Re: DOE cleanup to fund tax cut

[Susan Gawarecki <loc@ICX.NET>]

I was able to track down the source of this information.  The

Competitive Enterprise Institute (a conservative think tank) has

released a report authored by Robert Nelson titled "From Waste to

Wilderness: Maintaining Biodiversity on Nuclear-Bomb-Building Sites"

dated April 2001.  It's available at

http://www.cei.org/PDFs/waste_to_wilderness.pdf



I've quickly skimmed it and have yet to formulate an opinion.  Some

arguments and proposals look realistic, others not so.  I was extremely

surprised to see myself quoted (accurately) on pages 7-8, though

obviously out of the original context (the source doesn't seem to be

referenced), which was to complain that funding decisions for cleanup

are made to satisfy squeaky wheels, not by realistic evaluation of which

communities are most at-risk from DOE contamination.



The CEI press release, available at:

http://www.cei.org/PRReader.asp?ID=1412   reads:



Federal Government Should Abandon Current Nuclear Cleanup Program 



Environmental Expert Proposes Turning ‘Waste’ Sites into ‘Wilderness’

Areas



Washington, DC, March 20, 2001—The federal government spends around $6

billion a year to clean up Department of Energy nuclear sites from World

War II and the Cold War, but a Senior Fellow in Environmental Studies at

the Competitive Enterprise Institute says the program wastes taxpayers’

money and has the potential to hurt the environment.

               

In his newly released research paper From Waste to Wilderness:

Maintaining Biodiversity on Nuclear-Bomb-Building Sites, Dr. Robert

Nelson is proposing a new approach that would successfully convert these

waste sites into ecologically sound wilderness areas and save billions

of tax dollars at the same time. For more than fifty years, the

government has restricted access to nuclear weapons sites because of

public safety and health concerns, and now many of those areas have

become places where endangered species and other wildlife and plants are

thriving. 

               

“The current government attempts to clean up these areas overlook the

environmental value of their rare ecologies. It is time for a new form

of stewardship strategy, to take the necessary steps to protect

Americans from any actual threats posed by radioactive waste, but also

to set as a policy priority the conservation of these DOE sites for

their rich ecological diversity,” said Dr. Nelson.

               

Spending billions of dollars on environmental cleanup is not necessarily

good for the environment, argues Dr. Nelson, and he points to the Exxon

Valdez case as an example. After the oil tanker spilled more than 10

million gallons of crude oil into Alaska’s Prince William Sound in 1989,

Exxon launched a massive cleanup that cost about $2 billion. But the

process, which involved the spraying of intense jets of hot water and

oil detergents, ended up doing significant damage to the shoreline

ecology. Since then, many analysts have agreed it would have been better

to leave nature to do the job alone. 

               

To avoid situations like that, Dr. Nelson suggests a new “win-win”

approach for the cleanup of nuclear waste sites that includes:

recognizing the high ecological value of these sites, minimizing

actual risk to offsite human population, recognizing that long-term

cleanup requires technological advance, and continuing stewardship of

DOE sites to conserve ecological value and protect public health.



END QUOTE

-- 

.....................................................

Susan L. Gawarecki, Ph.D., Executive Director

Oak Ridge Reservation Local Oversight Committee

                       -----                       

A schedule of meetings on DOE issues is posted on our Web site

http://www.local-oversight.org/meetings.html - E-mail loc@icx.net

.....................................................

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