts environmental outreach programs for DOE that give the site more credibility in the eyes of the local communities because the lab is seen as being independent of the Department. In all these ways and more, the lab was essential to the functioning of the site--or at least it was so viewed by site management. And, all of that for $4 million dollars a year. These conclusions are not based on hearsay or speculation, but a careful review of the Department's own materials. Many of those materials are being made public today and public scrutiny is long overdue. Just as an example, the tasks that DOE asked the lab to submit in February went through a ``technical peer review.'' In other places, including a letter to Representative Barrow and a statement from a DOE spokesperson that was prominently placed in the local press, the tasks supposedly went through scientific peer reviews. No peer review of any kind ever occurred--DOE staff admitted that to Subcommittee staff in a meeting some weeks ago. A different kind of review was done at the behest of headquarters-- one that seems unprecedented and invented solely for the situation. Headquarters instructed the site to evaluate each task to see if it met a ``mission critical'' need in 2007. No one at the site knew what that meant. In the environmental management offices that invented the standard, ``mission critical'' meant one thing--does it clean up waste right now, today, or not? If work doesn't do that, then the work is not worth funding. It is a process designed to give one outcome and one outcome only. No science lab in the country does research that pays dividends in the next six months. That is just not what science is about. A handful of people at headquarters gutted a lab that is internationally renowned for work that has saved the taxpayer millions, maybe billions of dollars. One question eludes us: Why? It is hard to believe that the effort to close the lab is really about $4 million. We look forward to Departmental witnesses joining us at a later date. Mr. Clay Sell had agreed to appear today, but personal circumstances have pulled him away. We are working to find another date before the recess where we can have the Department in to explain their conduct and their letters to the Subcommittees and the Congress. Now, I would like to recognize Mr. Lampson, the distinguished Chairman of the Energy and Environment Subcommittee. Chairman Lampson. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Chairman Miller. I think it is excellent that our Committee on Energy and Environment joins the Subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight for this very important hearing. I certainly concur with all of the things that you have said here today and certainly we are here to attempt to solve a mystery, a mystery involving the Savannah River Ecology Laboratory, SREL, a laboratory associated with the University of Georgia and located on the Department of Energy's Savannah River Site. What is SREL? It is a laboratory whose work has saved the taxpayers millions of dollars in remediation costs. A laboratory that has the confidence of the local communities in South Carolina and Georgia adjacent to the Savannah River Site, and the enthusiastic support of the Citizens Advisory Council associated with the site. A laboratory that has been in existence since the 1950's when the Savannah River Site was established. It was founded by one of the Nation's foremost and imminent ecologists, Dr. Eugene Odum, and it is maintained invaluable continuous long-term data sets on important animals and plants. This laboratory in conjunction with the University of Georgia has trained hundreds of environmental scientists and has run popular and successful public education and outreach programs on the Savannah River Site. SREL has also assisted the site in its efforts to comply with federal and State environmental laws. It also manages one of the seven National Environmental Research Parks in a network of ecologically important sites that exist on DOE property across the country. The Savannah River Ecology Laboratory has provided these services to the taxpayers of this country at a cost of less than $10 million a year. Well, this is a record of achievement that any organization would be proud of and certainly one that deserves recognition. And what is their reward for those 50 years plus of service? Well, they have certainly been recognized by the DOE headquarters. They have been, unfortunately, rewarded with a loss of funding in the middle of the fiscal year leading to layoffs and essentially the closure of the laboratory, a move that places the ongoing research and the continuity of long- term data sets in grave jeopardy. Bad faith bargaining in the renewal of a cooperative agreement with their federal partner, the Department of Energy, and the dismissal of the laboratory's director, apparently by personal request of the Secretary of Energy to the President of the University of Georgia. I simply do not know what to make of it. I feel as if I am in the middle of Wonderland with Alice. The callous treatment of the employees of SREL is disgraceful. Beyond the hardship inflicted on them by the sudden and unexpected job loss, this decision is absurd. It is not in the interest of the people of South Carolina and Georgia, the Savannah River Site, the Department of Energy, or the rest of this nation. And we have witnesses with us today who will be able to begin to tell us about this laboratory, its history, and its work. Dr. Paul Bertsch, the former Director of the lab, will be able to tell us about the events of the past few years that have brought us here today. We will hear from the Department of Energy at another hearing, but I am not confident that we will ever fully understand why the headquarters of the Department of Energy has spent a great deal of time and effort to close a world-class laboratory with an excellent record of service to the Department, to the Nation, and to the local community. I believe the ultimate reasons for this absurd and ill-advised decision may be and continue to be a mystery that will not be able to solve. Hopefully, though, we will reverse this decision and restore this laboratory so that it may continue its good work. And I yield back the balance of my time, Mr. Chairman. [The prepared statement of Chairman Lampson follows:] Prepared Statement of Chairman Nick Lampson We are here today to try to solve a mystery involving the Savannah River Ecology Laboratory (SREL)--a laboratory associated with the University of Georgia and located on the Department of Energy's Savannah River Site. What is SREL? Well it is a laboratory whose work has saved the taxpayers millions of dollars in remediation cost. A laboratory that has the confidence of the local communities in South Carolina and Georgia adjacent to the Savannah River Site and the enthusiastic support of the Citizens Advisory Council associated with the site. A laboratory that has been in existence since the 1950's when the Savannah River Site was established. It was founded by one of our nation's most eminent ecologists--Dr. Eugene Odum--and it has maintained invaluable continuous long-term data sets on important animals and plants. This laboratory in conjunction with the University of Georgia has trained hundreds of environmental scientists and has run popular and successful public education and outreach programs on the Savannah River Site. SREL has also assisted the Site in its efforts to comply with federal and State environmental laws. It also manages one of the seven National Environmental Research Parks in a network of ecologically important sites that exist on DOE property across the country. The Savannah River Ecology Laboratory has provided these services to the taxpayer at a cost of less than $10 million dollars per year. Well, this is a record of achievement that any organization would be proud of, and certainly one that deserves recognition. And what is their reward for these 50 years of service? Well they have certainly been recognized by DOE Headquarters. They have been rewarded with a loss of funding in the middle of the fiscal year leading to layoffs and essentially the closure of the laboratory--a move that places the ongoing research and the continuity of long-term data sets in grave jeopardy; bad faith bargaining in the renewal of a cooperative agreement with their federal partner--the Department of Energy; and the dismissal of the laboratory's Director--apparently by personal request of the Secretary of Energy to the President of the University of Georgia. I simply do not know what to make of this. I feel as if I am in the middle of Wonderland with Alice. The callous treatment of the employees of SREL is disgraceful. Beyond the hardship inflicted on them by the sudden, unexpected job loss--this decision is absurd. It is not in the interest of the people of South Carolina and Georgia, the Savannah River Site, the Department of Energy, or the rest of the Nation. We have witnesses with us today who will be able to tell us about this laboratory, its history and it work. Dr. Paul Bertsch, the former Director of the laboratory, will be able to tell us about the events of the past few years that have brought us here today. We will hear from the Department of Energy at another hearing, but I am not confident that we will ever fully understand why the Headquarters of the Department of Energy has spent a great deal of time and effort to close a world-class laboratory with an excellent record of service to the Department, to the Nation, and to the local community. I believe the ultimate reasons for this absurd and ill- advised decision may be a mystery we will not be able to solve. Hopefully, we will reverse this decision and restore this laboratory so that it may continue its good work. Chairman Miller. Thank you, Mr. Lampson. The Chair now recognizes Mr. Sensenbrenner for an opening statement. Mr. Sensenbrenner. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I had a prepared opening statement that I was prepared to read into the record, but after hearing both the distinguished Chair from North Carolina and the other distinguished Chair from Texas, let me state that I am really disturbed that what appears to be a piece of bad faith on one side is being reciprocated with another piece of bad faith right here on the other side of the aisle. The Deputy Secretary of the Department of Energy had to leave town for a funeral. We can't help those kinds of things. Sometimes we have to leave town for funerals as well, whether it is a family member or a very close, personal friend, or a mentor or something like that. And there was a request that was made at the Majority staff to postpone this hearing until Mr. Sell could come on back to be able to testify on behalf of the Department of Energy on why the decisions were made. The Majority rejected that request, and I think that that in and of itself was unfair. Now, after hearing both Mr. Miller and Mr. Lampson's opening statement I think the purpose of the hearing is now clear. It is not to investigation the contributions of SREL, something that all of the witnesses that are here can testify to, and I think which is not at the heart of the controversy. The purpose of this hearing is to attack the Department of Energy, and specifically Deputy Secretary Clay Sell, which isn't able to be here to be able to defend itself. Now, I have heard from the other side of the aisle that we are going to go to the expense of having a second hearing where Mr. Sell will come on in and testify some time later on. That is not really necessary, and I think the purpose of having an investigation is to be able to hear both sides of the argument. Now, the argument I don't think is the contributions that SREL has made over the years. That really is not the issue. The issue is a disconnect between the Department of Energy people who were on site at SREL and the headquarters office of the Department of Energy that apparently made the decision to discontinue the funding. And the attack that I have heard from both of the distinguished Chairmen can't fairly take place when DOE can't be here to defend itself. The witness did have to leave Washington to go to a funeral, and it simply is not fair for this hearing to proceed without DOE being able to be present. You know, I come to these hearings like this with an open mind, but when there is a procedural overreach, and there clearly is a procedural overreach in the case of this instance because of Mr. Sell's necessity to go to a funeral, I would ask the two distinguished Chairs to postpone this hearing so that we can hear about all these issues at one hearing. And if you don't do so, I think that shows that you folks are hell bent to hang DOE in a time when DOE cannot be there to defend itself. And I yield back the balance of my time. Chairman Lampson. May I interrupt one second? Mr. Sensenbrenner. I yield to the Chairman. Chairman Lampson. And ask that---- Chairman Miller. Well, and Mr. Sensenbrenner, I certainly agree that funerals of family members or close family friends or close friends is something we should respect, but what you just said I am advised by our staff is not correct. The Department of Energy did not request that the hearing itself be postponed, only that Mr. Sell be excused from appearing today. Mr. Sensenbrenner. Well, I am requesting, reclaiming my time. I am requesting that the hearing be postponed because I think that to use kind of a tried phrase that we hear on one television network, we ought to be fair and balanced. And we can't be fair and balanced because Mr. Sell is attending a funeral. If you want to be unfair and unbalanced, go ahead. I think we ought to be fair and balanced, and when I held investigative hearings, I always had people on both sides testify, and if they couldn't come, we rescheduled the hearing so that everybody could see exactly what the issues were, starting with the Committee Members. Chairman Miller. Well, Mr. Sensenbrenner, you were not part of the telephone conversations that I was part of with the Department of Energy, and if you were under the impression that they were eager to have Mr. Sell come and appear before this committee, my experience is no, that that is not the case. Mr. Sensenbrenner. Well, reclaiming my time, of course, when we are investigating them they are not eager to have somebody appear before the Committee. My point is we ought to listen to both sides, and by going ahead with this hearing, you are not going to listen to both sides. Chairman Miller. My immediate concern is the convenience of several witnesses who have come to Washington today. Mr. Lampson, you wish to be recognized as well. Chairman Lampson. Well, and that is the point. Mr. Sensenbrenner. Well, it is my time, and I yield to the gentleman from Texas. Chairman Lampson. Thank you, Mr. Sensenbrenner. I, too, was concerned about the folks that had already been scheduled. I just wanted to ask of whom we had heard or to whom the statements from the Department of Energy were directed so that we could know about the request for postponement. And it is going to be only a postponement. We will have Mr. Sell here on August the 1st. Mr. Sensenbrenner. Reclaiming my time, this all goes to show that because the Majority wants to attack the Department of Energy, I guess we are going to have two hearings to attack the Department of Energy when we could very easily have done it with one and have both sides speak and have both sides on the witness stand at the same time and Members of the Committee can ask questions to actually get to the bottom of this. From everything I know the problem is DOE headquarters. It is not the DOE personnel that is down at SREL, and the only way we are able to get DOE headquarters to be able to testify knowledgeably is to have Mr. Sell here. I have made my point. It is now up to the Majority to decide whether we are going to have a fair and balanced hearing or not, and I see my time is up. Chairman Miller. Thank you, Mr. Sensenbrenner. Mr. Inglis. Mr. Inglis. Mr. Chairman, I do recognize the significance of Mr. Sensenbrenner's questions. I think they are well placed before this committee, before the Chairs to--the hearing goes forward. It is, I think, important to get to the bottom of these things. I wish that we were having a balanced hearing here, and it is important to find out what is going on. For more than 50 years the Savannah River Ecology Lab at the University of Georgia has been a helpful resource as I understand it to the Savannah River Site. Savannah River Ecology Lab's research projects and educational outreach activities help Savannah River Site understand the ecological impacts of the site's operations. Today we will hear from several witnesses, not as many as we would like to hear from, who will attest to the usefulness of the lab's projects, both to SRS and to the surrounding community. And they will assert the need to continue funding these programs. I look forward to hearing their testimony. I also look forward to hearing what the Department of Energy has to say, and I yield back the balance of my time. [The prepared statement of Mr. Inglis follows:] Prepared Statement of Representative Bob Inglis Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for holding this joint hearing. For more than 50 years, the Savannah River Ecology Lab (SREL) at the University of Georgia has been a helpful resource to the Savannah River Site (SRS). SREL's research projects and educational outreach activities help SRS understand the ecological impacts of the site's operations. Today, we'll hear from several witnesses who will attest to the usefulness of SREL's research projects to both SRS and the surrounding community, and the need to continue funding these programs. I look forward to hearing their testimony. Thank you again, Mr. Chairman, and I yield back the balance of my time. Chairman Miller. Well, again, Mr. Sensenbrenner said it is for the Majority to decide. I would like to take a quick recess for Mr. Sensenbrenner to discuss this matter on the Minority side and with the Minority staff, because, again, my understanding of what has happened is different from what Mr. Sensenbrenner just said. I am not accusing Mr. Sensenbrenner of misrepresenting the facts. I think perhaps our understanding is different. And I would like to take a brief recess, and I also would like to inquire quickly, and we are looking at a really long hearing if we try to do everything in one day. The hearing in less than two weeks is three panels of the Department of Energy, and this is today three panels if we count Representative Barrow. We, I have a long line of questioning prepared to go to Mr. Barrow's credibility as a witness, but my staff has advised me that is probably not appropriate. But for the other Members who are, the other witnesses who are here, I know it was not convenient to come to Washington. It would not be convenient to come back a second time, but what is your availability on August 1? Because I would rather have this hearing be about the decision and the conduct of the Department of Energy, not about procedural fairness. What is your availability? How inconvenienced will you be? I know you are all sitting on the front row. Could you, those who are set to testify in later panels today. Mr. Bertsch, what is your availability on August 1? I am sorry. What? Okay. Dr. Whicker. Dr. Schnoor. I yield to Mr. Hall. Mr. Hall. Chairman, I appreciate your efforts to approach fairness here, and there would be opening statements that I would ask permission to give in a little bit and name other people that probably ought to be here that were really a part of the line there---- Chairman Miller. Again, Mr. Hall, there will be a hearing with three panels on August 1. Three panels all from the Department of Energy on August 1. Mr. Hall. Well, I think there are at least maybe three other people from the Department of Energy that were either--or those that, under his direction that have some information that the Chair would value, and Members of this panel in arriving at your decision. Chairman Miller. The reason, again, Mr. Sell was scheduled to testify today. It is his schedule, and I am---- Mr. Hall. Yeah, and I recognize that. Chairman Miller.--sympathetic to his need to attend the funeral of someone close to him, but Mr. Sell was more than politely invited. Mr. Hall. I don't question that, and these gentlemen have indicated that they could come back. Chairman Miller. Well, actually, the two witnesses who will testify to the value of the research at the lab, I mean, I assume the Department of Energy, if they wish to tell their side of the story, it has to, with the negotiations with the lab about funding. And for that Dr. Bertsch has said that he believed he could come back. But it would, but the two scientists who are familiar with the work of the lab have traveled some distance to be here, and we have heard one of them say that he would have to interrupt a family vacation to come back on August 1. Mr. Hall. I don't like to do that. Chairman Miller. Well, I wouldn't like to do that either. Mr. Sensenbrenner, if Mr. Bertsch comes back and that the testimony be, and I am not terribly concerned about Mr. Barrow's schedule. I believe he is probably going to be in Washington regardless, but the two scientific witnesses could testify today, and we could hold Mr. Bertsch to testify on August 1. It would be a long day of hearings. Mr. Sensenbrenner. If the Chairman would yield---- Chairman Miller. I do yield. Mr. Sensenbrenner.I don't think the issue is the scientific value of what has been done at SREL. I can stipulate to the fact that the scientific value is there. The issue is why the DOE headquarters had a different view of the DOE personnel that were on site, and that is what we ought to be investigating. Now, you know, I would ask unanimous consent that the witness's prepared statements at today's hearings be included in the record, and if, you know, we want to get to the bottom of this, I think we ought to be looking into what went on at DOE headquarters on this. You know, I guess, you know, my point is, is that when Dr. Sell, you know, could not appear because of the necessity of him attending the funeral, there should have been sensitivity on the part of the Majority staff to reach a decision on whether to go ahead with this hearing before the witnesses ended up leaving wherever they were to come to Washington, D.C. You know, I certainly don't want to inconvenience them, but I do want to make sure, you know, that we have a fair and balanced hearing. I thank the Chair for yielding. Chairman Miller. All right. If Dr. Bertsch can come back on August 1, I believe that the contested, the factual issues, contested, disputed factual issues all have to do with Dr. Bertsch's testimony. Mr. Sensenbrenner. That is true. Chairman Miller. Not with the testimony of Dr. Schnoor and Dr. Whicker, who will testify to the value of the scientific research done at this laboratory. Chairman Lampson. Mr. Chairman, may I be recognized---- Chairman Miller. Mr. Lampson. Chairman Lampson.--for a request? Can we take a five-minute recess and discuss this? Chairman Miller. We can take a five-minute recess. The Subcommittees will be in recess for five minutes. [Recess.] Chairman Miller. We are back in order. The first I had heard from anyone from the Minority, from the Minority Members, from Minority staff, from the Department of Energy, that there was any complaint at all about this hearing going forward was Mr. Sensenbrenner's opening statement. I am not hard to find. I have found Mr. Sensenbrenner on the Floor to discuss matters before this committee. I have tried to consult with him. I think that is the way to proceed in a collegial fashion, as cooperatively as we can. His locker is across from mine in the House gym. We see each other. We talk. The first I have heard of any objection at all to today's hearing was in the opening statement. Now, Dr. Bertsch has said that he can come back. Dr. Bertsch, your testimony is very important. We need you back. I believe that the only factually-contested issues pertain to your testimony, Dr. Bertsch, and we will take that up on August 1. The Department of Energy, it was my personal experience, not just what I heard through staff but my personal experience is the Department of Energy has been less than cheerful in dealing with this issue. We need your documents, we need all that we have requested. We don't need them in dribbles and drafts. We need the rest of what we have requested, and we need them well before August 1 so our staff has a chance to review them thoroughly so that everyone, the Minority, is prepared to ask questions of Dr. Bertsch, we are prepared to ask questions of the Department of Energy, everyone is prepared for the next hearing. But Dr. Bertsch's panel today will be postponed until August 1, which will be a long day. I also encourage the Minority Members to talk to the Minority staff, because my understanding, again, of what has happened with respect to this hearing is very different from what has been represented here. Mr. Sensenbrenner. Will the gentleman yield? Chairman Miller. I will yield in a moment. And it is the first that I have heard the Department of Energy objected in any way with going forward with this hearing as scheduled today. We will go forward on August 1. There will be four panels, three that we have already scheduled, the representatives of the Department of Energy and Dr. Bertsch. And we will hear the factual discussion of what happened, how the decision was made. Today we will hear from Representative Barrow, and we will hear from the two scientific witnesses who can testify to the value of this lab's work. Now, I now yield to Mr. Sensenbrenner. Mr. Sensenbrenner. Well, let me say that it is not my intent to further inconvenience the two scientific witnesses, except to reiterate the point that the scientific value is not the issue that is in contention, that we are investigating. What I will say is that I was not aware of Mr. Sell's personal problem where he had to leave town for a funeral until late last night or the first thing this morning. I was not in the gym this morning working out. I didn't see the Chairman there. But, you know, let me say in order to make sure that we do have a complete record, it is my hope that on the August 1 hearing that in addition to Mr. Sell that the Chair call Charlie Anderson, who is the principle Deputy Assistant Secretary for the Office of Environmental Management, and Jill Sigal, who is the former Assistant Secretary of Energy for Congressional and Intergovernmental Affairs. She has left the DOE in April of 2006, but she was around and dealing with this at the relevant time when the decision was made. I would hope that if we are accommodating to the Majority and going ahead with the hearing today, that they would be accommodating to us in having all three of these individuals as Minority witnesses. Failing that, the Minority will have no opportunity except to invoke that part of the rule that allows for a Minority day of hearings. Then we end up having three hearings on this, whereas if the Majority were sensitive, we could have rolled this all into one. And I yield back. Chairman Miller. And Mr. Sensenbrenner, all those witnesses are scheduled is my understanding, are scheduled on August 1. So we should hear from everyone. If the Minority has other witnesses to suggest, we certainly are willing or we certainly will try to accommodate the Minority and to have a procedurally fair hearing, that our inquiry into this will be procedurally fair. That does not mean the Department of Energy will like the outcome, but we will, it will be procedurally fair. And, again, I am not that hard to find. My office has a telephone number, all the Members have a directory of all of our offices' telephone numbers. I have a Blackberry. I actually read my messages, somewhat compulsively like most people who have Blackberries. I am easy to find on the Floor. It is not hard to find me, and I believe that our staff talks constantly. The Minority and the Majority staffs talk constantly. Mr. Lampson. Chairman Lampson. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I just want to express my chagrin at this. There hasn't been very much fairness up to this point on DOE, and there has been, there have been many things said and many actions made that many people are finding absolutely abhorrent. SREL has been treated unfairly. I think they should be able to tell their story to as best as possible get us prepared for those future hearings. It disappoints me to hear the kind of things that we are hearing here this morning. To me there has not been balance in the way the budget or the people at SREL have been treated. The budget has been cut, people have been terminated, jobs have been lost as of June the 29th, I believe. There is the potential for significant amount of data that has been continuously gathered since 1951, to not be able to be gathered, and the longer that we wait before, as I said earlier, this mystery begins to unfold, the harder it is going to be for it to be put back together again, and the potential for valuing what is going to be potentially lost. So if we postpone this based on a technicality, and I think that we were notified on Wednesday, the 12th of July, that Mr. Sell would have to be out of town for a funeral, today is the 17th, so that was five days ago. I am not going to say that there have been additional shenanigans being played, but I think the question of fairness on the part of that agency, to a lot of lives and to a lot of information that means a great deal to the lives of citizens across the United States of America, is at least questionable. It disappoints me very significantly that an issue like this would be raised in the manner in which it has been raised. I for one am embarrassed with it, and I think that this committee should be. I will yield back my time. Chairman Miller. I think we have had opening statements of a sort from the Chairs and the Ranking Members of both of the Subcommittees. If any other Member has an opening statement, we will welcome that in writing for the record. [The prepared statement of Mr. Costello follows:] Prepared Statement of Representative Jerry F. Costello Good morning. Mr. Chairman, thank you for calling this hearing to examine the past and current work of the Savannah River Ecology Laboratory (SREL) and the events leading up to the current funding crisis. SREL was established to track the ecological changes and environmental consequences of establishing nuclear weapons production facilities on the Savannah River Site (SRS). SREL evaluates the effects of SRS operations through a program of ecological research, education, and outreach involving both basic and applied environmental processes and principles. SREL has a distinguished record of publications, with the research staff publishing more than 80 articles in peer-reviewed scientific publications annually, and an astounding amount of unbroken data sets on the ecology of the site. I am concerned that in the past few years, the Bush Administration's budget requests have decreased funding and, at one point, called for an elimination of funding all together for this important laboratory. Further, I am concerned the cooperative agreement reached on December 1, 2006 between the Department of Energy (DOE) and SREL did not fully disclose the terms and scope of the ``technical peer review'' system. It was not until months later that the term was properly defined by the DOE. As a result of the scope and standards of the new technical peer review system, the DOE was able to drastically cut projects and informed SREL that only $800,000 of its proposed $3 million in work would be funded. Due to the lack of DOE projects funded, the University of Georgia reduced the personnel at the lab and currently employs 30-40 individuals on site to carry out work funded through grants already in place from other agencies. I am interested in hearing from Dr. Bertsch why SREL signed the cooperative agreement; what SREL's understanding of ``technical peer review'' was; and how the DOE's implementation has affected their ability to complete projects. Mr. Chairman, because of the significant impact of the DOE's decision to withdraw funding for the laboratory, I look forward to hearing from our witnesses their thoughts regarding the events leading up to the funding crisis, the decision to withdraw funding, and the future of SREL. [The prepared statement of Mr. Barrett follows:] Prepared Statement of the Honorable J. Gresham Barrett Third Congressional District of South Carolina U.S. House of Representatives Chairman Miller and Ranking Member Sensenbrenner, thank you for allowing me the opportunity to share my thoughts regarding the Savannah River Ecology Lab with you. I also appreciate the work you are doing to find a practical solution which will allow the lab to continue to operate. As you are probably aware, the Savannah River Ecology Lab (SREL) is located on the Department of Energy's Savannah River Site (SRS) in South Carolina. The only laboratory of its kind in the Department of Energy's (DOE) complex, the SREL has been operated by the University of Georgia since its 1951 founding by Dr. Eugene P. Odum. At that time, it was tasked and funded by the Atomic Energy Administration, DOE's predecessor, to perform the ecological baseline studies on the Savannah River Site. Over the past fifty-six years, the SREL's mission has evolved to include not only an independent evaluation of the ecological effects of nuclear activities at SRS, but also internationally recognized research, education, and public outreach programs. I am proud to represent the Third District of South Carolina in which the lab is located, and I have been fortunate to see firsthand the valuable work that the SREL does. As an independent laboratory staffed with university scientists, the SREL provides a thoughtful and unbiased evaluation of the effects of SRS operations on the environment and helps to ensure the safety of the surrounding community. Today, as environmental cleanup becomes an important part of the overall SRS mission, we believe the operation of SREL remains critical and will continue to provide valuable information related to the long-term stewardship issues at the site. Throughout the lab's existence, SREL has also been highly-touted for its insightful research and education on subjects such as remediation and the effects of environmental contamination, restoring degraded habitats, and environmental stewardship. It is home to award- winning scientists who have authored more than 3,050 scientific journal articles as well as approximately 50 books since its founding, and students from universities across the United States have studied, co- authored peer reviews, and developed their