Damage Control (cont'd)
A Grassroots Approach
In 1953, the Feed Materials Production Center began producing uranium ore for use in nuclear weapons. Until its doors closed in 1989, waste from these processes, including vast amounts of low-level radioactive radium and other toxic heavy metals, was stored on site in pits, piles and drums. These agents, as well as airborne uranium from the plant's smokestacks, leached into the ground water and contaminated drinking wells and adjacent fields. It is estimated that almost one million pounds of uranium was released into the atmosphere during the life of the plant.
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John Applegate '78 |
"I'm a poster child for the benefits of tenure," jokes Applegate, who now teaches environmental law at the University of Indiana in Bloomington, but who first found time to get involved with this grassroots movement at Fernald when he gained tenure as a professor of law at the University of Cincinnati. Chartered by the federal Department of Energy and both the federal and Ohio Environmental Protection Agencies, the coalition was charged with advising those agencies on four issues: the future use of the site; the level of remediation at the site; the disposal sites for waste materials; and the priorities among the remedial actions.
A specialist in environmental law related to toxic substances and hazardous waste, Applegate says he was fascinated by the challenges that such a coalition would face. Formed on the heels of a highly successful citizen's lawsuit that garnered millions of dollars in both civil damages and remediation funds, there was rampant distrust among area residents of government institutions that had previously denied the contamination. Applegate's task was to build a large coalition that could deal with the issues in a compassionate, yet logical way. The group needed to educate citizens and then come to community-wide consensus on a set of recommendations that would go to the very agencies many members of the community distrusted.
In the vast web of the industrial weapons complex, the two alumni and their colleagues on the task force discovered that citizens' input actually cut through systematic red tape that can tie up the cleanup of such sites for years. "We demonstrated that the public can be involved in these kind of technical decisions in a really productive way," explains Applegate. And in a process that Applegate can only compare to Haverford's Plenary, the task force not only achieved consensus on many recommendations, but set concrete examples of remediation practices whose impact was felt all the way to Congress.
By far, the task force's greatest success story was its effort to prompt the government to accelerate the cleanup and re-examine the level of remediation that needed to be achieved for the site. Experts initially estimated that this plant, which had taken only two years to build, would take 25 or 30 years to scrub completely clean of toxic and radioactive chemicals. Dumped materials needed to be stabilized; contaminated buildings taken down; topsoil removed; ground water pumped and treated; waste pits and piles dug up; and issues regarding disposal and storage of the waste resolved. "Instead of looking at Fernald as a 25-to-30 year project, it will now finish around 2005 or 2006," explains Applegate. "Originally they estimated it to be finished somewhere between 2015, 2020."
What the task force recognized early on was that the very long time frame for the entire cleanup was counterproductive to the overall emotional well-being of the citizens who lived near the plant. "The way our government makes decisions about environmental issues is very much of the nature that you go get all of the information, analyze it completely, and then come up with a complete plan," Applegate explains. "The problem, of course, is that it is impossible. A lot of time is spent wrangling over the complete plan rather than actually doing the cleanup. While all of this is going on, there's a feeling of frustration and anxiety among the residents. There's a feeling nothing will ever get done. What they come away with is a whole solution rather than a practical solution."
To spur the government to take faster action meant the community task force needed to educate the community about its options and ultimately make their decisions about the cleanup on the basis of risk assessment. In other words, they needed to examine the residual risk left on the site versus the time and efforts involved in the cleanup. "The task force ultimately made a number of risk-based decisions that were unusual if not unprecedented in consistently choosing a degree of cleanup less than the maximum possible by law," Applegate says.
To help the community make those tough decisions, the task force developed a number of educational techniques that have gained national recognition. The group first developed a tool box system -- a notebook filled with individual fact sheets designed to break down information in a usable form for specific issues. To better educate task force members and citizens about the actual task of storing the toxic waste, the group also developed a three-dimensional FutureSite system. The system allowed citizens to visualize the amount of waste materials at the site and the effort involved in transporting those same waste materials to off-site storage areas outside of Ohio.
Using color coded chips, citizens could see the amount and severity of contaminated soil and waste on the site. By moving those chips around they could then visually understand the actual trade-offs involved between risk and cost. And, just as important, they could visualize the future impact that such waste might have on residents in another part of the country if they opted to send it to an authorized storage facility. "It was very good at describing the physical part of differing levels of contamination and how that relates to future risk," says Applegate.
Applegate's experiences on the task force prompted him to testify before Congress on public input and the use of risk assessment to set standards and priorities for other cleanup projects around the country. "The people who live near Fernald and other environmental restoration sites are tired of seeing millions of dollars go into study and analysis while permanent remediation waits," he told Congress.
The remediation of Fernald is well underway, and with most of its work done, Applegate has stepped down from the task force. But he notes Fernald still has a way to go. Even after the direct work wraps up in six years or so, the ground water will continue to be treated for years to come. Citizens both at Fernald and around the country must deal with the challenge surrounding the long-term stewardship of waste storage sites which will exist long after they are gone.
But Applegate is adamant about the continued involvement of the public in such major decisions. The country, he notes, has come a long way from when government entities followed reckless practices and made environmental decisions about such dangerous materials without the input of the very public it affected. "That is precisely the danger of secrecy," says Applegate. "The idea of getting a solution that everyone can live with was the core of what we were trying to do."
