RE: DOE cleanup to fund tax cut

["Stokes, James" <StokesJ@TTNUS.COM>]

I would like to put this issue in my own personal perspective.  The U.S DOE

Defense Programs complex consists of about 2000 square miles of

radioactively and chemically contaminated lands.  Does anyone belive that

there are enough tax dollars in The United Staes of America, to clean al of

these lands to their original pristine condition?  Do the calculations, and

I will be willing to bet against it.



Therefore, at some point, there will have to be a decision, that no more

clean up will happen.  I am not saying that this is the time for that.  I am

simply stating, pragmatically, that that time WILL come.



Therefore, we most diligantly, and RESPONSIBLY spend the money while it is

available, to clean up as much as we can.  Because the "wallet" for cleanup

is not bottomless.  Remember that the Weldon Springs, MO sight sat idle for

fifteen years, before any money was appropriated for its cleanup.



Many do not know that it was the sister facility of the Fernald, OH site.

Ask yourself why the Fernald sight received billions for its cleanup, when

Weldon Springs only received millions.  Answer, politics, not technical

justification.  Fernald is 1150 acres of uranium contamination.  Hanford is

570 sq miles, INEEL is 890 SQ. miles,  and Savannah River Site is about 270

sq. miles.  These sites have transuranic contamiation.  Just usinf a simple

linear extrapolation,  the U.S. budget could not handle a cleanup to

pristine conditions in our lifetime.



The decisions that will have to be made will be emotional, negotiations

protracted, and in the end, will satisfy noone.  But all of us must look at

what CAN be achieved, and do our best to ensure that the most that can be

done, will be.  But there will be a point at which the cleanup will have to

end, because there just simply is just not enough money to do it all.



These are my opinions alne, and probably conflict with many others who

naively believe that we can have it all.

-----Original Message-----

From: RuthWeiner@AOL.COM

To: loc@ICX.NET; radsafe@list.vanderbilt.edu

Sent: 4/6/01 6:16 PM

Subject: Re: DOE cleanup to fund tax cut



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

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