[CPEO-MEF] Tri-Valley CAREs' Comment Letter on EPA's Integrated Cleanup Initiative

[Lenny Siegel <lsiegel@cpeo.org>]

Submitted by Peter Strauss <petestrauss1@comcast.net>

U.S. EPA, Solid Waste and Emergency Response
Integrated Cleanup Initiative
Becky Brooks
brooks.becky@epa.gov
1200 Pennsylvania Ave., NW (MC5101)
Washington, DC

January 10, 2011

RE: Tri-Valley CAREs' Comment Letter on EPA's Integrated Cleanup Initiative

Tri-Valley CAREs is a community-based organization in Livermore 
California that was founded in 1983. A significant part of our core 
mission is to monitor the cleanup of two Superfund sites, one is 
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) main site, and the other 
is the nearby LLNL high explosives testing range, called Site 300. Both 
are part of the Department of Energy nuclear weapons complex.

Tri-Valley CAREs has received Technical Assistance Grants from EPA 
Region IX to better inform, educate and involve the community in LLNL 
Superfund decisions, and has been the recipient in 2000 of the federal 
EPA's Most Effective Hazardous Waste Community Award.

We support and encourage EPA's Integrated Cleanup Initiative, and are 
encouraged by proposed actions that include:

* Exploration of opportunities to revise the hazard ranking system, 
including the need to incorporate the vapor intrusion pathway and 
exploration and stakeholder input regarding policy guidance on sensitive 
populations

* Leveraging program resources to better bring sites from assessment and 
cleanup to re-use

* Improving tracking of institutional controls

* Improving community understanding of Five-Year Reviews

* Improving Performance Metrics

Notwithstanding the above, we have several additional suggestions that 
would enhance community involvement and participation. These are:

* Improving Performance Reporting

* Helping communities better understand what Community Acceptance really 
means

* Integrating Optimization on a regular basis

Our suggestions in these three key areas are provided below:

1) Improving Performance Reporting

In almost all Superfund cleanup projects, commitments and milestones 
concerning the cleanup performance (e.g. timing of cleanup, how much 
contaminant will be removed) are disregarded in Records of Decision 
(ROD). Most RODs list a series of documents that must be completed and 
an estimate of time to cleanup the site, with no indication of the 
expected rate of actual progress along the way. We suggest that the 
Proposed Plans, RODs, and subsequent Five-Year Reviews contain both a 
measurable schedule and performance milestones with which the community 
can gauge progress. Too often, communities are told that cleanup will 
take 50 to 100 years, without any tangible way to gauge interim progress 
along the way against the end-date estimated in the ROD.

Performance metrics that we suggest include measurable schedules of time 
expected to contain plumes, time expected to reduce the mass that 
contributes to the contamination of the soil, groundwater and indoor 
air, and the time expected to achieve regulatory milestones such as 
achievement of MCLs.

We suggest that each site spell out the mass in the soil and groundwater 
and lay out a conservative timetable of performance milestones. These 
can be updated by the site, as appropriate and as more information 
becomes available, e.g., through additional site characterization. This 
timetable would then be used to monitor the performance of cleanup, and 
provide interested parties with an idea how cleanup is progressing, and 
will progress.

We regard the lack of performance milestones as a fundamental problem 
with the government's approach to CERCLA enforcement.

Furthermore, in the Five-Year Review, we suggest there should be a 
comparison between expected results and observed performance. We 
understand that these milestones may be controversial to establish, as 
PRPs are often resistant to estimating mass removal rates, and generally 
do not like to be held to performance indicators. To get past this 
barrier, it should be made clear that the performance milestones that we 
are requesting are estimates to keep the community informed of progress. 
It is our hope that PRPs, and their Superfund documents, be better able 
to inform the community of success and/or an early warning of the need 
for adaptation of the remedy.

We note that this can aid the overall Superfund cleanup, as engaged 
communities and other interested parties can, as appropriate, advocate 
for actions that will benefit the cleanup and ensure that it stays on 
track to a positive outcome.

2) Helping communities better understand what Community Acceptance 
really means

One of the nine EPA criteria for evaluation of the cleanup strategy is 
community acceptability. In our experience, we have not seen a 
methodological evaluation of community acceptance, and it is difficult 
for regulators or the PRPs to explain what it means and how community 
support or resistance may alter projects.

Regarding the LLNL main site and Site 300 Superfund cleanups, our 
organization held meetings in the surrounding communities and drafted a 
consensus list of criteria as an acceptable framework for cleanup. These 
criteria are broad, and they are evolving as additional community views 
come to our attention.

Below are examples of the consensus Community Acceptance Criteria that 
Tri-Valley CAREs drafted. The specific example used is the LLNL Site 300 
Superfund cleanup. The examples are generalized here as much as possible 
for the purpose of a national strategy comment, but some site-specific 
information is retained for better readability and comprehension of the 
underlying principle involved in the comment.

o Complete the cleanup project in a timely manner. Set a schedule for 
cleanup activities and adhere to it. The goal should be to complete 
cleanup ten years after the DOE's last scheduled ROD, with up to the 
year 30 years after for monitoring of residual contamination.

