[CPEO-MEF] letter about Roscoe Bartlett's comments

[Lenny Siegel <lsiegel@cpeo.org>]

Pasted below is a letter from Jim Werner <jim@wernerbird.com>, former
Energy Department official, to Jim Stanton, the reporter who has been
covering Congressman Roscoe Bartlett's recent comments on cleanup.
 
April 18, 2002
 
Dear Mr. Stanton:
 
I understand that you have been covering the story about Roscoe
Bartlett. I was a US Energy Department official for 8 years, and Mr.
Bartlett's recent comments were not new to me. He made similar comments
at Congressional hearings about our sites ("just plants trees and come
back after 50 years and it will be all cleaned up" - despite half lives
for many of our waste of thousands of years) in 1994-1998 that I recall. 
 
One factual comment (if it matters): cleanup is NOT generally done to
pristine levels. In fact DOE and other federal agencies have explicitly
acknowledged that cleanup cannot and will not be done to pristine
levels, and regulators have virtually never required it. I don't know
where Bartlett gets his "facts" but I've been doing waste cleanup
professionally for more than 20 years, and I've have never seen that to
be the case.  
 
See e.g.,
 
http://ndep.state.nv.us/lts/states.htm
 
http://ndep.state.nv.us/lts/close/circle.htm
(see page 87)
 
http://lts.apps.em.doe.gov/center/reports/pdf/draftstudy.pdf
 
http://lts.apps.em.doe.gov/center/stewstudy.html
 
 
 
Jim Werner
o/(202)537-5150
Fax/(202)537-3457
<jim@wernerbird.com>

-- 


Lenny Siegel
Director, Center for Public Environmental Oversight
c/o PSC, 278-A Hope St., Mountain View, CA 94041
Voice: 650/961-8918 or 650/969-1545
Fax: 650/961-8918
<lsiegel@cpeo.org>
http://www.cpeo.org

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