Two reports say underground water at Test Site needs better monitoring

Suzanne Struglinski

Monday, March 29, 2004 | 11:40 a.m.

WASHINGTON -- Two independent reports released today say radioactive contamination in water under the Nevada Test Site needs better monitoring, especially as the area population continues to grow, creating more competition for water resources.

Nevada-based Citizen Alert, a community activist group, released a more than 100-page report completed in 2002 saying some of the department's monitoring wells drilled at the Nevada Test Site, 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas, are not located in places that could properly detect how radioactive pollution would move through underground water supplies.

Peggy Maze Johnson, Citizen Alert executive director, said the department needs to spend about $2 million for each of the unspecified number of additional wells needed to better pinpoint the problem.

Citizen Alert plans to send its report and a letter to Gov. Kenny Guinn asking for his support in declaring the Test Site a federal "Superfund" site, which would outline specific cleanup procedures under a law of the same name and tap into federal money set aside to remediate designated sites.

The Energy Department paid for the $50,000 study out of a fund created by a court decision in 1998 that allows nonprofit groups to study the department's nuclear weapons complex.

"We know there is contamination from the fact there was bomb testing, but they don't know how fast its going and in what direction," Johnson said. "Is is going to the Colorado (River)? We don't know."

A separate report, released by the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability, examined major water supplies under all the department's nuclear weapons plants. The $75,000 study, funded through the same judgment account, calls for more public participation and better cleanup of department sites, among other recommendations.

At the Test Site, the alliance said, underground nuclear weapons tests clearly contaminated ground water but how far the contamination spreads underground and exact figures of how much radioactive material remains underground vary.

Test Site spokesman Kevin Rohrer, who had not yet reviewed either report, said generally that the test site has not detected any radioactive contamination of the site borders or in drinking water wells, and is confident it will not be a problem in the near term.

"But can we say for certain it will never happen? No, we can't," Rohrer said.

Rohrer said the department is in the midst of studying migration of radioactive material through the ground water and already has plans to drill more wells to study it more thoroughly. He said the site is testing and monitoring as much as it can that the budget will allow.

The Nevada Test Site released its annual environmental report in February, which showed no airborne or groundwater radioactivity offsite based on monitoring by Bechtel Nevada.