Mike Nartker
WC Monitor
6/6/2014
Twenty-five years after federal agents conducted a raid on the Rocky Flats site in Colorado—widely seen as the symbolic start of the Department of Energy’s cleanup efforts—DOE has “come of age” when it comes to transparency, a former Department cleanup chief told WC Monitor this week. “I see a tremendous amount of collaborative effort between the Department of Energy personnel and its contractors, the regulators, the stakeholders. We have organized structures to accept input from stakeholders,” said Ines Triay, who was the last Senate-confirmed Assistant Energy Secretary for Environmental Management. Triay, who left the cleanup program in 2011, added, “And the regulatory framework is very robust. We have worked out—sometimes through litigation—the regulatory framework that is going to be utilized for the Environmental Management program. That is a marked difference between then and now, if you will.”
On June 6, 1989, agents from the FBI and the Environmental Protection Agency carried out “Operation Desert Glow” at the Rocky Flats site, which was used to produce plutonium pits for nuclear weapons. The raid was conducted in response to alleged environmental violations at the site, and operator Rockwell International was later charged with criminal environmental violations. The company subsequently pled guilty and paid a fine of $18.5 million. The term “raid” may have been a bit of a misnomer, though, according to Leo Duffy, the first head of DOE’s cleanup program, who noted this week that the FBI had received the Department’s approval to enter the high-security site. “The FBI didn’t really raid [the site], even though that’s what the papers said. Admiral Watkins had to give his approval for them to enter the plant,” Duffy told WC Monitor, referring to James Watkins, who was the Secretary of Energy at the time. “The FBI could not go into any areas that were radioactive because they weren’t radioactive-trained and they needed an escort,” Duffy said. “They said they were going to make copies of everything in the files, and we said, ‘Go right ahead. Just document what you take.’”
From the subject of a federal raid, Rocky Flats would go on to become of one of the major successes of DOE’s Office of Environmental Management. Cleanup work began at the site in the mid-1990s, and the project was completed in the fall of 2005—decades ahead of initially projected schedules. The Rocky Flats cleanup “turned around the thought that nothing could ever be completely finished, completely accepted from a regulatory perspective as completed,” Triay said. “We demonstrated that that was not the case and that, indeed, we could perform extremely complex cleanup and get regulatory approval as well as stakeholder acceptance.”
Rocky Flats Cleanup ‘Perfect Storm’ of Factors
DOE’s use of a cost-plus-incentive fee-type contract has been seen by many as one of the major factors in the successful completion of the Rocky Flats cleanup. However, David Trimble of the Government Accountability Office said this week that other factors played a strong role. “Many people will point to the success of the cleanup [and say] the success was because of the incentivized contract. I think that there’s an element to look at there, but then you have to immediately ask, ‘Well, that’s been tried in other contracts—look at MOX for that matter—and it hasn’t worked there. So was that really the answer?’” Trimble told WC Monitor, referring to the Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility project that has experienced significant cost increases.
Trimble went on to say, “What doesn’t get mentioned as much, in terms of the success, is the scope reductions to the work. By that I mean initial estimates of the cost were assuming they would have to remove the large foundations at the complex. They were able to strike agreements that they didn’t have to remove those. Also, the plutonium contamination was much less than originally thought, and that’s largely unique to that site because it’s rocky and it’s dry, which is not common if you’re looking anywhere east of the Mississippi. So these things saved a lot of money, but that was not so much a management efficiency issue. These were very successful reductions in scope.”
The Rocky Flats cleanup was at the center of “a perfect storm” of factors, Trimble said. “You had the political [support] on the Hill. You had this political push from the state because the land that was going to be reclaimed was considered valuable given the boom in real estate development. They had agreements to reduce scope by being able to leave the foundations. The plutonium contamination was less than thought. And internally you had support,” he said. “It’s not to be a criticism of it. It’s just to say it’s important to look hard at why they were able to achieve the mission to figure out what you can learn from that. You can’t look at it through very simple glasses. You have to look hard and remember all of the facts of the time.”
When asked if such a “perfect storm” could again happen at another cleanup site, Trimble replied, “Being an auditor, I don’t think you look for perfect storms. You look for processes and positive procedures that get you success on a regular basis. The ‘perfect storm’ idea is kind of like the ‘great man’ theory—you need a great leader to make it happen. That sort of rubs against the grain of an auditor—no, you should have an organizational capability and processes to ensure your success.”
How Should DOE Now Prioritize Cleanup Efforts?
DOE’s success at Rocky Flats also came about because the site, along with the Fernald and Mound sites in Ohio, was designated as a “closure” site, and as a result was given higher funding priority over other DOE cleanup sites. Today, however, such a prioritization approach would likely be met with resistance from state officials, Triay said. “I’m not certain whether that is going to be an approach that would be successful. During the Recovery Act, we actually demonstrated that a lot of cleanup could be done with the infrastructure that we have. For that reason, I believe that many of the sites are going to want to be part of the priority sites because we made a lot of progress across the complex,” she said. “I believe that because of the maturity of the Environmental Management program, very likely all of the states are going to want to make some amount of progress [and] show their citizens some amount of progress in the cleanup.”
Instead, Triay suggested that work at each individual site be prioritized with an eye toward work that can be fully completed. “The states, the stakeholders and the Department of Energy come together and say, ‘At this site we’ll concentrate on this part of the cleanup and then, when we finish that particular piece of the cleanup, we will engage the next set of activities.’ Rather than attempting to do everything at every site,” she said. Such an approach would still need to incorporate risk-based decision-making, Triay said. “The prioritization needs to be based on risk. There’s no question about it,” she said, adding, “My point is if it is evident that a particular effort is going to take longer because we’re still trying to work out some of the issues associated with that particular cleanup, maybe we can concentrate on an activity or a project within that site that can complete while some of the experimental work, or some of the technology, is being developed or discussed between the regulators, the stakeholders and the Department of Energy.”
Triay added, “Those are the opportunities that we need to capitalize on so that we can acknowledge the risk, establish our priorities based on risk because that is the logical thing to do, but at that point then ask, ‘Can we complete this so we can take that money and invest it in then completing the more complex activities that we still need to work out some of the regulatory aspects or some of the technological aspects?’ And if the answer is yes, we should do it.”
