Project funded by the Science and Society Program, National Science Foundation.
July 2009 - June 2011.
Seth Tuler (PI), Research Associate Professor, Worcester Polytechnic Institute
Contamination by chemicals and radionuclides is being cleaned-up at hundreds of sites around the US. Some are government facilities (i.e., DOE, DOD, NASA) that have been involved in defense-related activities (e.g., nuclear weapons production, military bases). Many are private (e.g., low level radioactive waste facilities, landfills, uranium mining and tailing sites, old industrial facilities).
While Federal, state, and local agencies are moving ahead with clean-ups of many sites, oftentimes it does not mean that all contaminants have been removed. For example, DOE defines clean-up complete when groundwater contamination is contained or monitoring is in place - not when all contamination is eliminated. At many sites it may be impossible or impractical to remove all contaminants (such as plutonium in the soils around Rocky Flats or PCBs from Waukegan Harbor, IL); where clean-up is defined as complete contamination will remain and pose risks to the public and environment and the sites will not be available for unrestricted use for very long periods into the future (in some cases thousands of years).
Sites with such conditions are widespread in the US. For example, of the 144 Department of Energy sites that are being remediated 109 will be left with some form of contamination on site after clean-up is complete. These include large "mega sites" such as Rocky Flats (CO) and smaller sites such as Fernald (OH) and Weldon Springs (MO). Non-DOE sites have similar needs, and include hardrock mine sites, formerly used federal facilities, and many privately owned industrial sites and brownfield sites. EPA estimated that approximately 80% of Superfund sites in the post-construction phase will have residual contamination and remain unavailable for unrestricted use.
When residual contamination remains mechanisms must be established for longterm institutional management (also called longterm stewardship) of the remaining contaminants and of the systems put in place to contain them. LTS may involve a combination of engineering controls, such as physical barriers intended to prevent contaminant migration or intrusion, and institutional controls, such as restriction of development or public access to contain or prevent exposures to residual contamination. Committees of the National Research Council have stated, repeatedly, that the only safe assumption about LTS measures is that they will fail. A significant social challenge is how to create lasting successful arrangements to manage risks from residual contamination in a context of competing preferences and evolving social systems and technical capabilities.
As part of this Fellowship, Seth Tuler will engage with both theoretical and practical issues involving LTS of contaminated sites. Two to three cases will be used to investigate stakeholdersŐ perspectives about a) LTS system requirements for anticipating, recognizing, and responding to failures of engineering and institutional controls and b) the role of public participation to achieve these functions. The extent to which their perspectives reflect analytical propositions about creating and sustaining resource and hazard management institutions over ling periods of time will be assessed. Four streams of research will be mined to identify propositions for creating and sustaining LTS systems: high reliability organizations, adaptive management, risk governance, and common-pool resources. Technical training is a second part of the Fellowship and will involve a series of courses on hydrology, fate and transport of contaminants, geochemistry, and remediation and monitoring technologies. As part of the training he will collaborate with Dr. Paul Mathisen, Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Worcester Polytechnic Institute.
None to date.