dissertations based on research at SREL. Without a doubt, as interest in nuclear energy continues to increase worldwide, the value of the scientific work being done at the SREL will only grow in importance. In addition to the essential research being done at the lab, the SREL provides important Environmental Outreach programs to individuals and families of the Central Savannah River Area (CSRA). Each year, the lab creates greater awareness of the diverse ecosystems of the SRS among children and adults across the region by offering Ecotalks, live plant and animal exhibits, and tours open to the public. Additionally, the SREL outreach programs supply informative materials regarding basic ecology and biology to students and teachers throughout the CSRA and even nationally, greatly enriching students' understanding of the sciences. As you can see, for over 56 years, the Savannah River Ecology lab has served the SRS, South Carolina, and the Nation through innovative research and outreach. Because of its strong track record, the lab has received strong bipartisan support from both the South Carolina and Georgia delegations in the House of Representatives and the Senate. I continue to be a proponent of the work the lab does and am saddened by the situation it finds itself in today. While there has been much argument as to who is at fault, it is my hope that the Department of Energy, the University of Georgia, SREL, and Congress can work side-by- side to find a solution that will allow the lab to continue to serve our country through its threefold mission of research, education, and outreach. I look forward to any insight this committee may be able to provide on the matter and again thank you for allowing me to submit my statement. Chairman Miller. And now the Chair will recognize Honorable John Barrow, who represents the district that includes the University of Georgia campus and the communities that border the Savannah River Site, who has devoted a great deal of his time and energy, effort to protect the lab's work and to insure its future. And I want to thank him for bringing this, his role in bringing this to our, to the Subcommittees, the two Subcommittees' attention, and we look forward to his testimony today. And, Mr. Barrow, I am somewhat disappointed. We usually place witnesses under oath and remind them of the penalties of perjury, but for whatever reason we are not doing that with respect to you. Mr. Barrow. Panel I: STATEMENT OF HON. JOHN BARROW, A REPRESENTATIVE OF THE STATE OF GEORGIA, 12TH DISTRICT Mr. Barrow. Thank you, Chairman Miller, thank you, Chairman Lampson. All right. Well, that is the one I started out with, but someone turned this one away and turned that, flipped that other one on. Thank you all for calling this hearing. In the interest of full disclosure, I don't represent the University of Georgia campus any longer, but I do represent the part of this country that is probably most affected by the ongoing work, that is the entire watershed from the fall line at Augusta all the way down to the mouth of the Savannah River at the city of Savannah. I share that interest with my colleagues in South Carolina, Gresham Barrett, Mr. Inglis to a certain extent, and Joe Wilson down at the other end. I want to try and put in my words what it is I think we are dealing with here, what it is I think we have here, and what I hope we will take away from this. First of all, what we are dealing with here. Over half a century ago our country embarked at the height of the Cold War on a technological building boom to build the weapons that we would use to win the Cold War. Now, we either use them by dropping them or use them by not dropping them. It was our fear that we might have to drop them, in which case we would all lose, but it was our hope and our expectation that if we had them, we wouldn't have to use them. And we embarked on a building plan that rivals nothing that we have seen in this country before or since, and it took place at places like the Savannah River Site, took place at Hanford, took place at Oak Ridge, Los Alamos, all over the country this was going on. This was a building program that involved buying up a whole bunch of land so we could put buffers between the people and the work that was being done there. We are talking about dirty work that had never been done before, on a scale that had never been imagined before, with consequences we never faced before, and that is what we started to do about half a century ago. It was all a non-peer-reviewed work done by Government contractors submitting the lowest bid. At the same time there was a fellow who had a vision about how to deal with, at least to monitor the situation by the name of Eugene Odum. He was literally the father of modern ecology, wrote the book, practically invented the word, certainly is the guy who was responsible for the words, currency and usage, in everyday English. Dr. Odum had a vision. His vision was something along these lines. This is something that is worth watching, this is something that needs watching, and here is an opportunity to watch it that we have never had before. It is worth watching because we were involved in all kinds of dirty work on hundreds of square miles, ascribed a watershed, and what was going on there wasn't just going on. It was going on all over the country. Now, Congress adopted this vision way back in 1972, when we first adopted the National Environmental Research Parks Program. The Savannah River Site was the first National Environmental Research Park, and this ain't a park like the kind of parks we are used to. This isn't a park where folks can go. It is a park where animals wander in and wander out. It is a park where water and the ceaseless cycle of waters comes and goes. It is a park that was supposed to be open to scientists in the words of the DOE as a protected outdoor laboratory where long-term projects can be set up to answer questions about what we are doing on this scale and in places like this. These are parks that are unique in the words of the DOE because they provide opportunities for research to study the compatibility of the environment with energy technology options. That is fancy words to say can we survive doing what we are doing here? Or are we going to kill ourselves in the process? Are we going to poison ourselves in order to keep ourselves from being blown up? Again, these are parks, but they are not real parks. These are parks that are closed to people but supposed to be open to scientists. Now, the thing I want to emphasize is when the DOE talks in sort of fancy language about how these are places where you can, a protected outdoor laboratory. This is a normative statement. This is something we ought to have. We are actually conducting great big old laboratories. These are laboratories, in fact, whether we like it or not. We are conducting experiments on a scale that has never been done before. The industrial generation of nuclear waste and its ponding and pooling and amassing in these places is something that has never been done before. We are experimenting like crazy in these seven places around the country, and whether or not we recognize it and treat it as a laboratory is up to us. But whether or not it really is a laboratory, where we are doing things that have never been done before, playing God in ways that have never been done before, that is a fact. And Congress recognized that back in 1972. The only issue here as I see it is not whether or not scientists are going to be allowed to run the lab. It is still going to be run by bean counters accountable to politicians. The question is not whether scientists are going to be allowed to run the lab. The question is whether or not there are going to be scientists actually in the lab watching what is going on on a continuous basis. Now, these parks are, in the words of the DOE, a unique asset to the country. SREL is unique because it is the only institution in the entire country where we have actually been monitoring and treating it like a laboratory from the very get go. It is the only place in the country where we have set data to, data sets to use the term, where we know what has been going and watching what has been going continuously from the beginning. And so it is unique. It has a unique role to play for all the others. It is also unique because it sets astride an ecosystem that has more complexity and more diversity than any of the others. If we can get it right, if we can understand what is going on in the euphemistically referred to Southeastern Mixed Forest, swamp, pine, slash, you name it. If we can figure out what is going on there, we can figure out what is going on in shrub step, we can figure out what is going on in Juniper, Penyan, and Grassland, we can figure what is going on in all the other places where environmentally speaking it is a cakewalk compared to the complexity and the diversity of what is going on in Savannah River. So what I am trying to do is set the stage and point out that this has enormous implications beyond just the local. This isn't just a question, although it is a question, of the way we treat the employees and the loyalty and the support we given the folks that are doing this work. It is not just that. That is important to me, it is important to Gresham Barrett. It is not just important to the immediate environmental watershed of the Savannah River. That is important to me, it is important to Barrett, it is important to Inglis, and it is important to Wilson and the Senators on both sides. It is about trying to maintain and monitor the lab, and the one place where we have been doing this from the very get go so that we don't lose sight of that vision. We have got to watch what is going on so we don't poison ourselves in the process of not blowing ourselves up. Now, what do we have here? What I think we have here is a five-year plan to defund the SREL by folks who basically think it ought to be converted into any other kind of commercial contractor, sort of a gigantic Serve Pro, bidding for some of the cleanup work at the Savannah River Site. Now, with all due respect to the Serve Pro folks, I acknowledge what they do, but this is not that kind of mission. This is not that kind of asset. It is not that kind of legacy. What we also have here is a failure to communicate, and you are all going to get to that, and I encourage you all to get to the bottom of it. What I hope we will take away from this, let us talk about what I want to take away from this series of hearings. This is not about the jobs in the area, although that is important. It is not about the immediate environmental impact, although that is important. And it is certainly not about Dr. Odum's legacy. That gentleman's--I knew the man. He was the greatest man I have ever met, the most brilliant and unassuming person you will ever know. He is an amazing fellow, but his legacy is established far beyond our poor power to add or detract. It is about, though, the work of his hands, which is still running there and which serves as the only institution that has been doing this work from the very beginning and do it in the one place where if you can do it no place else, it has got to be done there for the benefit of all these National Environmental Research Parks around the country. It is about, try to take our cue from Dr. Odum. Dr. Odum did anything in his life. He helped us understand the connections between things and the importance of things that we took for granted and the importance of the little things, the little things that we didn't really think much about until they were gone. If we can take anything away from this, if we would apply Dr. Odum's vision toward this problem, then the temporary elected officials who occupy this political nitch for the time being can preserve and protect something that we badly need everywhere. We ought to expand and have SREL in all of the National Environmental Research Parks. That ought to be what we take from this is a commitment to expand this elsewhere. But if we can take his vision, the appointed officials and the elected officials who are occupying this little nitch for just the time being won't destroy something that needs to be protected. We can actually preserve it, enhance it, and that I think is what we really need to do. I thank the Chairman for the courtesy of allowing me to speak here. I thank you all for your stick-to-it-iveness, and I know I have talked too much. I will yield back whatever time I may have left. [The prepared statement of Mr. Barrow follows:] Prepared Statement of Representative John Barrow Chairman Miller, Ranking Member Sensenbrenner; Chairman Lampson, Ranking Member Inglis, and Members of the Committee: Thank for holding this hearing and thank you for inviting me to appear before you today. I am extraordinarily concerned with recent actions by the Department of Energy that I understand have drastically reduced the adequate, stable, and mission-based funding for the Savannah River Ecology Laboratory and have caused the Laboratory, for all practical purposes, to close. Over the past five years, the Department's support for the Lab has been drastically reduced and manipulated, while the University of Georgia, which manages the Laboratory, has continued to uphold its end of the financial bargain that has kept the SREL going over the years. It seems evident to me that the Department of Energy's policy of reducing funding for the Savannah River Ecology Laboratory (SREL) is about to take from all of us a valuable research tool to protect our citizens and our environment. I am convinced that the need for sufficient and sustained Laboratory funding from the Department is crucial. The Department's drastic reduction in funding, and the processes they employed in reducing funding, have come under increased scrutiny recently, we must learn the truth. I thank you and your staff for the timely and energetic investigation of the Department of Energy's current and past plans to reduce and eliminate funding for this laboratory. The more I learn about the situation involving the Department's SREL funding, the more I'm puzzled. After first becoming aware of the dire funding situation at SREL, and in my initial contacts with Secretary Bodman and his staff, I suggested to the Secretary that we work together to develop and plan an expanded, ample, and stable DOE budget that would support the laboratory's vital mission. The Department's response to me was vexing. I was told a story that didn't quite jive with the communications that I had received from the scientific community, local leaders, and others who were familiar with the situation. Specifically, I was told by the Department in a letter from Secretary Bodman's staff, that the research being conducted at the facility was not `peer reviewable.' When I checked on this I was assured by some of the top scientists in the country that the research at SREL was fully peer reviewable and that the quality of the research was top-rank. This is only one of the inconsistencies that been unearthed in the early stages of discovery. The Savannah River Ecology Laboratory, founded by Dr. Eugene Odum, one of the most influential figures in the history of ecology in the 20th century, has been studying the effects of the Department's nuclear production and processing activities on the environment, wildlife creatures, and habitat at Savannah River Site (SRS) for over fifty-five years. Currently, the Laboratory supports cleanup missions as well as providing critical information related to long-term stewardship issues at the Department of Energy's Savannah River Site. This kind of research has enormous implications for the surrounding watershed, which includes a large part of the 12th District of Georgia, and quite frankly for nuclear production sites around the world. SREL is an independent academic laboratory that provides significant credibility among the general public and regulators on issues related to environmental impacts of nuclear facility operations, as well as the overall health of Savannah River Site ecosystems. Through its partnership with the DOE, the Savannah River Ecology Laboratory has established a strong international reputation for conducting high quality ecological research. In fact, SREL is often cited as an institution whose expertise and research forms the basis of stakeholder support critical to the Department for conducting existing and future missions at the Savannah River Site. The Laboratory is unique in its focus and mission, and the body of research that it has produced in over a half century of scientific exploration, is important not only for our country, but this body of work is recognized and utilized throughout the scientific world. To this end I believe it is critical to have an independent and credible source of information on how activities at our nuclear productions sites affect wildlife, habitats, and our ecosystems. In addition to its ongoing research activities at the Savannah River Site, SREL is the organization that has the expertise, institutional memory, and academic credibility to develop and implement long-term monitoring plans at SRS and potentially at other DOE production sites that will be accepted and trusted by the general public, regulators, and other stakeholders. After this investigation is concluded, and the findings published I would like to offer a view for the future. I would like to draw the Committee's attention to the issue of the