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Executive Summary

Oak Ridge, Tennessee, is home to one of the largest and most diverse U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) complexes in the nation. The Oak Ridge Reservation (ORR) was born of the Manhattan Project and nurtured by the Cold War, and its primary missions were to develop the materials and skills necessary to build the atomic bomb.

When they were first built, the three major facilities on the ORR--Y-12, K-25 and X-10--each had a distinct mission. Y-12 enriched uranium using an electromagnetic process, which was later abandoned in favor of the more efficient gaseous diffusion used at K-25. Y-12's primary mission became precision machining of specialty materials for bomb manufacturing. X-10, later known as Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), undertook weapons research and development, especially purification of plutonium.

Now these facilities have different missions. Y-12 disassembles nuclear weapons and stores highly enriched uranium. It has also been designated the National Prototype Center, in recognition of the unique expertise of its machinists.

K-25 has been renamed East Tennessee Technology Park (ETTP) and is dedicated to environmental management. Surplus facilities at ETTP are being decontaminated and leased to private industry under a plan known as "reindustrialization." ORNL undertakes research and development in a wide variety of scientific fields; it is widely known for its contributions to neutron science and is the designated location for the planned Spallation Neutron Source.

Activities on the ORR have not been without a price. For more than 50 years, radioactive, hazardous, and mixed wastes have been buried, poured into ponds and streams, burned, and discharged out smokestacks. The resulting contamination affects approximately 10 percent of the Reservation's area and has migrated off site via air, groundwater and rivers.

Tennessee Oversight Agreement

The State of Tennessee, driven by concerns over the pollution of state waters and potential impacts on local residents' health, entered into a legal agreement with DOE called the Tennessee Oversight Agreement (TOA). Signed in 1991, the TOA requires DOE to provide technical and financial support to the State for activities in four major areas: environmental restoration, environmental monitoring and oversight, emergency response and preparation, and public outreach.

A second legal document, the Federal Facilities Agreement (FFA), was inked in 1992 and established a formal relationship between the State, DOE and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The FFA specifies objectives and timetables DOE must meet to ensure that cleanup activities proceed according to mutually agreed-upon plans.

The Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation (TDEC) created the Division of DOE Oversight to implement the State's responsibilities under these two agreements. The Division has five program sections: Environmental Monitoring and Compliance, Environmental Restoration, Radiological Monitoring and Oversight, Waste Management, and Administration.

Local Government and Citizen Involvement

The State and the Division have long been proponents of community involvement in the difficult decisions regarding environmental restoration of the ORR. Under the TOA, the State provides a grant to the Oak Ridge Reservation Local Oversight Committee, Inc., (LOC) to serve as an independent multi-jurisdictional forum for local governments to provide advice to DOE and the regulatory agencies. In place since 1991, the LOC added a Citizens' Advisory Panel in 1995 to enable interested citizens to study the issues in depth and make recommendations to the LOC Board.

The Division also supports DOE's official advisory board, the Oak Ridge Site Specific Advisory Board (ORSSAB), and holds an ex officio seat on the ORSSAB. This board was created in 1995 and is chartered under the Federal Advisory Committee Act.

Local governments also have boards concerned with the environmental effects of DOE's activities within their jurisdictions. The Oak Ridge Environmental Quality Advisory Board and the Roane County Environmental Review Board routinely examine DOE's environmental decisions.

Outside of these "official" bodies, stakeholder initiatives have taken on a life of their own. Out of the highly successful End Use Working Group, a Stewardship Working Group was formed in 1999 to produce a detailed road map for DOE to use in managing sites that have residual contamination after remediation is complete. The Division provided a point of contact and technical support to this group over the course of its life.

The widespread availability of electronic mail and the Internet have made near-instantaneous dissemination of complex information an everyday event. TDEC (including the Division of DOE Oversight), the Environmental Protection Agency, DOE, the stakeholder organizations, and other interested groups maintain Web sites and communicate via e-mail lists and listservers regarding environmental issues at the ORR.

