Re: DOE cleanup to fund tax cut

[RuthWeiner@AOL.COM]

As at least one respondent pointed out, the sites are currently ecological 

preserves, precisely because human access is limited.  Hanford's NERP 

(National Environmental Research Park) is in fact a rather unique ecology 

since it is a temperate zone desert.  It's called the Arid Lands Ecology 

(ALE) site, and was inaugurated in 1976.


I might also point out that in 1991 or 1992, when I was on a NAS risk 

prioritization panel, Curt Travis at Oak Ridge used a program called MEPAS to 

identify the most hazardous sites in the DOE complex, and there were really 

only a few places that posed any significant risk.  However, this made most 

of the citizen activists mad, because in any prioritization some sites end up 

high on the list and others , lower.  At their behest, Hazel O'Leary 

eliminated the prioritization idea (and the NAS panel) and instituted the 

Citizens' Advisory Boards, following some meeting at the Keystone conference 

center in Colorado that resulted in the so-called "Keystone Accords" that 

gave "stakeholders" a voice in what to clean up and how to do it.  And here 

we are!


Ruth Weiner, Ph. D.

ruthweiner@aol.com