An agreement between the U.S. Department of Energy Assistant Secretary for Environmental Management, the DOE Savannah River Operations Office, and the DOE national laboratories involved in the contaminant plume containment and remediation focus area was signed December first. Later in December, Clyde Frank, Deputy Assistant Secretary for the Office of Technology Development, announced the Idaho Operations Office will be the lead office for the mixed waste focus area.
Focus area concept
DOE's Office of Environmental
Management (EM) conducts thousands of activities in the
public and private sectors all over the country. About a year
ago, Assistant Secretary Thomas Grumbly said EM needed to define
more clearly the major reasons for and aims of its research and
development activities. Grumbly asked EM to decide which
environmental restoration and waste management problems were most
important from a research and development perspective. That job
came mostly to the Office of Technology Development. Then, EM had
to form teams, at headquarters and across the country, with
appropriate people to represent industry; academia; and national,
state, and local stakeholders to manage and solve its
environmental cleanup problems.
EM called the five major problem-categories "focus areas." They are contaminant plume containment and remediation; mixed waste characterization, treatment, and disposal; high-level waste tank remediation; landfill stabilization; and facility transitioning, decommissioning, and final disposition. In addition, EM identified three categories of needs that crosscut all focus areas: characterization, efficient separations (of radioactive from hazardous components of mixed waste), and robotics.
The organization of EM (and ancillary government, contractor, technical and programmatic peer review; and stakeholder concerns) into focus area teams is an attempt to establish a functional matrix. Though changes like this can move slowly inside large organizations both inside and outside government, cooperation among members from different sectors and organization is real and growing.
Plume focus
area is subject of joint statement of objectives
The Joint Statement of Objectives for the Management and
Implementation of the Contaminant Plume Containment and
Remediation Focus Area Team describes how the signing parties
share concern about soil and groundwater contamination because of
the potential for health and ecological risk and in the reduced
value of affected soil and groundwater resources for future use.
Technology development for contaminant plume containment and
remediation must furnish DOE/EM with technologies to characterize
and contain the spread of surface and subsurface contaminants and
restore contaminated soil, groundwater, and to a lesser extent
surface waters to environmentally acceptable conditions in
keeping with regulations, risk reduction needs, and land use
requirements. Contaminant plumes involve nearly two billion
gallons of contaminated groundwater and more than 55 million
cubic yards of contaminated soil throughout the DOE complex.
Contaminants include organics (such as solvents and fuels),
inorganics (such as salts and metals), radionuclides, and mixed
wastes. For more about the plume focus area, see "DOE teams up to focus
on plumes" in the November
1994 issue of Initiatives.
Mixed waste
focus area selects lead organization
As the lead organization for the mixed waste focus area, the
Idaho Operations Office will have responsibility for developing
and implementing new technologies for remediating mixed waste
across the DOE complex and provide day-to-day technical
management of the focus area. Selection of the lead organization
was done on the fast track. The call for interest and
qualifications was sent to DOE's operations managers on November
10, 1994, responses were due December 1, and Clyde Frank
announced the selection of the Idaho Operations Office on
December 15. The Idaho Operations Office was selected based on
its experience in managing mixed low-level waste operation; its
proven ability to interact with the private sector and
universities; its technical expertise in applied engineering; its
ability to interact effectively with regulators and stakeholders;
and its cost- effective use of technologies.
The five focus area teams agree to integrate and guide DOE-sponsored activities ranging from basic research through technology development to pilot scale demonstration by challenging environmental problem holders, technology developers, regulators, and stakeholders to collaborate in prioritizing, selecting, and providing better needs definition and technology development. The teams also will (1) transfer developed technologies to industry for commercialization and application on DOE sites; (2) identify opportunities to retrofit existing environmental remediation projects with more effective technologies; and (3) demonstrate and validate commercialized technologies to provide U.S. industry with world leadership in environmental remediation.