best utilization of the National Environmental Research Parks. There are seven of these parks located on DOE sites throughout the country. The first one was established in 1972 on the Savannah River Site itself. Called the Savannah River Park, the site contains the greatest diversity of plants and animals in the entire southeastern region and has every major ecosystem found within the southeastern U.S. within its borders. DOE originally acquired large tracts of land around its national nuclear production sites for security. These sites have been protected from commercial development and public access has been controlled and limited to the purposes of public education and research. In 1997, there was a suggestion that DOE divest these properties and the scientific community argued passionately for their preservation because of their great value for research and education. Over the past, almost forty years, these sites have become ecological sanctuaries and natural laboratories unmatched in their size and diversity. Whether we talk about sound management of land and water resources, important species of animals, or better understanding and mitigation of the impacts of human activities on the environment, we must have information that has been systematically collected over many decades. That is exactly the type of information we have at SREL, and potentially this kind of research could be duplicated at these other National Environmental Research Parks. This unfortunate crisis at SREL has brought an opportunity for Congress to use these parks more effectively. Once we get to the bottom of this investigation, and we restore Savannah River Ecology Lab functioning, I would propose that we should have SREL-like labs throughout the country at these parks, and then offer this model for interested allies, for most nuclear production sites around the world. This would be a great tribute to Dr. Odum, and a fitting recognition of the work that has been carried out by the dedicated scientists and staff at SREL for the past 55 years. I wouldn't even know how to place a value on the body of research that has been produced at SREL, it certainly cannot be duplicated or replaced if this laboratory is shuttered. Instead of jeopardizing the future of valuable scientific assets with arbitrary and malicious budget cutting, the Department should be working to secure the future of these unique and valuable national assets that Dr. Odum foresaw these many years ago. Thanks again for letting me come before you today, and I'd be glad to answer any questions. Chairman Miller. And that time is a negative five minutes. It is not typically that Members ask questions of other Members, but actually I did ask questions of Mr. Hunter when he was here a couple weeks ago. Does any Member of the Committee have a question of Mr. Barrow? If not, Mr. Barrow, thank you very much, and I will not use the questions that I had going to the credibility of the witness. Our next panel we will receive the testimony of Dr. Ward Whicker, Professor of Radiological Health Science at Colorado State University. Professor Whicker, you can come forward now. Professor Whicker is regarded as one of the founders of the field of radioecology. He has had more than 98 articles published in peer-review journals. He is an honorary council member of the National Council of Radiation Protection and Measurements. He has also received the prestigious E.O. Lawrence Award in 1990, from the Department of Energy. And then the final witness, Professor Jerald Schnoor. If you could take your seat here. Dr. Schnoor is the Alan S. Henry Chair in Engineering at the University of Iowa. Dr. Schnoor is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, a member of the EPA Science Advisory Board. He is the editor in chief for the journal, Environmental Science and Technology. As our witnesses should know, your oral testimony, your spoken testimony is limited to five minutes, and the Chair may be a little more likely to enforce that than I was with respect to Mr. Barrow. And after that there will be questions from any Member of the Committee. It is our practice typically, except when we are dealing with one of our colleagues perhaps, to take testimony under oath. Do either of you have any objection to being sworn in, to swearing an oath? All right. You also have a right to be represented by Counsel. Are either of you represented by Counsel today? All right. And if you would please stand and raise your right hand. [Witnesses sworn] Chairman Miller. Dr. Schnoor, you may begin. Panel III: STATEMENT OF DR. JERALD L. SCHNOOR, PROFESSOR, CIVIL AND ENVIRONMENTAL ENGINEERING; CO-DIRECTOR, CENTER FOR GLOBAL AND REGIONAL ENVIRONMENTAL RESEARCH, UNIVERSITY OF IOWA Dr. Schnoor. Chairman Miller and Chairman Lampson, Ranking Member Sensenbrenner, Ranking Member Inglis, and Subcommittee Members, I thank you for the opportunity to testify regarding the funding crisis facing the University of Georgia's Savannah River Ecology Laboratory located on the Department of Energy's Savannah River Site near Aiken, South Carolina. As the Chairman said, my name is Jerry Schnoor. I am a professor at the University of Iowa and member of the National Academy of Engineering, and I serve on the U.S. EPA's Science Advisory Board. As Editor-in-Chief of the leading journal in the field, Environmental Science and Technology, I manage the peer review process for thousands of scientific papers which are submitted each year, including several from Savannah River Lab. One of my personal areas of research is groundwater and hazardous wastes remediation, especially phytoremediation. That is the use of plants to try to help clean the environment. It is a promising, long-term technology for some contamination problems at the Savannah River Site as well. I do not have any public or private research grants related to SREL stock or stock options held in publicly-traded or privately-owned companies, nor have I received any form of payment or compensation from any relevant entity connected with this testimony. Therefore, I hope and believe that I am qualified to testify about the quality and importance of the scientific research being performed at the Savannah River Lab and its relevance to DOE's strategic initiatives. The information I am providing is based largely on my professional interaction with SREL faculty and a visit to the laboratory, a review of the institution's publication and history, and other DOE documents that are readily available in the public record. Due to time constraints, greater detail and additional supporting information and documentation has been provided in my written testimony, and I ask that it be read into the record. Since its founding in 1951, SREL's research emphasis has constantly evolved to meet the changing needs of DOE and SRS in particular in my opinion, which is reflected in even a cursory review of SREL's scientific publications and their site reports. In response to a growing cost associated with environmental cleanups at DOD and DOE sites, the National Academy of Science has issued a report entitled, Groundwater and Soil Cleanup: Improving Management of Persistent Contaminants, by the National Research Council in 1999. In the report the committee clearly recognized the value of the Savannah River Ecology Lab, noting, ``Ecological risks are better characterized at the Savannah River Site than at other DOE installations, due in part to the designation of the site as a National Environmental Research Park and the presence of the Savannah River Ecology Laboratory.'' Despite such praise, the discussion concerning the current funding crisis has directly called into question the technical expertise of the SREL faculty and indirectly the overall quality and relevance of its research. First, I want to address some misconceptions concerning the type of research conducted at SREL. Over the last decade or so there has been a clear shift in research emphasis at the lab with an increasing focus on contaminant fate and transport, largely in response to a more focused DOE cleanup mission. SREL faculty have demonstrated expertise in several active fields of research that are directly relevant to the Savannah River Site remediation efforts. In addition to the clear practical benefit, SREL's support for the SRS pump-and-treat system resulted in four refereed articles in ES&T, my journal, two in Vadose Zone Journal, one in Groundwater, and one in the Journal of Contaminant Hydrology. In addition, SREL researchers have developed three other patented technologies, including a system that combines both contaminant immobilization with phytoextraction, the use of plants. And they have submitted initial paperwork for an automated environmental monitoring system. The Savannah River Lab also plays an important role in the regulatory process by providing independent scientific credibility necessary for site management to propose and receive approval for alternative, cost-effective remediation strategies. In some instances SREL faculty have been asked to accompany site contractors to regulatory negotiations in case certain questions arise for which their technical expertise is required. Mr. Chairman, my candid overall opinion is that the Savannah River Ecology Laboratory is providing the DOE and the Nation with high quality research in a very cost effective manner. It has long been recognized as perhaps the foremost land in terrestrial ecology in the country, and in recent years it is performing extremely useful research related to the date, transport, effects, and remediation of chemical contaminants relevant to SRS. During the past 30 months alone, Savannah River Lab researchers have published eight rigorously peer-reviewed journals in ES&T, my journal, on nickel, uranium, mercury, radio-cesium, and lead, all important contaminants at the site. In light of these accomplishments, I strongly believe that SREL's funding should be continued. The survival of the Savannah River Ecology Lab as an independent academic institution on the Savannah River Site ensures that long-term management and remediation strategies and scenarios will be developed and implemented based on independent, verifiable science. Thank you very much. [The prepared statement of Dr. Schnoor follows:] Prepared Statement of Jerald L. Schnoor Chairman Miller and Chairman Lampson, Ranking Member Sensenbrenner, Ranking Member Inglis, and Subcommittee Members: I thank you for the opportunity to testify regarding the recent funding crisis facing the University of Georgia's Savannah River Ecology Laboratory (SREL), located on the Department of Energy's Savannah River Site (SRS), near Aiken, SC. My name is Jerry Schnoor. I am Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Occupational and Environmental Health, and Co-Director of the Center for Global and Regional Environmental Research at the University of Iowa. I am also a member of the National Academy of Engineering, inaugurated in 1964 to provide technical advice to the Nation, and I serve on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Science Advisory Board (SAB). As Editor-in-Chief of the leading journal in the field, Environmental Science and Technology, I manage the peer- review process for thousands of scientific papers which are submitted each year, including several from SREL. One of my personal areas of research expertise is groundwater and hazardous wastes remediation, especially phytoremediation, the use of plants to help clean the environment, which remains a promising long-term technology for some contamination problems at the Savannah River Site. I do not have any public or private research grants related to SREL, stock or stock options held in publicly traded and privately owned companies, nor have I received any form of payment or compensation from any relevant entity connected with this testimony. Therefore, I believe I am qualified to testify about the quality and importance of the scientific research being performed at the Savannah River Ecology Laboratory and its relevance to DOE's Strategic Initiatives. The information I am providing is based largely on my professional interaction with SREL faculty and a visit to the laboratory, a review of the institution's publication history and the faculty's research accomplishments (available on UGA website), and other DOE documents that are readily available in the public record. Due to time constraints, greater detail and additional supporting documentation has been provided in my written testimony. Since it's founding in 1951, SREL's research emphasis has constantly evolved to meet the changing needs of DOE and the SRS in particular, which is reflected in even a cursory review of SREL's scientific publications and site reports. In response to the growing cost associated with environmental cleanup at DOE and DOD facilities, the National Academy of Sciences issued a report entitled ``Groundwater & Soil Cleanup: Improving Management of Persistent Contaminants'' (NRC, 1999). In the report, the committee clearly recognized the value of SREL, noting: ``Ecological risks are better characterized at the Savannah River Site than any other DOE installation, due in part to the designation of the site as a national environmental research park and the presence of the Savannah River Ecology Laboratory.'' Despite such praise, the discussion concerning the current funding crisis has directly called into question the technical expertise of the SREL faculty, and indirectly the overall quality and relevance of their research. First, I want to address some misconceptions concerning the type of research conducted by SREL. Over the last decade or so, there has been a clear shift in research emphasis at the lab with an increasing focus on contaminant fate and transport, largely in response to a more-focused DOE cleanup mission. SREL faculty have demonstrated expertise in several active fields of research that are directly relevant to SRS remediation efforts. In addition to the clear practical benefit, SREL's support for the SRS pump-and-treat system resulted in four refereed articles in ES&T, two in the Vadose Zone Journal, one in Groundwater, and one in the Journal of Contaminant Hydrology. In addition, SREL researchers have developed three other patented technologies, including a system that combines both contaminant immobilization with phytoextraction (U.S. No. 6719822), and they have submitted initial paperwork for an automated environmental monitoring system. SREL also plays an important role in the regulatory process by providing the independent scientific credibility necessary for site management to propose and receive approval for alternate, cost-effective remediation strategies. In some instances SREL faculty have been asked to accompany site contractors to regulatory negotiations in case certain questions arise for which their technical expertise is required. My candid overall opinion is that the Savannah River Ecology Laboratory is providing the DOE and the Nation with high quality research in a very cost effective manner. It has long been recognized as perhaps the foremost laboratory in terrestrial ecology in the country, and in recent years it is performing extremely useful research related to the fate, transport, effects, and remediation of chemical contaminants relevant to SRS. During the past 30 months alone, SREL researchers have published eight rigorously peer-reviewed articles in ES&T on nickel, uranium, mercury, radio-cesium, and lead, all important contaminants at the site. (The references are listed at the end of this written testimony.) In light of these accomplishments, I strongly believe that SREL's funding should be continued. The survival of SREL as an independent academic institution on the SRS ensures that long- term management and remediation scenarios will be developed and implemented based on independent, verifiable science. DOE management in Washington may not be aware that SREL researchers have assisted in the choice, refinement, and even the implementation of several high-profile SRS remediation efforts. For example, SREL researchers actively supported the F- & H-Area pump-and-treat groundwater remediation system, the Mixed Waste Management Facility's (MWMF) tritium remediation system, the 488D Ash Basin reclamation, and reclamation and closure of the SRL basins to name a few. SREL research was used in designing the water treatment facility for the $120 million dollar F- and H-Area pump-and-treat operation. These efforts further led to the development of a patented pump-and-treat technology for enhancing the extraction of contaminants from aquifers (U.S. No. 5,846,434). As documented in the latest renewal of the Cooperative Agreement, SREL research ``provides a further understanding of the environmental effects of SRS operations.'' More specifically, however, the Cooperative Agreement lists nine responsibilities in Appendix A, including the following (see the attached Appendix A from the Coop Agreement): SREL will assess the impact of site operations on the environment, and will continue to provide the public and DOE with an independent view of the environmental management of the SRS. SREL will continue basic and applied environmental research with emphasis upon expanding the understanding of ecological processes and principles, and upon evaluating the impacts of site activities, new missions, and land use practices on the environment. SREL will use the information collected in the