Abraham to announce plan on environmental cleanup

Monday, Feb. 4, 2002 | 9:58 a.m.

Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham is expected to announce today an accelerated approach to environmental cleanup that is expected to save time and money at former nuclear weapons facilities such as the Nevada Test Site.

Abraham gave a preview of the expedited plan on Thursday, when he visited the Energy Department's Fernald, Ohio, project.

The environmental management plan creates a new $800 million account to be used by sites to speed cleanup. By moving faster on cleanup projects, the DOE expects to save money in the long run, Abraham said.

The new fund is part of the overall department request for $6.7 billion for basic cleanup to be used by all 109 sites. The DOE plan is expected to be released today with the 2003 budget.

The Nevada Test Site, 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas, is one of the federal facilities that receives cleanup funds. From 1951 until 1992, the Test Site was the proving ground for 928 above- and below-ground nuclear experiments. For the past seven years the Test Site has received $70 million to $90 million annually for environmental cleanup.

However, it is not in line for the accelerated cleanup funds this year. Former nuclear weapons facilities at Rocky Flats, Colo., near Denver, and Hanford, Wash., are first in line for the new program.

With the accelerated plan, the energy secretary noted, Rocky Flats, which had been contaminated with plutonium and expected to take 65 years at a cost of more than $36 billion to clean, will take about 10 years to complete, costing about $7 billion.

Last year the department's Cold War nuclear sites had a timetable of 70 years to complete cleanup at an estimated cost of $300 billion, Abraham said. "That is not good enough for me," he said, "and I doubt it is good enough for anyone who lives near these sites."

The new proposal set three goals: eliminate significant health and safety risks as soon as possible, review remaining risks on a case-by-case basis while working with state and local officials to develop cleanup strategies, and streamline cleanup so funds go beyond routine maintenance and other non-related projects.

The Alliance for Nuclear Accountability, a group of community organizations near DOE sites, worried that the fast-track cleanup plan could result in a lowering of cleanup standards, spokesman Bob Schaeffer said.

In August 2000 the National Academy of Sciences released a report that said the Test Site would never be clean enough to allow public access to the land. Academy scientists also warned that rapid growth in the Las Vegas Valley may one day cause local officials to search for more water around the site, where the extent of radioactive contamination is unknown.

The DOE is studying ways to monitor ground water for radiation. Two independent reviews said the department failed to provide proper monitoring methods.