This article discusses creating a sustainably protective engineered and human management system in perpetuity for sites with long-lived radiological and chemical hazards. This is essential at this time because the federal government is evaluating its property as assets and attempting to reduce its holdings, while seeking to assure that health and ecosystems are not put at risk. To assist those who have a stake in the remediation, management, and stewardship of these and analogous privately owned sites, this article discusses current end-state planning by reviewing the federal government's accelerated efforts to reduce its footprint and how those efforts relate to sustainability. The article also provides a list of questions organized around six elements of risk management and primary, secondary, and tertiary disease and injury prevention. Throughout the article, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) is used as an example of an organization that seeks to reduce its footprint, manage its budget, and be a steward of the sites that it is responsible for.
INTRODUCTIONThere is a widely held expectation supported by some laws and precedents that federal agencies such as the Department of Energy (DOE) and Department of Defense (DOD), just like other government and private organizations, will not leave materials on site that will endanger people and ecosystems. One way of meeting that expectation is to choose a future land use that minimizes exposure. But a conservative land-use plan surrounded by a buffer zone may not be appropriate at many sites where the contaminated land is otherwise a valuable asset.Whatever the land-use choices, the responsible organization needs an unambiguous mechanism that ties its land-use choices to risk through a sustainably protective system that can be operated as long as it is needed, in perpetuity if necessary. Such a sustainable plan rests on a sound remediation and monitoring program and then requires both engineered systems and human operations.A sustainable system is particularly critical during a period when the current owners and managers of federal government property are evaluating all federal properties as assets and where in some case they are shrinking their footprint by turning over, easing, and selling sites to other federal agencies, states, local governments, and private organizations (Baxa, 2004;Bush, 2004 The goal of efficient asset management is challenging at sites where contamination by long-lived radiological and chemical agents is a legacy (Burger et al., 2003b. At these sites, it is incumbent on site managers; natural resource damage committees; other federal, state, and local government officials; and other stakeholders to understand the risk implications while assessing these assets, whether it leads to reducing the footprint, or, alternatively, to keeping the land but optimizing/modifying its potential uses, or plans for its management (for example, considering different remediation approaches).With asset management as context, the objectives of this article are (1...