The Oak Ridge Site Specific Advisory Board (ORSSAB) has identified five priorities in fiscal 2019 for cleanup of the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge Reservation in Tennessee.
The federally appointed advisory panel submitted a two-page list of remediation recommendations for consideration by DOE’s Oak Ridge Office of Environmental Management (EM) in preparing the funding request for the budget year starting Oct. 1, 2018.
Oak Ridge was home to uranium enrichment operations for national security during the Manhattan Project and Cold War. Cleanup is ongoing at the Y-12 National Security Complex, the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and the former uranium enrichment site now called the East Tennessee Technology Park. The environmental remediation prime is URS-CH2M Oak Ridge (UCOR).
ORASSB requested budget funds and any additional funds that become available first be directed to off-site groundwater monitoring, including the assessment of groundwater quality, public health impacts, and the evaluation of potential plume migration paths.
It also asked the Oak Ridge EM office to plan for sufficient waste disposal capacity at a new on-site disposal facility and to maintain a trust fund to build future disposal facilities as needed.
The board recommended the office continue plans to remove and decontaminate equipment and excess facilities, and establish safe access and egress from contaminated facilities.
Additionally, the board asked the EM field office plan and implement debris cleanup at the East Tennessee Technology Park.
Mercury cleanup should also be a high priority, per the board, which said the field office should continue to develop technology to mitigate mercury methylation in Oak Ridge’s East Fork Poplar Creek.
The Oak Ridge Environmental Management field office held a community workshop in April to discuss the budget formulation process and allow portfolio project directors to talk about their own priorities.
The advisory board said it used information it gathered at that meeting to draft the priorities. ORASSB said it drafted the recommendations to fall in line with Environmental Management’s existing “Vision 2020” plan to completely clean up and turn over the rest of the East Tennessee Technology Park in the next two years.
“The Oak Ridge Site Specific Advisory Board has been a trusted partner that has provided valuable insight and perspectives from the community to DOE’s Environmental Management program in Oak Ridge,” said Oak Ridge Environmental Management spokesman Ben Williams. “We appreciate their recommendations for priories in fiscal year 2019, and we believe they align very closely with our anticipated efforts during that timeframe.”
The DOE Office of Environmental Management develops its budget requests two years beyond the current fiscal year.
It gives its field offices, like the one in Oak Ridge, an outline of how much money they should expect for in the budget requests. The field offices in turn pass on the information to the public, regulatory agencies, and local advisory boards, which give the field offices their own recommendations on what they should ask for.
Oak Ridge environmental management would receive $390.2 million in fiscal 2018 under DOE’s latest budget proposal. That would be a reduction of over $78 million from the enacted budget for fiscal 2016.