environmental research to develop and test hypotheses that will contribute to the scientific foundation necessary to conduct meaningful ecological risk assessments and to understand the environmental consequences of energy technologies, remediation efforts and other SRS activities. SREL scientists will work closely with SRS personnel to assist DOE and other SRS contractors in making wise and informed decisions concerning land and facilities management. SREL will continue to publish its scientific findings in peer-reviewed scientific journals to aid the public and to assist DOE in making policy decisions by providing a basis of independent, verifiable science. Although SREL is well positioned to fulfill these responsibilities and more, one must note the inconsistency between the language of Appendix A and the assertion that all DOE funding will be provided only on a task-by-task basis based on ``mission critical'' needs in the current year. Two obvious questions quickly come to mind. How does DOE define mission critical needs? Through what process does DOE review SREL's research activities to determine if they are consistent with such needs? In preparing for today's testimony, I studied the research task matrix that DOE instructed SREL to provide for the FY07 ``funding review'' (see attachment), and compared it with the April 2007 Draft version of the DOE-Office of Environmental Management's Engineering & Technology Roadmap: Reducing Technical Risk and Uncertainty in the EM Program, which is available on the DOE-EM website (http:// www.em.doe.gov/pages/emhome.aspx). As noted in the document's introduction (see attachment), the Technology Roadmap was developed by DOE-EM, Deputy Secretary for Engineering and Technology, Mark Gilbertson, under Congressional direction within the FY 2007 House Energy and Water Development Appropriations Report to identify technology gaps and develop a strategy for funding proposals that address such needs. It is clear that several ongoing SREL research programs (e.g., support for the tritium phytoremediation facility and characterization of grouts and other engineered waste isolation materials) and the proposed research tasks included in the task matrix, indeed, directly address many of the strategic initiatives identified in the DOE-EM Technology Roadmap. The local public's response to the SREL funding crisis is indicative of the areas general support for DOE activities, a support that I contend has been fostered by SREL's presence on the site since it was established in the 1950s. Given this support, I want to draw attention to the general consistency between the DOE-EM Technology Roadmap and the NRC report drafted almost ten years earlier. Both documents clearly indicate that we lack the technical expertise required for the safe and cost-effective cleanup of the legacy wastes and facilities in the DOE complex. As the Roadmap notes: ``. . . the remaining [cleanup] challenges will require a strong and responsive applied research and engineering program.'' Although considerable progress has been made in the last decade, the DOE-EM Roadmap acknowledges that numerous challenges remain. However, environmental research over the last two decades indicates that following some initial intervention, like removing the pollutant source, many environmentally degraded systems will recover through natural biogeochemical processes, an observation that forms the basis for the widely adopted concept of Monitored Natural Attenuation (MNA). Furthermore, adopting a costly, highly invasive remediation strategy can result in ecosystem disruption that is far worse than the original contamination. It is my opinion that SREL's presence on the SRS has easily resulted in continued DOE cost savings that far outweigh the institutions annual operating budget. Despite the apparent disconnect with respect to DOE-HQ's perception of SREL expertise, there are additional reasons for DOE to reinstate SREL's long-term funding. In contrast to the primary site contractors that must focus on more immediate management and remediation deadlines, often dictated by regulatory agreements, SREL's academic independence allows scientists to focus on more long-term remediation and stewardship concerns so that the required background information is available to support responsible decision-making now and in the future. Research institutions like SREL are largely evaluated based on publication record and external grants. Despite the recent loss of several faculty positions due to budget cuts, SREL has averaged 85 refereed publications a year for the last six years, which is a very good rate of scientific productivity considering SREL's number of full- time faculty and the declining budget situation. Earlier this year SREL reached a significant milestone with the publication of the 3,000th peer reviewed article. Since 1991 alone, SREL researchers have published 44 articles in ES&T, a journal ranked #1 in total citations and articles published out of 140 journals in the field of environmental sciences, and #4 in Impact Factor, a measure of the relative number of times a specific manuscript within a journal is cited. Even a cursory review of the article titles verifies that they are directly relevant to our understanding of the fate, transport, ecological impact, and remediation of contaminants on the SRS, including major contaminants of concern (COC) such as chromium, uranium, plutonium, cesium, tritium, and chlorinated solvents, such as TCE and PCE, to name a few. The same is true of the work published in other journals as well. Any summary of faculty accomplishments is sure to overlook numerous outstanding contributions, and so I encourage the committee to review the concise two-page CV's, typical of the format that is submitted with funding proposal, that have been attached to my written testimony. However, a few specific examples are worth noting that are relevant to the current discussion. SREL researchers have served as Associate Editors for the Journal of Environmental Quality, the Soil Science Society of America Journal, and Water Air and Soil Pollution. Members of the SREL faculty regularly provide scientific reviews of manuscripts submitted to ES&T and other scientific journals. Dr. Lee Newman is the Editor of the International Journal of Phytoremediation. A recent publication in Geochemical Transactions by Dr. A. Neal et al., (2007) was recognized as the most accessed paper for June 2007 and is the eighth most accessed for all time in the journal. Another publication by Neal, Rosso, Geesey, et al. (2003) was listed in top 25 most downloaded papers for 2003-2004 in Geochimica Cosmochimica Acta. These accomplishments are evidence of a vibrant and productive faculty who are publishing articles of high impact in the best journals in the world. Recently, Dr. John Seaman served as the guest editor for a special edition of the Vadose Zone Journal showcasing remediation activities at the SRS, and he co-authored with Drs. Mary Harris and Brian Looney of SRNL the introductory article entitled ``Research in support of remediation activities at the Savannah River Site,'' which highlighted collaborative research activities of SREL, SRNL, the U.S.-Forest Service, and other universities in addressing DOE needs. Furthermore, SREL research activities in support of SRS cleanup were also recently highlighted in several submissions to a special SRS edition of Environmental Geosciences. Representative from SREL have served as technical advisors to the Citizen's Advisory Board (CAB), a local independent organization established by DOE to provide local stakeholder input regarding operations and environmental issues associated with the SRS. In summary, SREL research activities clearly support DOE's ongoing site remediation and long-term stewardship goals. The lab's presence fosters a more open dialogue that promotes stakeholder consensus when choosing an eventual course of action with respect to federal lands and resources. As demonstrated in the past, SREL's research efforts can reduce the long-term cost associated with site management and cleanup, lessen the public's anxiety concerning possible health risks associated with continued site operation, improve our fundamental understanding of subsurface processes that can be applied to other impacted sites, both government and commercial facilities, and prevent or greatly lessen the possible impact of future site activities on the environment and the surrounding public. The quality of SREL's science, the faculty's research productivity, and the relevance of the science to the DOE and SRS argues strongly for continued funding of the laboratory. Appendices: DOE-EM Technology Roadmap (April 2007 Draft) SREL FY07 Funding Matrix UGA Cooperative Agreement Appendix A Two Page Summary CVs for each SREL Faculty member References Van Nostrand, J.D., Khijniak, T.J., Neely, B., Abdus Sattar, M., Sowder, A.G., Mills, G., Bertsch, P.M., Morris, P.J. (2007). Reduction of nickel and uranium toxicity and enhanced trichloroethylene degradation to Burhholderia vietnamiensis PR1<INF>301</INF> with hydroxyapatite amendment. Environ. Sci. Technol. 41:1877-1882. Unrine, J.M. Jackson, B.P., Hopkins, W.A. (2007). Selenomethionine biotransforamtion and incorporation into proteins along a simulated terrestrial food chain. Environ. Sci. Technol. 41:3601-3606. Rodriguez-Navarro, A.B., Romanek, C.S., Alvarez-Lloret, P., Gaines, K.F. (2006). Effect of in ovo exposure to PCBs and Hg on Clapper Rail bone mineral chemistry from a contaminated salt marsh in coastal Georgia. Environ. Sci. Technol. 40:4936-4942. Hinton, T.G., Kaplan, D.I., Knoz, A.S., Coughlin, D.P., Nascimento, R.V., Watson, S.I., Fletcher, D.E., Koo, B-J. (2006). Use of illite clay for in situ remediation <SUP>137</SUP>Cs- contaminated water bodies: field demonstration of reduced biological uptake. Environ. Sci. Technol. 40:4500-4505. Jackson, B.P., Williams, P.L., Lanzirotti, A., Bertsch, P.M. (2005). Evidence for biogenic pyromorphite formation by the nematord Caenorhabditis elegans. Environ. Sci. Technol. 39:5620-5625. Shaw-Allen, P.L., Romanek, C.S., Bryan, A.L. Jr., Brant, H., Jagoe, C.H. (2005). Shifts in relative tissue del<SUP>15</SUP>N values in snowy egret nestlings with dietary mercury exposure: a marker for increased protein degradation. Environ. Sci. Technol. 39:4226-4233. Stepanauskas, R., Glenn, T.C., Jagoe, C.H., Tuckfield, R.C., LIndell, A.H., McArthur, J.V. (2005). Elevated microbial tolerance to metals and antibiotics in metal-contaminated industrial environments. Environ. Sci. Technol. 39:3671-3678. Jackson, B.P., Ranville, J.F., Bertsch, P.M., Sowder, A.G. (2005). Characterization of colloidal and humic-bound Ni and U in the ``dissolved'' fraction of contaminated sediment extracts. Environ. Sci. Technol. 39:2478-2485. <GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT> <GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT> <GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT> <GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT> <GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT> <GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT> <GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT> <GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT> <GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT> <GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT> <GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT> <GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT> <GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT> <GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT> <GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT> <GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT> <GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT> <GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT> <GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT> <GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT> <GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT> <GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT> <GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT> <GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT> <GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT> <GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT> <GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT> <GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT> <GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT> <GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT> <GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT> <GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT> <GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT> <GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT> <GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT> <GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT> <GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT> <GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT> <GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT> <GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT> <GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT> <GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT> <GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT> <GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT> <GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT> <GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT> <GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT> <GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT> <GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT> <GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT> <GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT> Biography for Jerald L. Schnoor (i) Professional Preparation Iowa State University, Chemical Engineering, B.S. 1972 University of Texas, Environmental Health Engineering, M.S. 1974 University of Texas, Civil Engineering, Ph.D. 1975 Manhattan College, Environmental Modeling (postdoc), 1976 (ii) Appointments 2002-present--Allen S. Henry Chair Professor of Engineering, University of Iowa 1990-present--Co-Director, Center for Global and Regional Environmental Research, University of Iowa 1985-1990--Chair, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Iowa 1983-present--Professor, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Iowa 1980-1983--Associate Professor, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Iowa 1977-1980--Assistant Professor, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Iowa (iii) 5 Publications (selected from 150 journal articles, 6 books, 3 patents) Boulanger, B., J. Vargo, J.L. Schnoor, and K.C. Hornbuckle. ``Detection of Perfluorooctant Surfactants in Great Lakes Water.'' Environmental Science & Technology, 38(15), 4064-4070, 2004. Boulanger, B., A.M. Peck, J.L. Schnoor, and K.C. Hornbuckle. ``Mass Budget of Perfluorooctane Surfactant in Lake Ontario.'' Environmental Science & Technology, 39(1), 74-79, 2005. McCutcheon, S.C., and J.L. Schnoor, Eds. 2003. Phytoremediation-- Transformation and Control of Contaminants. New York: John Wiley & Sons. 987 pp. Mihelcic, J.R., J.C. Crittenden, M.J. Small, D.R. Shonnard, D.R. Hokanson, Q. Zhang, H. Chen, S.A. Sorby, V.U. James, J.W. Sutherland, and J.L. Schnoor. ``Sustainability Science and Engineering: The Emergence of a New Metadiscipline.'' Environmental Science & Technology, 37(23), 5314-5324, 2003. Schnoor, J.L. 1996. Environmental Modeling: Fate and Transport of Pollutants in Water, Air, and Soil. New York: Wiley Interscience, 682 pp. (iv) Synergistic Activities 1. Editor-in-Chief, Environmental Science & Technology, 2003-present 2. U.S. EPA Science Advisory Board, 2006- 3. Chair, National Research Council Colloquium, Water Implications of Biofuels, 2007 4. National Research Council, Water Science and Technology Board, 2000-2005 5. Chair, U.S. EPA ORD, Board of Scientific Counselors, 2000-2004 6. Distinguished lectureships: - Walter J. Weber Jr. Distinguished Lecturer, University of Michigan, 2004 - Soil Science Society of America Honorary Lecturer, Soils and Environmental Quality, 2004 - Henske Distinguished Lecturer Award, Yale University, 2000 - Sigma Xi Distinguished Lecturer, 1999-2000 - Association of Environmental Engineering Professors Distinguished Lecturer, 1998 - Presidential Lecturer, University of Iowa, 1996 7. Awards: - Paper of the Year 2005, Award for Integration of Human and Ecological Risk Assessment, HERA Human and Ecological Risk Assessment, An International Journal - Soil Science Society of America, Soils and Environmental Quality, Honorary Lecturer, 2004 - National Academy of Engineering, member, elected 1999- present - Best Theoretical Paper Award, Environmental Water Resources Institute, ASCE, 2004 - Hancher-Finkbine Medallion, University of Iowa, 2000 - Rudolph Hering Medal, American Society of Civil Engineers, 1998 - Distinguished Fellow Award, Iowa Academy of Science, 1996 - Walter L. Huber Research Prize, American Society of Civil Engineers, 1985 (v) Collaborators & Other Affiliations (a) Collaborators: Pedro Alvarez, Gregory R. Carmichael, John Crittenden, Larry Erickson, Charles Haas, Keri C. Hornbuckle, Peter Jaffe, Craig Just, Steve McCutcheon, James Merchant, Barbara Minsker, Kenneth Moore, Tatsuaki Nakato, Richard Ney, Gene Parkin, Gary Pierzynski, John Rosazza, Michelle Scherer, Ming-Che Shih, Mitchell Small, Peter Thorne, Richard Valentine, Benoit Van Aken (b) Graduate and