DOE agrees to be more open about cleanups

Tuesday, Dec. 15, 1998 | 11:13 a.m.

The U.S. Department of Energy signed an agreement Monday to give the public more oversight of its contamination cleanup at places such as the Nevada Test Site.

The DOE agreed to greater public oversight after a nine-year legal battle with 39 environmental and peace groups, including Citizen Alert, a Nevada watchdog organization.

The agreement also establishes a $6.25 million fund for independent monitoring of the DOE's cleanup efforts.

In exchange, a federal judge dropped contempt charges against the DOE.

"This is a major victory both for the environment and for public participation," said Rick Nielsen, executive director of Citizen Alert.

The DOE's cleanup of radioactive and toxic contamination at sites nationwide, which began eight years ago and will take at least until 2070, will be the largest environmental project in U.S. history, at an estimated cost of more than $250 billion, said Chris Paine, a senior researcher with the National Research Defense Council.

The agreement should allow the public more access to information about the Test Site, 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas, Paine said. The United States exploded nuclear weapons above and below the desert surface from 1951 until 1992. Sub-critical nuclear testing, which does not result in an explosion, continues at the site.

Environmental groups maintain the sub-critical tests are part of the problem, and they hope the new access to information will help them prove the point.

"With access to program-by-program data on DOE-generated waste, we'll be able to demonstrate the link between ongoing U.S. nuclear weapons research and production activities and the dangers of contamination," said Reinhard Knutsen of the Shundahai Network, a local environmental group.

Under an initial settlement in the case reached in 1990, the DOE was expected to spell out the amounts and destinations for millions of tons of contaminated wastes, such as the low-level radioactive wastes already shipped to the Test Site. The agency failed to provide the information, which sparked the second lawsuit in April 1997.

"It took a heck of a lot longer than necessary to settle," Paine said.

The information the DOE will provide will be kept online and up to date. An earlier report published about four years ago is already out of date, Paine said.

The environmental groups gained support from former Energy Secretary James Watkins and other former senior DOE officials.