Local group urges monitoring of Test Site ground water

Thursday, June 14, 2001 | 10:33 a.m.

A community panel that wants the federal government to better monitor ground water for potential radioactive contamination from the Nevada Test Site made its pitch to independent scientists and engineers.

The pitch was made Wednesday by the Test Site's Community Advisory Board at a scientific peer review that concluded today at Texas Station hotel-casino.

At issue is whether nuclear weapons explosions at the Test Site from 1951 to 1992 have contaminated aquifers and whether there is a threat to Nevada's drinking water. Although the Department of Energy has already spent more than $170 million studying the groundwater issue and claims to have found no contamination outside the Test Site, the board has been disappointed with the results.

"People in rural communities have brought a lot of concerns to us," said board member Kathleen Peterson, a Lockheed Martin scientist. "We represent large groups of people, in some cases people who feel they will be impacted but don't know by how much or how quickly."

DOE's National Nuclear Security Administration Nevada Operations Office plans to spend about $700 million more over the next 25 years, including about $25 million this fiscal year, to continue its monitoring efforts. There have been disagreements, however, over the methods used to study potential underground radioactive flows. Part of the problem is that no one knows for certain the direction, speed or volume of such flows.

Since everyone agrees that it would cost too much money to rid the groundwater of radioactivity, the alternative strategy has been to develop an early warning system designed to alert Nevadans about the potential for future contamination of their wells. The closest residents to the Test Site, which is 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas, are Oasis Valley ranchers who use wells about 22 miles away.

"I would say there are not sharp differences between us and the board," said Carl Gertz, the DOE's environmental manager at the Test Site. "It's an excellent dialogue on a highly technical subject."

The Nevada Division of Environmental Protection, which oversees Test Site cleanup activities, and the DOE have agreed to pinpoint geographic boundaries they believe unsafe levels of radioactive groundwater will not cross over the next 1,000 years. Their goal is to be 95 percent certain of those boundaries.

That may be easier said than done, however. Board members told the peer review that they were concerned that the monitoring could still fail due to insufficient scientific data or lack of federal funding. Board member Mike Genge, a Pahrump resident and Naval consultant, raised questions about the viability of predicting how far contaminated groundwater could travel over the next 1,000 years.

"It sounds like at the end funding may be the driver of this," Genge said of monitoring efforts.

The peer review involved a six-member team assembled by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers with an assist from the Institute for Regulatory Science, based in Columbia, Md. The team of experts, who specialize in subjects ranging from hydrology to economics, is expected to issue recommendations by the end of August on how the monitoring should proceed.

One citizen who voiced her concerns was Kalynda Tilges, nuclear issues coordinator for Citizen Alert, an environmental advocacy group in Las Vegas. Tilges urged the peer review to consider an early warning system that would give Nevadans at least 20 years notice that contaminated groundwater is coming their way.

She said Nevadans want assurances that "we can feel safe about our water supply." With the rapid growth in Southern Nevada creating increasing demands on Lake Mead for drinking water, Tilges said that "we need our groundwater resources for the foreseeable future."