Postgraduate Advisees: Eric Aitchison, Bryan Boulanger, Joel G. Burken, Annette Dietz, Africa Espina, Claudia Espinosa, Sumeet Gandhi, Kirk Hatfield, Shan He, Brad Helland, James Jordahl, Roopa Kamath, Sara Kelley, Thorjorn Larssen, Sijin Lee, Louis A. Licht, Malva Mancuso, Drew C. McAvoy, Sara McMillan, Melissa Mezzari, Nikolaos Nikolaidis, Deborah O'Bannon, Kurtis Paterson, Kimberly Precht, Jeremy Rentz, Sanjay Singhvi, Philip L. Thompson, Benoit Van Aken, John Veenstra, Mark Wiesner, Jong Moon Yoon, Bryan Young (c) Graduate and Postgraduate Advisors: E. Gus Fruh (deceased), Donald J. O'Connor (deceased), Werner Stumm (deceased) (vi) Current and Pending Support <bullet> Center for Global and Regional Environmental Research (CGRER), Source of Support: Iowa Department of Commerce, 12/1/ 2007--on going, $600,000 per year. <bullet> Sensors for CyberEngineering: Monitoring and Modeling the Iowa River for Nutrients and Sediments, Source of Support: Iowa Water Center (ISU) and U of Iowa matching, 3/1/2005-2/28/ 2007, $109,378. <bullet> CLEANER/WATERS Project Office, Source of Support: University of Illinois (UIUC) and NCSA, 7/1/2005-6/30/2008, $3,000,000 total (subcontract $400,000 to UI-Schnoor). <bullet> Phytoremediation for the Containment and Treatment of Energetic and Propellant Materials on Testing and Training Ranges, Source of Support: SERDP (DOD), 9/1/2005-8/31/2008, $729,975. <bullet> Superfund Basic Research Program, ``Effects of Airborne PCBs,'' Project #5 Schnoor P.I., Source of Support: NIEHS, 5/1/2006-9/30/2010, $750,000. Chairman Miller. Dr. Whicker. STATEMENT OF DR. F. WARD WHICKER, PROFESSOR, RADIOLOGICAL HEALTH SCIENCES, COLORADO STATE UNIVERSITY Dr. Whicker. This is supposed to advance, but it is not advancing. Okay. I am a professor emeritus at Colorado State University. I have been in the business of doing radioecology teaching and research for about 45 years now. My familiarity with the Savannah River Ecology Lab stems from spending three years there doing research on my own full-time, and I have had a number of graduate students that have done their research there for their dissertations and theses. I think in the interest of time I will come back to this one. The importance of the Savannah River Site environment is important to recognize both scientifically as well as in other areas, educationally and so forth. The upper left slide is an aerial view of the Savannah River Site taken from a satellite. It shows mostly green surrounded by farmland and some urbanization. The large reservoir on the right hand of that green blob is our pond, which I am going to come back to in a moment. But when you are there as a scientist working, you would almost think that you are you in a national park. It has a tremendously diverse wildlife and as many people have said, it has been a National Environmental Research Park since about 1972. These and many other species live there, and they are exposed to contaminants that have resulted from releases from the nuclear reactors and other industrial activities at the site. One of the main issues and things that the laboratory, Savannah River Laboratory can do is that they can get involved in the question about cleanup. The key to this is determining whether cleanup is really needed at all, not necessarily how to do it, unless it is important to do it. This requires risk analysis and the sciences which underpin the risk analysis. Cleanup costs, if you plot the level of contamination versus cost, you have two distinct thresholds. The biggest one of which is when you decide to have engineered cleanup. At that point the costs go up by many orders of magnitude, and the SREL science applies directly to that. I want to give you a case history if I can of Par Pond, because this is, I think, an example that really speaks to the value of the laboratory. This is a large impoundment created for cooling reactors. It operated for about 30 years, and then it was shut down in 1988, because the reactors were shut down, but the reservoir was still there. However, there were some leaks in the dam, and they decided that they needed to figure out what to do. In order to reduce risk in case the dam should fail, they dropped the lake level 20 feet. This exposed cesium-137 contamination led to designation under CERCLA\1\ that something had to be done. This required a management decision. Yet there were several alternatives of how to treat this ranging from draining the reservoir and breaching the dam and repairing the dam and refilling the reservoir to contain the contaminants. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- \1\ CERCLA: The Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act, commonly known as Superfund. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Risk assessment, one risk assessment was done by an outside firm. It was a paper assessment that said that it would be okay for somebody to farm the land, but SREL research showed this not to be the case based upon actual data. It basically showed that cesium-137 has extremely high plant uptake and that moves into the food chain, and it would produce a lifetime risk to somebody living there that would exceed the EPA guideline of one chance in 10,000 of getting a cancer some time in your lifetime. So that was not an acceptable option. The two remaining options were to fix the sediments in place or to excavate it. There was no feasible way at the time to fix it in place, and so one looked carefully at excavation, and the cost of excavation of this reservoir was going to be $4 billion, at least. So we came down to the best option to repair the dam and fill the reservoir at a cost of about $12 million. This is less than one percent of the excavation. Then the question arose is what about the health and of humans and ecological impacts of allowing this contaminated reservoir even to exist. Well, the SREL research demonstrated that radiation dose rates to plants and animals were well below the applicable DOE standards. The radiation health risks for hypothetical sport fisherman or hunter would be well below EPA standards, and there would be essentially no risk to other people using the reservoir. Also, from many years and decades of research on the reservoir, there was never any clear evidence of ecological impacts from either radiation or chemicals, and so that gave one comfort that the radioactivity there was just there, it could be measured, but it wasn't causing any ecological damage. The outcome was that they did, in fact, repair the dam and refill the pond. It was essentially recovered in about five years. Over $4 billion was saved from this decision. The research that was done to lead to this outcome cost about $200,000 or 800 times less than the cost of that of dredging. In conclusion, I see I am out of time, SREL should be funded, and I think even expanded as an independent scientific organization. In fact, the SREL research has saved the Government more money than it has received. This Par Pond example I think proves that notion. A number of these other points have been made by others. Let us see if there is any here I should state. I guess down to the very bottom line. The funding required to maintain the infrastructure is relatively trivial. The cost of not restoring this funding, I think the costs of that are going to be extremely high. Thank you. [The prepared statement of Dr. Whicker follows:] Prepared Statement of F. Ward Whicker I have been a member of the faculty at Colorado State University (CSU) for about 45 years. I retired from full-time duty about two years ago, but continue to teach and conduct research as a part-time, temporary employee. My field of teaching and research is called ``radioecology'' which deals with natural and man-made radioactivity in the environment, the movement and accumulation of radioactive materials through the environment and food chains, the effects of radiation on plants and animals, and the assessment of health risks to people exposed to environmental radioactivity. Teaching, research and service have been the primary duties assigned to me at CSU, but I also served as Head of the Department of Radiological Health Sciences from 1998 to 2002. I have had a number of national and international assignments outside of the university over my career and these are briefly summarized in my biographical sketch that accompanies this document. I have considerable experience working with scientists at the Savannah River Ecology Laboratory (SREL), and spent three years (1982, 1991 and 1992) there conducting full-time research. I also mentored 13 graduate students from CSU who each conducted research projects at SREL over the last 30 years or so. Most of my work at SREL has dealt with the distribution and transport of radioactive contaminants in reactor cooling reservoirs located on the Savannah River Site (SRS). I also spent considerable effort conducting human health risk assessments for various management options of a large, radioactively-contaminated reservoir (Par Pond), which had finished serving its main purpose of cooling hot water from P and R reactors, and which had shown leakage and internal erosion of the dam. I maintain an informal scientific collaboration with Dr. Thomas Hinton, a radioecologist at SREL, but have no financial interest with the laboratory nor with any other organization at the SRS. My testimony today is intended to provide my personal assessment of the overall value of SREL to the Department of Energy and to science and society in general. The main points I will attempt to make include the following: <bullet> The SRS has enormous ecological, scientific and educational value, in addition to its nationally important programs related to defense, and potential programs related to sustainable energy development. <bullet> There will be a need for environmental assessments at the SRS into the foreseeable future while the government conducts various programs there in the national interest. These programs may include national defense, nuclear fuel fabrication, energy research and production, remediation technologies, etc. <bullet> Portions of this site may be ecologically-threatened by scientifically unwarranted remediation, privatization or new programs that may be ecologically damaging. <bullet> SREL has and can continue to play a critical role at the SRS by providing objective, independent science that contributes information that is vital to decisions on remediation, land management, stewardship and environmental assessments of site activities. SREL research can simultaneously spare valuable ecosystems and save large sums of federal money. <bullet> SREL has a very impressive track record for cost effective, credible research. Unlike some DOE-sponsored laboratories, SREL is a University of Georgia organization that publishes nearly all of its work in peer-reviewed scientific journals without censorship by DOE or other governmentally- affiliated organizations. <bullet> Unique opportunities remain for education (K-12, college, graduate levels and the general public) through SREL outreach programs at the SRS. These opportunities range from basic biology, ecology and numerous environmental sciences to fields with direct application to Site activities such as remediation technology, risk assessment, toxicology, radioecology and geochemistry. The SRS encompasses over 300 square miles, approximately 85 percent of which is relatively pristine forest lands and aquatic ecosystems (streams, ponds and wetlands). Only about 15 percent of the land area has been developed for roads, parking lots, utility lines and industrial structures. The undeveloped land and waters essentially serve as a large buffer zone that protects the public from potential accidents or routine activities that could release radioactive and chemical contaminants to the environment. The buffer zone concept has functioned extremely well, and only very minor amounts of contamination have reached the lands and waterways that surround the SRS. A satellite view of the SRS clearly shows a roughly circular area of green forest surrounded by farmland and otherwise developed land. The SRS buffer zone provides a very rich and diverse flora and fauna that flourishes in the absence of significant human impact. This landscape provides enhanced air and water quality, not only within the boundaries of the SRS, but also in the surrounding landscape. The SRS serves not only as a sanctuary for fish and wildlife, but also as a nursery for plants and animals that can migrate outside the boundaries of the site, enhancing the environmental quality of surrounding areas. Scientifically, the SRS is of tremendous value because of its largely undeveloped nature and the fact that it is protected from unauthorized human intrusion. This situation provides extremely rare opportunities to study ecosystems that are not impacted by human activities, and those that may be impacted to various degrees by physical, chemical and radiological agents resulting from site operations. This situation led to the designation of a large portion (nearly 200,000 acres) of the SRS in 1972 as a National Environmental Research Park. The SREL has a distinguished history of over 50 years of existence on the SRS and has provided a tremendous body of knowledge that has contributed to Site operations, science in general, and public education. Much of the DOE budget in the past 15 years or so has been devoted to environmental cleanup, or remediation, of radioactively/chemically- contaminated lands. Because most residual, long-lived radionuclides such as cesium-137 and plutonium-239 adhere very strongly to soil particles, their removal from contaminated areas by necessity involves removal of the soil or sediment in which the contamination is located. Thus, most cleanup methods require removal of topsoils on land and sediments in streams and impoundments. The volumes of contaminated soil or sediment can be enormous, and the material needs to be excavated and transported to a disposal location elsewhere. This process is not only extremely costly; it also damages the ecosystem that may be contaminated but is otherwise healthy, and it unavoidably leads to damage to the area designated for disposal of the material (see attached article: ``Avoiding destructive remediation at DOE sites,'' Science 303: 1615-1616 (March 2004)). There have been various DOE estimates of the total cost of such remediation activities, and most have been in the range of 100 to 500 billion dollars. As of about 2003, over $60 billion had been spent on remediation. In many cases, scientific risk assessments supporting the decision to remediate have been done poorly, and sometimes not done at all. Clearly, much of the soil remediation completed in the DOE complex has not actually reduced real health risks to real people. Instead, they have possibly reduced future risks to hypothetical people assumed to use the land in very unrealistic ways. Actually, the cleanup process itself produces risks to cleanup workers, and it has also caused spreading of otherwise stable contamination (Science 303: 1615-1616 (March 2004) ). I believe that the only objective and quantifiable way to determine the necessity of cleanup of contaminated areas is a rigorous, scientific assessment of the human health and ecological risks of proceeding with engineered cleanup, and comparing the results with the same risks of simply protecting and monitoring the area involved. It costs somewhat more to isolate and monitor a contaminated area than to just ignore it, but proceeding with aggressive, engineered soil removal escalates the costs by several orders of magnitude. The risks resulting from leaving contaminated soil or sediment in place generally increases in proportion to the level of contamination, so it is critical to carefully measure and document the levels of each identifiable contaminant in the area of concern as a first step in determining what action, if any, to take. The second action is to use science-based methods of assessing the human health and ecological risks from such documented levels of contamination. If the risks resulting from leaving contamination in place are sufficiently low, and if the costs of, and damage from, cleanup are sufficiently high, then it is difficult to justify action to remediate. The SREL is ideally poised to continue the science needed to make such decisions at the SRS. Just as importantly, SREL has the necessary credibility with the public and the regulatory agencies to have their findings trusted and used in the decision-making process. It seems instructive at this point to summarize an actual case study at the SRS that involved choosing between alternative approaches to managing a contamination situation that required relatively urgent action. The case study involved Par Pond, a 2,600 acre impoundment that was used for about 30 years to cool hot water from the P and R military production reactors. The reactors were shut down permanently by 1988, so the reservoir was no longer needed for the purpose of cooling. In 1991, there were signs that the dam which created the reservoir was beginning to erode internally and starting to leak. As a safety precaution for people living downstream, the water level was lowered by about 20 feet, which exposed approximately 50 percent of the area of bottom sediments. The sediments in the reservoir had accumulated radioactive contamination during various periods of reactor operations, but most came from leaking fuel elements in R reactor in the late 1950s and early 1960s. The primary contaminant was cesium-137, a radionuclide with a 30 year half life that tends to be mobile in local ecosystems and which readily accumulates in plants, animals, and potentially in people. This situation led to the need to examine alternatives for managing Par Pond and its lakebed. On the one hand, the levels of cesium-137 were sufficiently high to generate concern about protecting hypothetical people in the future who might use the area to grow crops, or people who might consume fish living in the reservoir. On the other hand, the 30 year stability and unexploited nature of the reservoir allowed the natural development of 30 shoreline miles of rich wetland/ littoral vegetation, a diverse and productive fishery that attracted bald eagles and osprey, American alligators, turtles and other wildlife. It also attracted thousands of waterfowl that found sanctuary from hunters during the winter months. In essence, Par Pond had become a large fish and wildlife refuge of exceptional quality. It was often referred to as one of the ``crown jewels'' of the many different and exceptional ecosystems of the SRS. Clearly, remediation of the reservoir would destroy this entire ecosystem. The Par Pond situation did not escape the attention of the regulatory agencies. