ARTICLE - "DOE Stewardship Plan Violates Public Trust"

By Miles Nelson, MD

There is a plan afoot, put forward by the Department of Energy (DOE), to abdicate their responsibility for clean up of Cold War radioactive and toxic contamination. The DOE has been mandated by Congress and the American people to recover and restore the land, water and air that they have poisoned over decades of unbridled nuclear build-up. Instead, they have developed a scheme called "stewardship" that they hope will placate a trusting public and free up funds for other projects. The DOE would have you believe that "stewardship" is a sacred partnership between government and communities to ensure the health and safety of the people of this country far into the future. "Stewardship," in reality, is a crime being perpetrated by the DOE against the American people and the people of New Mexico. "Stewardship" is an excuse the DOE is using in order to save money, and it puts communities and families in harms way for many centuries to come. This crime is being carried out at contaminated DOE sites across the country as well as right here in Albuquerque at Sandia National Laboratories (SNL) and reflects a fundamental shift in the DOE's national nuclear policy.

In the past America's nuclear policy reflected the basic values of our society. At a time when we feared for our freedom from real and imagined aggressors we produced and amassed huge stockpiles of nuclear weapons. This production has resulted in a tremendous accumulation of radioactive and toxic wastes across the country at DOE facilities. Little thought was given to management of the waste stream generated by these activities. Consequently, very dangerous substances were often merely dumped on or in the ground. This careless behavior at DOE facilities has resulted in the contamination of neighboring communities and has lead to disease and death in these communities. It is well documented that DOE facilities across the nation are neck deep in radioactive and toxic debris. Much of this debris is buried in shallow, unlined earthen dumps. This incredibly long-lived waste has already contaminated the ground water at many facilities and threatens to do so elsewhere. At our own Sandia National Laboratories the ground water has been contaminated with cancer causing chemicals.

As the consciousness of the nation evolved we became more informed and more concerned about the environment and our health. Reflecting this concern, DOE was directed to clean up the contamination it had created in order to ensure the safety of our communities. But the contamination is too huge, the price tag is too great and DOE lacks the resolve to do the job. Aware of the nation's concern about the safety of the radioactive and toxic waste that litters our country, DOE has embarked on a long-term scheme to alter the public's perception of this hazard. The DOE has developed the concept of "stewardship" to justify leaving the waste where it is. "Stewardship" is a euphemism designed in a public relations ploy to co-opt the hearts and energies of good people in the community to buy into the concept of inadequate clean up.

An example from our own community is the Mixed Waste Landfill located at Sandia National Laboratories. Sandia's budget for environmental restoration is about 20 million dollars a year. With this money they have cleaned up a variety of contaminated sites; however, the Mixed Waste Landfill is estimated to cost over 30 million dollars to clean up. Therefore, instead of redistributing the necessary funds away from weapons development, DOE/SNL have decided to leave this dangerous radioactive dump right where it is, just a few miles upstream from South Albuquerque and Isleta Pueblo. In this dump are numerous 55-gallon drums of radioactive and toxic waste, the exact content of which is not completely known. Currently these drums are intact, but at some point in the near future these drums will corrode and rupture, discharging their contents into the surrounding soil. At the present time only radioactive tritium and a few toxic metals are migrating out of the landfill. When these drums rust away, however, a true witches brew will be released. This dump contains hazardous waste that will remain potentially deadly for centuries to come, but DOE merely intends to cover this site with soil and watch it for 70 years. This plan is called "stewardship."

DOE/SNL have kicked off their "stewardship" drive with a series of public meetings designed to herd a compliant populous into a "partnership" with the DOE. The first meeting was May 4th at the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center in downtown Albuquerque. During this meeting the public expressed concern and dismay that they were only now being brought into the process. Public comment was overwhelmingly in favor of stopping the "stewardship" process and reopening discussion on clean-up. But SNL spokesman Dick Fate was recalcitrant, refusing to seriously engage the public unless it was on Sandia's terms. At an earlier meeting of the Sandia National Laboratories Citizen's Advisory Board Mr. Fate was asked by the Board to partner with the public in a meaningful way, that is to bring the public on board at the planning stages of "stewardship." But Mr. Fate, displaying the top down paternalistic attitude so characteristic of the DOE and SNL refused to consider these suggestions while making it clear that DOE/SNL policy makers will make clean-up versus "stewardship" decisions and then hand these decisions down to the public. This arrogant attitude on the part of DOE/SNL representatives serves to destroy any potential for substantive partnership with the community.

Many people at the May 4th meeting were interested in why the mixed waste landfill was not going to be cleaned up. Mr. Fate explained that the mixed waste landfill could not be cleaned up because the waste is too "hot" to be safely removed, and there are no facilities to accept the waste after excavation. Mr. Fate's comments were specious excuses that only served to mislead the public. The DOE handles very "hot" waste routinely and there are a number of licensed facilities that accept exactly this type of contamination from the DOE on a regular basis. Mr. Fate knows this, but insists on diverting the public's attention from the real reason that DOE/SNL refuses to clean up the mixed waste landfill by suggesting that there are insurmountable safety and technical obstacles. The truth is that DOE/SNL is more concerned about budgetary constraints than the health and safety of the people of Albuquerque and Isleta Pueblo.

The mixed waste landfill is the first site proposed for "stewardship" in New Mexico. The DOE and SNL are trying to ramrod this through in spite of public resistance. If they are successful in this effort other even more dangerous sites will follow. This is ingenious; if they are victorious here then they will have justification to continue dumping an on-going radioactive waste stream in numerous haphazard dumpsites around the state and the country. This solves several problems for DOE. They won't have to spend the money to clean up current contamination, and they can rid themselves of the bottleneck of ongoing waste allowing them to accelerate their nuclear agenda.

In a "stewardship" handbook printed by the DOE (Stakeholder Report on Stewardship, Oak Ridge Reservation, Vol.2) it is written that a long-term program of biological monitoring (of unremediated hazardous landfills) is "invaluable" to try to "verify that contamination has not devastated the health of the public or the environment." Of particular interest to DOE are "rates of contamination and impact on wildlife, and the subsequent mobility of contaminated species." Clearly, DOE is more interested in our communities as experimental fodder than valued partners. The ethics of "stewardship" are, therefore, highly suspicious if not completely outrageous.

The only true impediment to clean-up of the mixed waste landfill is the lack of resolve and lack of concern for the community on the part of the Department of Energy and Sandia National Laboratories. In an effort to advocate for clean-up of the Mixed waste landfill a growing coalition of concerned citizens, businesses and organizations is forming. This group is called Citizen Action for Clean-up of Sandia Labs. This group is lobbying for public meetings to give you and your families the opportunity to voice your concerns and to acquire unbiased information about the risks to your health from this toxic radioactive dump. For more information visit the group's website at radfreenm.com, or call at 280-1844.