Fact of the Day
Democrats Get It Wrong On DOD And DOE Clean-Up
At today’s hearing, “Oversight Hearing on Cleanup Efforts at Federal Facilities,” Senate Democrats stated that the Department of Defense and the Department of Energy are not cleaning up their facilities –going so far as to say: “it is unacceptable delaying cleanup at their sites. DOD is putting themselves above the law.”
FACT: DoD has invested over $28 billion on environmental restoration at over 31,000 sites located on more than 1,600 active facilities, 200 Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) facilities, and 9,900 Formerly Used Defense Sites (FUDS) properties. As of the end of fiscal year 2007, over 21,600 sites, sixty-nine percent, have met their cleanup objectives and are response complete.
The current inter agency debate of the 11 outstanding DOD facilities that do not have Federal Facilities Agreements in place clean up is continuing and will continue regardless of the debate. Through fiscal year 2007, DOD has spent over $650 million on clean-up efforts at these eleven installations which have an aggregate estimated cost in excess of $1.3 billion.
The Department of Energy has done an outstanding job of cleaning up 83 of their 108 sites. They currently have completed 8 national priority list (npl) sites out of their 21 on the NPL list. DOE sites are focused on the clean-up of radioactive waste and contamination generated by nuclear energy research and nuclear weapons production. DOE has been and is performing first-of-a-kind clean-up tasks in highly hazardous work environments. The Department of Energy recently cleaned up two heavily contaminated sites to note. The first on is the Fernald Environmental Management Project in Ohio. This site is now a wild life preserve and the Rocky Flats Environmental Technology Site in Colorado which has also been converted in to a wild life preserve.
September 2008 Facts of the Day