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) declared the exposed lakebed a CERCLA or ``Superfund'' site, a designation which imposes a defined protocol for assessing all feasible alternatives for managing the site. The main alternative strategies that were developed and studied included: 1. Draining, breaching the dam, and converting the lakebed to forest or other vegetation cover, 2. Draining, breaching the dam, and excavating and removing the sediments, 3. Draining and attempting to fix the sediments in place, and 4. Repairing the dam and refilling the reservoir to cover the <SUP>137</SUP>Cs-contaminated sediments. Option 1 initially looked feasible, and a generic, ``paper'' risk assessment by a non-SRS affiliated laboratory suggested acceptable risks for a hypothetical self-sufficient site resident who farmed the lakebed and subsisted on foods grown there. However, SREL research by scientists who made actual measurements on the lakebed contradicted the earlier study. Site-specific research showed the <SUP>137</SUP>Cs to be taken up by food crops to a much greater extent than did the generic ``paper'' risk assessment, leading to a hypothetical risk that could exceed the EPA-unacceptable threshold of 10-4 by a factor of about 30. The 10-4 threshold means a one chance in 10,000 of getting fatal cancer from the exposure to radiation. This meant that Option 1 was an unacceptable management strategy. Option 3, fixing the <SUP>137</SUP>Cs in place was not considered feasible, due to unproven technologies for doing so, and very high costs. That left Options 2 and 4 for further consideration. Option 4, repairing the dam and refilling the reservoir initially looked unfavorable due to the cost, estimated at 10-15 million dollars. However, when Option 2, excavating and transporting the sediments elsewhere was examined, the cost estimate exceeded 4 billion dollars! Furthermore, Option 2 would have destroyed the Par Pond ecosystem and would have created serious water quality problems downstream due to erosion of sediments before the soil became stabilized with vegetation. At this point, Option 4 appeared to be the best solution, but then the question arose as to the effects of the <SUP>137</SUP>Cs radiation exposure to plants, animals, and hypothetical fishermen who might consume fish from the reservoir. Again, SREL research and assessment provided the answers. The radiation dose rates to plants and animals living in Par Pond would be well under the DOE protection guidelines (0.1 or 1.0 rad/day, depending on species), and the risk to the hypothetical fisherman consuming fish from the reservoir would also be under the EPA risk guideline of 10-4. Furthermore, decades of SREL research on the Par Pond biota showed no indication of radiation effects. On the contrary, the plants and animals living in the reservoir were diverse, robust and self-sustaining. In the end, the decision was made to pursue Option 4, repairing the dam and refilling the reservoir. The dam repair and enhancement was completed at a cost of about 12 million dollars. The reservoir was refilled and the ecosystem was almost fully recovered within about five years. The cost to repair the dam was less than one percent of the cost of Option 2, engineered cleanup. The cost for the SREL research which supported Option 4 was approximately $200,000, or at least 800 times less than the cost of engineered sediment removal. A final way in which SREL contributed to this sensible decision was to provide tours of Par Pond for personnel affiliated with State and federal regulatory agencies. Actually seeing the ecosystem in person and talking with scientists having first-hand knowledge gave key people a far different impression than just reviewing piles of documents. I believe that this kind of success story can be repeated many times over in the future, leading to preservation of ecologically-valuable areas and saving large sums of money as well. However, a decision such as this requires detailed scientific information directly relevant to the problem, and the information needs to be generated by an independent, credible laboratory. SREL is that kind of laboratory. In conclusion, I believe the following points are true and relevant to the current funding crisis for the SREL: <bullet> The SRS is of great social, ecological, scientific and educational value. SREL should be funded to continue and even expand its role as an independent scientific organization that plays a key role in the long-term stewardship of the SRS. <bullet> SREL research has saved the government far more money than it has received. The Par Pond example alone proves this notion. <bullet> SREL research over the last 50 years has demonstrated time and again how nuclear activities can be compatible with a high degree of environmental quality. <bullet> SREL's work is credible to other scientists, regulators and the general public because it is an independent scientific/academic organization with an excellent reputation for integrity, high-quality work, productivity and educational outreach activities. <bullet> Some of the SREL research will be essential to the generation of public and political support for commercial nuclear power, which is expected to be a significant part of the solution to our over-dependence on foreign oil and global warming. <bullet> In terms of cost per scientific publication, the SREL has been one of the most, if not the most, cost-efficient environmental research laboratory in the DOE complex. <bullet> Largely as a result of SREL research, the SRS is probably the most well-characterized site in the DOE complex. This will continue to save time and resources in the planning process for new missions and providing required environmental regulatory documents, if SREL's ``corporate knowledge'' is retained through restored funding. <bullet> SREL provides training unique to environmental problems of military and industrial sites. Students and visiting faculty from colleges in every state have come to SREL for hands-on experience. Few, if any, other sites in the DOE complex can offer this kind of training in a truly academic atmosphere. <bullet> The funding needed to maintain the infrastructure of SREL is relatively trivial, while the costs of shutting it down are not. I fully believe that shutting down the SREL is a serious mistake that is not in the national best interest. I sincerely hope that this is realized before it is too late, and that funding for the laboratory can be restored. <GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT> <GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT> Biography for F. Ward Whicker Dr. Whicker has been a member of the CSU faculty since 1965 and, from 1998-2002, Head of the Department of Radiological Health Sciences. He played the key role in the development of the internationally- recognized graduate program in Radioecology, and is widely regarded as one of the founders of this field, which addresses the fate and effects of radioactivity in the environment. His formal teaching extends beyond CSU to numerous organizations, including the International Atomic Energy Agency, the International Union of Radioecologists, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. In 1989 he established the Par Pond Radioecology Laboratory at the Savannah River Site. His over 170 scientific publications include 98 in peer-reviewed journals, 33 book chapters and five books. His awards include the ``E.O. Lawrence Award'' from the Department of Energy (1990), the ``Distinguished Scientific Achievement Award'' from the Health Physics Society (2004), and the ``V.I. Vernadsky Award'' from the International Union of Radioecology (2005). His research on the effects of ionizing radiation on plants and animals has contributed to the development of national and international standards and guidelines for protecting the general environment from radioactive contamination. Dr. Whicker has served on many committees and advisory panels at national and international levels. These include the Board of Directors, Scientific Vice President, Honorary Council Member, and Member or Chair of several committees of the National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements. He has served on Committees of the National Academy of Science/National Research Council in the area of environmental problems of the DOE Weapons Complex. He has chaired national and international working groups and scientific writing teams, for example, for the International Atomic Energy Agency, the International Commission on Radiation Units and Measurements, and the National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements. He has served on review panels for many organizations, including the Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Congressional Office of Technology Assessment, Los Alamos National Laboratory, the National Cancer Institute, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the States of Colorado and Maine, the Office of Naval Research, Sandia National Laboratory, Battelle-Pacific Northwest Laboratory, and the Southwest Research Institute. He has consulted for many private organizations and has served as an expert witness on numerous litigation issues concerning radioactivity in the environment. He served four years as Associate Editor for the Americas for the Journal of Environmental Radioactivity. Discussion Chairman Miller. Thank you. At this point we will open our first round of questions, and the Chair recognizes himself for five minutes. Private Contractors Vs. SREL First, Dr. Whicker, your example of remediation at Par Pond, could a contractor have provided similar information to support the option of remediation in place as opposed to excavation? Dr. Whicker. They could not have come in and done the job very quickly. One of the key things was that the observation of fish and wildlife in that reservoir had been going on for decades, and the radioactivity had been there for decades. It was gradually decaying. If there were going to be effects, it probably would have occurred 30 or 40 years ago. So, no, I don't think a private contractor could come in and do the job properly. There was a risk assessment done by a private contractor on what the risks would be of farming the lake bed and someone living on the lake bed. They are the ones that came up doing a paper study with the notion that, yeah, it would be safe to farm out there, but they didn't take any data, they didn't really factor in the increased mobility of cesium-137 in that particular kind of soil. So, and I was told that that research cost about $1 million. It was done very quickly and on paper. They never came to the site to look at it. National Environmental Research Parks Chairman Miller. SREL is one of seven National Environmental Research Parks associated with DOE installations in different parts of the country, different ecological zones. What is the value of having research in each ecological zone? Is it important that there be a network of sites to allow kind of a regional understanding of ecological issues? Dr. Whicker. Yes, it is. Each of the DOE sites, the major sites, have different kinds of soil and the type of soil determines the mobility of radio-nuclides and contaminants in that soil, including how much is taken up into the food chain and thereby how much risk will there be to someone living on that side. So, yeah, it is important to do these kinds of studies at all the major sites. They all differ quite a bit in terms of their ecology and their geochemistry. The Value of Long-term Ecological Research Chairman Miller. What is the importance of longer-term data for reptiles, birds, amphibians in deciding which is, deciding on a credible risk assessment for different remediation options, excavation versus remediation in place? Dr. Whicker. Well, the long-term aspect is important. It is, you know, you can go out on the field and observe things in the field of ecology, but figuring out what is causing what is very, very difficult. Let us say you see a decline in a particular wildlife species, and you say, well, gee, is it because there is a little bit of, there is cesium-137 out there, or is it a natural cycle? Is it due to some other factor that we are not even aware of? Ecology is a science that has to be very innovative to try to figure out what causes what. You can observe things, but understanding the causes takes years, if not decades, of observation. Chairman Miller. To set an example to other Members of the Committee I will now yield to Mr. Lampson for his first round of questions. Chairman Lampson. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Let me start with Dr. Whicker, and I have a question or two. Radio-nuclides like cesium-137 and plutonium-239 are tainted in the environment for a long time, and although they attach to soil particles, they do move in the environment and sometimes are detected offsite. Now, I understand that the monitoring of animals and plants helps us to understand those paths. If these substances moved through the food chain, is it possible that larger, longer-lived animals carry this contamination offsite? And so is monitoring of birds, mammals, fish, and reptiles important from the perspective of insuring the safety and human health of people in surrounding communities? Dr. Whicker. It is true that animals such as birds and fish do pick up contamination, and yes, indeed, they can migrate off site. Studies have been done at Savannah River Ecology Lab and at other sites, and they generally show that just a very tiny amount of radioactive or chemical materials actually get moved off site by immigration of individuals from the side. Clearly observing these pathways of contaminant transport in animals and so forth does tell us a lot about what humans might be exposed to, and a lot of the work that has been done there has even been done in the context of agriculture. It isn't just pure ecology that we are concerned about. It is agriculture ecosystems, and we can learn about, a lot about that from the kind of work that has gone on at the Savannah River Site. We planted crops that people eat right on the Par Pond lakebed, for instance, and we looked at the uptake of cesium and other radio-nuclides into corn and okra and turnips and lettuce and so on, and that would be something that a self- sufficient farmer who might occupy that land in the future would be exposed to. Chairman Lampson. Would both of you comment on this question. Can natural attenuation be used safely as a remediation option if it is not coupled with a credible long- term monitoring program? Dr. Schnoor. By definition monitored natural attenuation includes long-term monitoring and modeling to make sure that the contaminants aren't migrating off site or posting an undue risk to humans or to animals. So, no, it cannot be done without long-term monitoring. Dr. Whicker. And I might add that the idea of monitored natural attenuation is a very effective one. The wisdom of putting these DOE sites in large areas where there is a buffer zone has really resulted in extremely small amounts of contamination ever getting off site. That is not to say that none does, but the levels that do get off site are extremely small because they do get tied up in the sediments, they are taken up in the biota. Actually, I can tell you that the presence of the Savannah River Site actually helps to improve both water quality and air quality for that whole region, as opposed to the idea if that whole area were say agricultural. The streams coming off the Savannah River Site are largely black water streams. They are clear. They are generally devoid of contaminants, where if you look at the streams coming into the river from the other side where they are coming off farmland is usually muddy, and that is usually loaded with pesticides and that kind of thing. So I think the site engenders a high degree of environmental quality that extends well beyond the borders of the plant. Chairman Lampson. Mr. Chairman, instead of carrying over, my next question will be longer than five minutes, so I will yield out my time at this point. Chairman Miller. Thank you, Mr. Lampson. Mr. Sensenbrenner for five minutes. National Laboratories' Overhead Costs Mr. Sensenbrenner. Yeah. