Citizens board: DOE’s testing not enough; new review needed

Thursday, April 6, 2000 | 10:25 a.m.

A citizens oversight board, not satisfied with the Department of Energy's insistence that ground water near the Nevada Test Site is safe despite the discovery of radiation in test wells, wants an independent scientific review.

At a meeting Wednesday night DOE officials told the Community Advisory Board overseeing cleanup efforts at the Test Site that radiation found in two wells outside the Test Site poses no threat to public drinking water in the Amargosa Valley, 12 miles west of the site, or Pahrump, about 25 miles away.

The DOE maintains the radiation came from natural sources -- either in the rock or from cosmic rays hitting the Earth -- not from the detonation of hundreds of nuclear weapons at the Test Site, 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

But advisory board member Connie Simkins of Lincoln County wanted to know how a handful of tests that do not determine how the radiation came to be in the wells proves that the water is safe.

"If they don't know what it is, how do you know it is safe?" Simkins asked.

That is why the DOE's ground water program needs an independent scientific review, said Rick Nielsen, the board member chairing an environmental management committee.

The board plans to send a letter to Gov. Kenny Guinn, asking the state to take the lead in conducting an independent review.

In December Guinn asked Energy Secretary Bill Richardson to provide $40 million in the DOE budget this year to drill wells and analyze water samples to understand how far and how fast ground water moves on the Test Site.

Instead, the DOE received $13 million for its underground water monitoring program this year and next, said Carl Gertz, the DOE's director of environmental management.

"We'd all like a little more money," he said.

State officials want more wells drilled at such locations as Pahute Mesa in the northwest corner of the Test Site, where many of the nuclear weapons tests were conducted.

The mesa needs 13 new wells to gather enough information, said Bob Bangerter, the DOE's project manager for the underground water monitoring program.

Scientists reviewing parts of the DOE's $170 million underground water program last year severely criticized the efforts so far.

Two separate scientific panels have flunked the DOE's ground water monitoring at Frenchman Flat in the southeast corner of the Test Site and at Yucca Mountain, the nation's only site under study for a proposed high-level nuclear waste repository.

Both reviews concluded that the DOE did not have enough information about the direction of the ground water, how fast it moves or the extent of contamination.

The DOE is cooperating with the state to write an acceptable plan for ground water monitoring at the Test Site, said Paul Liebendorfer, chief of the Bureau of Federal Facilities.