o PRPs must be held accountable for contamination and cleanup agreements 
that it has entered into with the State of California and EPA and these 
should not be altered. Federal Facility Agreements (FFA) that DOE has 
signed are binding documents. They are the only mechanisms which 
surrounding communities, local governments, and the states can hold DOE 
accountable for cleanup. If alterations are made in the FFA schedule, 
the committed levels of cleanup must remain the same, and the community 
should be informed

o Cleanup levels should support multiple use of the property that is 
unrestricted by environmental contamination. Only in very specific 
circumstances should a site be assumed to be forever restricted. Any 
modeling assumptions should assume residential communities relying on 
the regional aquifer for drinking water. Second, we do not believe that 
DOE sites will always remain in DOE's stewardship. The "need" for 
developing nuclear weapons and testing components is a political 
decision, not a technically necessary mandate. We recommend that these 
areas be assumed to have multiple uses including mixed residential, 
recreational, ecological preserve and industrial land uses.

o Cleanup levels should be set to the strictest state and federal 
government levels. We believe that the strictest cleanup levels should 
be met in cleaning up the site. Federal and state Maximum Contaminant 
Levels (MCLs) for all groundwater (on-site and off-site) should be the 
"bottom line below which the cleanup will not fall." In many cases the 
technology exists (and/or can be developed) that will clean up 
contamination to "background" or near background levels. At a minimum, 
the standard of 1 in 1 million excess cancer deaths should be adhered 
to, as well as meeting a hazard index of less than 1 (non-cancer health 
effects).

o Remedies that actively destroy contaminants are preferable. In order 
of preference, Tri-Valley CAREs recommends the following types of 
cleanup measures: a) remedies that destroy contaminants (i.e. by 
breaking them down into non hazardous constituents), such as by 
ultra-violet light/hydrogen peroxide, permeable barriers, or 
biodegradation; b) active remedies that safely treat or remove 
contaminants from the contaminated media; c) monitored natural 
attenuation in so far as it relies on natural degradation (and not 
further dispersion of the pollution) within a reasonable time frame. 
What is called "risk and hazard management" (i.e., restrictions on land 
use, fencing, signs and institutional controls), while potentially 
useful for reducing short-term risks, is not a valid cleanup in our eyes 
and should only be used as an interim measure. In no case do we think 
that "point of use cleanup" (e.g., placing filters on off-site drinking 
water wells) is appropriate. In all cases, hydraulic control should be 
established to halt migration of contaminant plumes to pristine waters. 
When soil excavation takes place, it should be properly controlled to 
minimize releases of contaminated soil into the air, and onto adjacent 
properties.

o Decisions should not rely on modeling alone. The Site-Wide Feasibility 
Study points out just how complex the hydrogeology of the site is, and 
how little is known about it. Given this, Tri-Valley CAREs believes that 
over reliance on modeling to predict the fate and transport of 
contaminants is not a good idea. Computer modeling should be used as a 
tool only, and continually updated by field-testing as that information 
becomes available. We believe that if it becomes necessary to base a 
decision primarily on modeling, the most conservative assumptions should 
be used.

o A contingency plan should be completed and subject to public review 
prior to the signing of a ROD. Tri-Valley CAREs recommends that a 
site-wide contingency plan be part of this document or part of the draft 
Remedial Action Plan. This is needed because the cleanup of a few sites 
are put off until the future, there are many uncertainties, innovative 
technologies will be used, and contingent actions should be part of the 
cleanup plan and thus incorporated into the site wide Record of Decision.

o Any ongoing activities should be designed to prevent releases to the 
environment. Releases to soil, air, groundwater and surface water from 
nuclear weapon development and component testing are no longer 
acceptable. Any activities, if they must occur, should take all 
necessary precautions to avoid any releases to the environment of 
radioactive material and chemicals of concern.

3) Integrating Optimization on a regular basis

Years of experience have led to the realization that the significant 
uncertainty in cleanup approaches requires adopting a flexible, 
iterative approach. Frequently missed target dates and failure to meet 
remedial action objectives (RAOs) have forced the development of 
mechanisms that allow for the continuous improvement and optimization of 
remediation technologies and techniques, known as Remedial Process 
Optimization (RPO). The ROD is essentially the strategic plan for 
achieving the Remedial Action Objectives (RAOs) (e.g., preventing plume 
migration). By its very nature, the ROD should incorporate a decision 
logic and the basis for future adaptations as part of the overall 
completion strategy for the site.

The Interstate Technology Regulatory Council (ITRC) notes that 
"Optimization should be an inherent element of the remedy evaluation, 
selection, and design process". (ITRC - Remediation Process 
Optimization: Identifying Opportunities September 2004 for Enhanced and 
More Efficient Site Remediation). Other agencies have developed guidance 
on adaptable management and Optimization. We would like to see these 
integrated into the RODs.

This concludes Tri-Valley CAREs' January 2011 comment on the EPA 
tegrated Cleanup Initiative based on our decades of experience, and, 
particularly, our work on the Superfund cleanups at the LLNL main site 
and Site 300. Thank you for this opportunity.

Please keep us apprised of EPA's decision(s) and action(s) taken on this 
3-year strategy to better serve communities and improve the cleanup process.

And, if you have any questions about this comment, please do not 
hesitate to contact Tri-Valley CAREs by email 
(marylia@trivalleycares.org), by phone (925/443-7148) or by postal mail 
(2582 Old First Street, Livermore, CA 94550).

Submitted via email by:

Marylia Kelley, Executive Director
Peter Strauss, PM Strauss and Assoc., Technical Advisor
Tri-Valley CAREs
2582 Old First Street
Livermore, CA, USA 94550

Ph: (925) 443-7148
Fx: (925) 443-0177
Web: www.trivalleycares.org
Email: marylia@trivalleycares.org or marylia@earthlink.net

"Stopping nuclear weapons where they start..."



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