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Both of you, do you believe as a general rule that research funds should be parceled out on a competitive peer review basis or by Congressional or Executive Branch earmarks? Dr. Whicker. I am not sure I quite understand your point. If I understand it a little bit, the work that the Savannah River Ecology Lab does is submitted to peer review journals and so forth, has to go through peer review before it can be published. However, it is not subject as far as I know to any kind of censorship from the Department of Energy. Mr. Sensenbrenner. I am talking about the grants to do the research that result in the publication. Dr. Whicker. Well, yeah. The grants that they get, they have to compete for grants. When they go after funding that would be from now DOE sources or non site, you know. It would be over and above their normal. Mr. Sensenbrenner. Dr. Schnoor. Dr. Schnoor. I agree that funding should be competitive, however, in the case of the Savannah River Ecology Laboratory, a certain base level of funding I think is necessary to keep the operation going and to insure and maintain the long-term research. Mr. Sensenbrenner. Yeah. I guess, you know, I guess the observation that I would make or make two observations, you know. One is is that neither Colorado State University nor the University of Iowa, or for that matter the University of Wisconsin, Madison, is able to get a specific line item from the DOE for things that should be competitively peer reviewed. You know, they ache to basically have their projects compete against everybody else's, and if they end up losing out, then those scientists are not funded by the Federal Government, and it is up to, in the case of each of these three institutions that I mentioned or for that matter, the University of Georgia, to determine whether or not to use their own funds to get from the legislature to continue that base. And I guess my question is is why should SREL be treated differently in terms of competitive peer review funding for this type of research than most of the other institutions in the country when they compete for scientific research grants? Dr. Schnoor. The Savannah River Ecology Lab, their research is peer reviewed, and my testimony---- Mr. Sensenbrenner. No. I am talking about, you know, this is after the research is done. I am talking about---- Dr. Schnoor. About the award. Mr. Sensenbrenner.--the award, because, you know, with you at the University of Iowa, you don't get the award. You don't do the research unless you get the state legislature to decide to fund it. Now, why shouldn't the same hold true with research that is done at SREL, where if they don't get the award, then it is up to the Georgia legislature to determine whether or not to continue the funding? Dr. Schnoor. A certain amount of funding is necessary at these laboratories just to keep the doors open and to keep a base-level research going. Mr. Sensenbrenner. Uh-huh. Dr. Schnoor. Then they should compete and do compete for other outside funds. Mr. Sensenbrenner. Well, I guess neither of you get my point, and I am trying to see why SREL ought to be dealt with differently in terms of funding for the basic research than practically every other institution in the country, whether it is a state university or whether it is a private university. Everybody else rolls the dice, well, with competitive peer review grants, and they have got to do it year after year after year. And if they don't win the competitive peer review grants, then they either go to the legislature or fold up shop. What is different about SREL? Dr. Schnoor. I am trying to answer your question, and that is that at research laboratories and SREL is no different than other EPA or DOE laboratories, you need a base level of funding to keep the---- Mr. Sensenbrenner. Uh-huh. Dr. Schnoor.--infrastructure, the research operation going. And that is really what we are talking about here, and a rather, in my opinion, a small amount of funding also. Ten million dollars is really quite small considering the quality and level of research that is going on at SREL. Mr. Sensenbrenner. But why should SREL get a line item and the University of Iowa doesn't? Dr. Schnoor. Well, the SREL gets a line item just like all the other National Research Laboratories. Mr. Sensenbrenner. Well, I am saying but why should they, because a peer review committee might decide that research that is done not at a National Research Laboratory has a higher priority for funding than SREL. Dr. Schnoor. I understand your question, and, of course, at the University of Iowa we would love to have a line item funding also, but we are not a National Laboratory located in one of these---- Mr. Sensenbrenner. But, Dr. Schnoor, my time is up. You know, my point is turning the coin over, you know, and that is that I know you would like to have, you know, a line item of funding, but why should SREL's line item of funding take away the potential of you getting more because your peer review research proposal is determined to be better by the committee? I yield back. Chairman Miller. Mr. Bartlett for five minutes. Mr. Bartlett. Thank you very much. Is it your understanding that generally speaking in the community at large and the scientific community and in the medical community that the lower the level of radiation the better? Dr. Whicker. Yes. The lower the better. Mr. Bartlett. Do you agree, Dr. Schnoor? Dr. Schnoor. Yes. There is a, in certain types of health outcomes, health effects, it is still thought that even a single bit of radiation could be enough to begin the disease process. Mr. Bartlett. Are you familiar with Hansey Selea? That name mean anything to either one of you? Dr. Whicker. Could you pronounce it again? Mr. Bartlett. Hansey Selea. H-a-n-s-e-y. Dr. Whicker. No. I am sorry. Radiation Hormesis Mr. Bartlett. Hansey Selea was a, one of the early investigators from Montreal, Canada, I believe, in stress. I am 81 years old, so my work in the scientific community is 50 years old and more, so he is back in history. But he was the first investigator to begin to understand the role of stress in the body. I wish I had come prepared with the actual data, but there is scientific evidence that appropriate levels of radiation are beneficial. Because what they do like any other stressor out there, they challenge the body's defenses, and these defenses are martialed so that we are then better able to withstand other stresses. I know that your perception is the perception of the general community and it should not be the perception I think of the scientific community, particularly the medical community. You know, radiation is just another stressor. As far as I know there is nothing unique about that, and I think that we are spending excessive amounts of money in cleanup, which with a hard look is really silly. It is just another stressor. Water is a great absorber. Your observation that refilling the impoundment was the right thing to do. It doesn't take much water to absorb this radiation, and the organisms living near it are probably better off for the moderate levels, the appropriate levels of radiation they are getting because their residence is built up, the body's defenses work that way. What do we have to do so that we change this perception that the less the better? I don't believe that radiation is a unique stressor. I don't think the scientific evidence indicates it is a unique stressor, and we just are straining that and spending all sorts of money we don't need to spend in cleaning up the last vestiges of this contamination. All of the ground in these cleanup areas don't have to be appropriate for establishing a daycare center where the kids may sit and put dirt in their mouth. That is the rules that we adhere to, and I think that we are spending at least an order of magnitude, too much money in cleaning up these sites, because we don't understand the science and physiology and the medicine. Dr. Whicker. Well, I agree with you, and in fact, my written testimony has an article published in Science that says basically what you are saying. The thing of it is is that it takes a lot of science to demonstrate what you are talking about and oftentimes to convince the regulatory community and the public that cleanup may not always be warranted because the damage can be great, the cost can be high. The notion of a little bit of radiation being good for you, that is a well-known phenomenon called hormesis, and that has received a great deal of attention over the years. Of course, we live in a radiation environment. We are sitting here right now, and we are getting a fair amount of radiation just because our environment, cosmic radiation, radioactivity in the earth's surface that has been there since the earth was formed. And so but the way that I answered your original question of, is that for the purposes of radiation protection, they assume that the dose and response to that dose is a linear phenomenon, but there is evidence--the trouble is there is not consensus on that, and getting the data to pin it down at the very low doses is very difficult. Mr. Bartlett. Yeah. I don't know of any evidence that says that this is not true. Thank you very much. My time is up, Mr. Chairman. Thank you. Chairman Miller. Thank you, Mr. Bartlett. I will now recognize myself for an additional five minutes for a second round of questioning. Mr. Sensenbrenner's questions regarding peer review I think foreshadows the testimony on August 1. Both of you are involved in scientific research and are familiar with what is involved, what is required typically of peer review. Is that correct? Dr. Schnoor. Yes. Dr. Whicker. Yes. Competitive Grants and Peer Review Chairman Miller. My impression of peer review for a grant is that the grant application is very thorough in the information called for, in the information that the applicant must provide. Is that correct? Dr. Schnoor. Yes. Dr. Whicker. Yes. Chairman Miller. Okay. Dr. Schnoor. I might add, Chairman Miller, that there are grants that are competitive, and there are grants that are part of a mission agency. Chairman Miller. Right. Dr. Schnoor. And I think that---- Chairman Miller. With respect to peer review. Dr. Schnoor.--you need both kinds---- Chairman Miller. To make a judgment by, to allow a judgment by others expert in the same field. Would it typically be the case that the information requested would be very thorough and would be the information needed to review? Dr. Whicker. Yes. Dr. Schnoor. Yes. Chairman Miller. Okay. If Dr. Bertsch testifies on August 1 that the information required of him was a sentence or two description of the work they plan to do, does that sound to you like the information usually required for a scientific or technical peer review? Dr. Schnoor. No. Chairman Miller. Okay. And a second question about peer review. With respect to peer review, what kinds of documents does it generate? Are there memoranda describing the failings of the proposal if peer review is critical? What, are there documents typically generated as a result of peer review? Dr. Whicker. Are you talking about in applying for a research money or---- Chairman Miller. Well, in making the decision. Dr. Whicker.--when it comes to publishing? Chairman Miller. Whoever makes the decision with respect to peer review, are there not generally documents generated as a result of peer review? Dr. Whicker. I think---- Chairman Miller. Memoranda, letters, something that would say what exactly the reviewer was looking for or if the reviewer found something wanting, exactly what was wanting. Dr. Whicker. Sometimes the person who submits the grant proposal will hear about those things, and they will get some communication back, but not always in my experience. Sometimes you just find out that you don't get funded, but you never hear about why. Dr. Schnoor. Well, normally I would say you, as one who proposes for research funding, you do receive letters of review back from panels who have looked at your research, and those remain anonymous. You don't find out what they were. Chairman Miller. Okay. Dr. Schnoor. But you do get to see---- Chairman Miller. Well, that is what you see as having applied for a grant---- Dr. Schnoor. That is correct. Chairman Miller.--subject to peer review, but internally, whether you see it or not, would you expect there to be some document of some kind that sets forth what the failings were that led to the denial of funding? Dr. Schnoor. Yes. That would be my belief. Chairman Miller. Okay. Dr. Schnoor. Yes. Dr. Whicker. I would think so as well. Chairman Miller. And if the Department of Energy has no documents that really reflect a peer review, an analysis of the work done at the Savannah River, the SREL, Ecology Lab, then perhaps there was not a genuine peer review. Is that---- Dr. Whicker. I would hate to speculate. Dr. Schnoor. I couldn't speak for the Department of Energy. I can say that there are, papers from the Savannah River Ecology Lab have been peer reviewed, their technical scientific papers. Environmental Remediation Research Done By SREL Chairman Miller. All right. Dr. Schnoor, we still have Superfund sites we are still cleaning up. The sites were on federal and private lands throughout the country. Are the studies that have been done at SREL applicable to remediation of environmental damage and other areas? Dr. Schnoor. Yes. I think my testimony shows that most of the papers, especially recently, are related to the problems at the Savannah River Site. But certainly these problems are shared by many other sites, and the research is applicable broadly. Chairman Miller. What is the status of our developing the technologies to cleanup safely environmentally-contaminated sites, particularly DOE sites, particularly radiation sites with the contaminous radiation? Dr. Schnoor. Especially where you have mixed wastes, that is both radio-contaminants as well as other contaminants together. These are considered to be among the more difficult sites to clean up, and proportionately more of those remain than other sites. Chairman Miller. All right. How would you evaluate SREL as a candidate for undertaking further research into remediation as a technique for cleanup? Based upon your experience with that lab? Dr. Schnoor. I think this lab is performing extremely well considering the rather small number of faculty involved in research there and the small federal funds and state funds committed to it. Fate and Transport Studies Chairman Miller. All right. I think we throw around terms like all of us know what they mean on this hearing. I think in hearings like this where members are not willing to betray their general ignorance of the signs, but what are fate and transport studies? Dr. Whicker. Am I part of the questioning here? Chairman Miller. Yes. Either one of you. Yes, sir. Dr. Whicker Dr. Whicker. Fate deals with where contaminants go once they are released, usually either to air or water. In other words, let us say you put a contaminant into water. It is, some contaminants will stay in the water but most of them will stick to soil particles, silt particles, phytoplankton, little organisms in the water. Then they might move through the food chain or they might not, depending on their chemistry. So that is what we mean by fate, what happens to it, where does it go. Chairman Miller. And transport. Is that different or is that part of fate? Dr. Whicker. It is the same thing basically. Dr. Schnoor. Transport is sort of where it goes---- Dr. Whicker. Yeah. Dr. Schnoor.--and fate is sort of what happens to it along the way. Dr. Whicker. Yes. Chairman Miller. Okay. A knowledge of where contaminants go and what happens to it, is that important beyond cleaning up on site. Would that be important, for instance, in any kind of activity at a contaminated site that disturbs the soil, construction activity, for instance? Dr. Whicker. Oh, yes. It is extremely important, and in fact, there are cleanups that have been done in the DOE complex that the cleanup itself generated dust and that dust blew offsite, and that led to a multi-billion dollar lawsuit. This was at Rocky Flats. Chairman Miller. I think that is all the questions that I have and since that is all the questions I have, that is all the questions that any Member has. But thank you for being here today. We will have a second panel on August 1. Dr. Bertsch, this will be your second trip to Washington. I understand that you have time on your hands now, but I appreciate and apologize for your coming today without testifying. We will try to accommodate your schedule on August 1. I will let you testify first and get on with your day. With respect to the Department of Energy witnesses, I strongly urge all the witnesses not to make lunch plans, not to make dinner plans. We will continue until we have completed the testimony scheduled for August 1. The best predictor of what a hearing, an Investigations and Oversight hearing will be like, how searching the questioning will be, how thorough it will be, is how motivated the Members are and the staff is. I think you should assume that the staff and the Members will be very motivated on August 1. With no further business, we are adjourned. [Whereupon, at 11:50 a.m., the Subcommittees were adjourned.] <Graphics Not Available in Tiff Format>