Study of the future land use of a contaminated site: Preferences versus potential use

Abstract

Worldwide, agencies with high levels of contamination are faced with decisions about remediation and restoration. These decisions should be informed by future land use and long-term stewardship goals. In the United States, the Department of Energy has lands in some 34 states that require cleanup. They are involved in massive remediation and restoration efforts on lands from the Cold War legacy and wish to reduce their overall footprint. Understanding future land use preferences is essential for determining the nature and degree of remediation and restoration. The objective of this study was to examine future land use preferences for the Department of Energy's Los Alamos National Laboratory as a function of ethnicity for attendees at the Los Alamos Gun Show in New Mexico (1999), and to determine whether their own activity influences future land use preferences. The highest preferred future land uses for Los Alamos National Laboratory were hiking, camping, National Environmental Research Park, and birdwatching, followed by hunting and fishing. Increased nuclear waste storage and building homes and factories were rated the lowest. Further, hiking and camping were rated higher than at two other DOE sites. There were few ethnic differences, although American Indians rated camping, hiking, building houses, and returning the land to American Indians higher than did others, and Hispanics rated using it for a preserve as a higher preferred land use than all others. The differences, however, were not great.Relative ratings for using the land for hunting and fishing were directly related to individual frequency of hunting and fishing for both whites and Hispanics, indicating that people perceive the importance of land use by how they want to use it. Ratings for hiking and camping were not related to the number of days people hiked and camped, suggesting these are general preferences overall.

Contaminated Sites and Indigenous Peoples in Canada and the United States: A Scoping Review

“…Two of these studies utilized structured interviews and found that future land use preferences differed by ethnicity, with participants that were members of the Shoshone Bannock tribe (Idaho) rating camping, fishing, hunting, and returning the land to Native people higher than white participants did. Native American participants were generally underrepresented, however, in both studies (324 out of 1370 participants (23.6%) and 11 out of 254 participants (3.5%)) (Burger, 2004a, 2004b). Another study involving semi-structured interviews of 18 members of the Dene and Metis communities of Fort Resolution (Northwest Territories) found that since the establishment and closing of the Abandoned Pine Point Mine site, the community’s land use patterns had changed from a land-based economy to a mixed economy reliant on wage labor, concluding that post-remediation land use would likely be different than land uses before the site’s establishment (LeClerc & Keeling, 2015).…”

“…Native American participants were generally underrepresented, however, in both studies (324 out of 1370 participants (23.6%) and 11 out of 254 participants (3.5%)) (Burger, 2004a(Burger, , 2004b.…”

“…Three semi-quantitative studies examined post-remediation land uses of contaminated sites (Table S12) (Burger, 2004a(Burger, , 2004bLeClerc & Keeling, 2015). Two of these studies utilized structured interviews and found that future land use preferences differed by ethnicity, with participants that were members of the Shoshone Bannock tribe (Idaho) rating camping, fishing, hunting, and returning the land to Native people higher than white participants did.…”

Managing residual contaminants—reuse and isolation case studies

“…Many of today's waste management techniques do not eliminate contaminants, such as hazardous and radioactive waste, but rather only concentrate and/or attempt to contain the contaminants of concern (Applegate & Dycus, 1998;NRC, 1997;Rumer & Mitchell, 1995;Russell, 2000;Suter, Luxmoore, & Smith, 1993;US EPA, 1998). Remedial decisions concerning these complex challenges often focus on mitigation actions to reduce risk (Burger, 2004b;Greenberg et al, 2002;Mayer, Faass, Greenberg, & Lewis, 2006). However, risks to human health and the environment frequently remain at many sites even after regulatory-approved environmental remediation operations are complete (US DOE, 1997DOE, , 1999DOE, , 2001.…”

An Evaluation of the Role of Risk-Based Decision-Making in a Former Manufactured Gas Plant Site Remediation

“…Although this range of options was constrained in Bayonne to residential versus commercial, the full range does exist in many other places, including, in our experience, at the Department of Energy sites. 29,30 It is the iterative nature of what the Department of Energy calls risk-based end states that imposes a challenge to integrate risk management, engineering, and economics. 3 The robustness of the remediation management to the dynamics of a negotiated understanding of the desired end state to the resident population concerns and to the discovery of unexpected contamination were all a direct consequence of the adherence to risk-based principles.…”