Major Findings

DOE historically released immense quantities of radioactive and hazardous contaminants, raising important questions: What effects did these releases have on human health of workers and residents? Is the current population at risk from contamination remaining in the environment? These are questions that have been studied by hundreds of scientists, engineers and health professional from DOE as well as by numerous independent agencies and organizations. The Division supports these initiatives by providing data on current contamination and past and ongoing releases.

The Tennessee Department of Health manages the Oak Ridge Health Studies, a TOA-funded program designed to answer the above questions. The health studies receive advice from a group of experts and citizens known as the Oak Ridge Health Agreement Steering Panel. These studies are scheduled to be completed in late 1999.

It is the Division's opinion, based on its own monitoring and oversight of DOE, that there are no immediate threats to public health from current activities on the ORR. However, the potential for harm does exist if there are lapses in maintenance and cleanups fail to progress. Dangerous materials such as uranium hexafluoride, highly enriched uranium, and metallic lithium remain in storage. DOE must ensure that current operations maintain the integrity of the controls on these materials. In addition, most of the poor waste disposal practices of the past have yet to be remedied, resulting in the continuing migration of contaminants off the Reservation. These sites, which act as sources for current soil, groundwater, and surface-water contamination, must be cleaned up or safely and permanently controlled.

DOE continues to release low levels of contaminants to the air and water, treat its hazardous and radioactive wastes, and dispose of solid wastes, all under permits granted by the State of Tennessee or the EPA. The Division monitors these activities to ensure that DOE remains in compliance. The results thus far indicate that DOE's current operations typically meet the requirements of its state and federal permits and do not pose health risks to the public.

Reindustrialization of ETTP is an avenue by which DOE has hoped to accelerate the cleanup of usable buildings and bring new jobs to Oak Ridge. The Division supports these goals but is committed to ensuring that reindustrialization does not interfere with mandated progress on site cleanup and does not pose a health hazard to private-sector workers on site.

Key Issues and Challenges

Today's cooperative relationship between DOE, EPA and the State of Tennessee evolved from a difficult situation in 1983. Massive quantities of mercury, released for years from Y-12, were discovered to have polluted East Fork Poplar Creek, which runs through downtown Oak Ridge. Court action forced a reluctant DOE to begin complying with federal and State laws and regulations.

The current partnership between these three entities is based on open communication, mutual respect for the different interests of each party, and the shared desire to accomplish site cleanups. This relationship took another step forward this year with the initiation of periodic meetings at the highest management levels between Oak Ridge Operations, EPA Region 4, and the Division.

Remarkable progress has been made in the past few years. East Fork Poplar Creek has been cleaned up, numerous other sites have been closed, and other significant milestones have been achieved. DOE has recently come to an agreement with the State on how to ensure adequate funding for long-term care of the planned on-site Environmental Management Waste Management Facility. However, many challenges remain--predictably, these are the most difficult to address. They include:

• Providing sufficient resources for long-term control and monitoring--or "stewardship"--of contamination left on the ORR;

  Today's cooperative relationship between DOE, EPA and the State of Tennessee evolved from a difficult situation.

• Coming to key decisions on how to address widespread groundwater contamination and the disposition of burial grounds that contain extremely long-lived radionuclides;
• Finding an appropriate disposal option for the huge inventory of low-level waste stored on the ORR as well as for the types of cleanup wastes that will be ineligible for disposal in the Environmental Management Waste Management Facility;
• Ensuring that the State of Tennessee will be treated equitably when the burdens of waste treatment and disposal are decided at the national level;
• Balancing the desire to reindustrialize ETTP with the need to decontaminate facilities and clean up significant problems at this still-contaminated site;
• Verifying that tools, metals, and other assets released into the public sector are appropriately decontaminated;
• Resolving health and safety questions raised by DOE and contractor workers and by area residents; and
• Providing adequate, long-term level funding for Environmental Management at ORO in the face of federal budget restrictions and commensurate with the severity of its contamination problems.

Download the report in PDF format (810 KB).

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