[House Hearing, 110 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
THE DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY'S SUPPORT
FOR THE SAVANNAH RIVER ECOLOGY
LABORATORY (SREL), PARTS I & II
=======================================================================
JOINT HEARING
BEFORE THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON INVESTIGATIONS AND OVERSIGHT
AND THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON ENERGY AND ENVIRONMENT
COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED TENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
----------
JULY 19, 2007
and
AUGUST 1, 2007
----------
Serial No. 110-45
and
Serial No. 110-50
----------
Printed for the use of the Committee on Science and Technology
U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE
36-143 PDF WASHINGTON DC: 2008
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______
COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
HON. BART GORDON, Tennessee, Chairman
JERRY F. COSTELLO, Illinois RALPH M. HALL, Texas
EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON, Texas F. JAMES SENSENBRENNER JR.,
LYNN C. WOOLSEY, California Wisconsin
MARK UDALL, Colorado LAMAR S. SMITH, Texas
DAVID WU, Oregon DANA ROHRABACHER, California
BRIAN BAIRD, Washington ROSCOE G. BARTLETT, Maryland
BRAD MILLER, North Carolina VERNON J. EHLERS, Michigan
DANIEL LIPINSKI, Illinois FRANK D. LUCAS, Oklahoma
NICK LAMPSON, Texas JUDY BIGGERT, Illinois
GABRIELLE GIFFORDS, Arizona W. TODD AKIN, Missouri
JERRY MCNERNEY, California JO BONNER, Alabama
PAUL KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania TOM FEENEY, Florida
DARLENE HOOLEY, Oregon RANDY NEUGEBAUER, Texas
STEVEN R. ROTHMAN, New Jersey BOB INGLIS, South Carolina
MICHAEL M. HONDA, California DAVID G. REICHERT, Washington
JIM MATHESON, Utah MICHAEL T. MCCAUL, Texas
MIKE ROSS, Arkansas MARIO DIAZ-BALART, Florida
BEN CHANDLER, Kentucky PHIL GINGREY, Georgia
RUSS CARNAHAN, Missouri BRIAN P. BILBRAY, California
CHARLIE MELANCON, Louisiana ADRIAN SMITH, Nebraska
BARON P. HILL, Indiana VACANCY
HARRY E. MITCHELL, Arizona
CHARLES A. WILSON, Ohio
------
Subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight
HON. BRAD MILLER, North Carolina, Chairman
JERRY F. COSTELLO, Illinois F. JAMES SENSENBRENNER JR.,
EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON, Texas Wisconsin
DARLENE HOOLEY, Oregon DANA ROHRABACHER, California
STEVEN R. ROTHMAN, New Jersey TOM FEENEY, Florida
BRIAN BAIRD, Washington MICHAEL T. MCCAUL, Texas
BART GORDON, Tennessee RALPH M. HALL, Texas
DAN PEARSON Subcommittee Staff Director
EDITH HOLLEMAN Subcommittee Counsel
JAMES PAUL Democratic Professional Staff Member
DOUGLAS S. PASTERNAK Democratic Professional Staff Member
KEN JACOBSON Democratic Professional Staff Member
TOM HAMMOND Republican Professional Staff Member
STACEY STEEP Research Assistant
------
Subcommittee on Energy and Environment
HON. NICK LAMPSON, Texas, Chairman
JERRY F. COSTELLO, Illinois BOB INGLIS, South Carolina
LYNN C. WOOLSEY, California ROSCOE G. BARTLETT, Maryland
DANIEL LIPINSKI, Illinois JUDY BIGGERT, Illinois
GABRIELLE GIFFORDS, Arizona W. TODD AKIN, Missouri
JERRY MCNERNEY, California RANDY NEUGEBAUER, Texas
MARK UDALL, Colorado MICHAEL T. MCCAUL, Texas
BRIAN BAIRD, Washington MARIO DIAZ-BALART, Florida
PAUL KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania
BART GORDON, Tennessee RALPH M. HALL, Texas
JEAN FRUCI Democratic Staff Director
CHRIS KING Democratic Professional Staff Member
MICHELLE DALLAFIOR Democratic Professional Staff Member
SHIMERE WILLIAMS Democratic Professional Staff Member
ELAINE PAULIONIS PHELEN Democratic Professional Staff Member
ADAM ROSENBERG Democratic Professional Staff Member
ELIZABETH STACK Republican Professional Staff Member
STACEY STEEP Research Assistant
The Department of Energy's Support for the Savannah River Ecology
Laboratory (SREL), Part I
C O N T E N T S
July 17, 2007
Page
Witness List..................................................... 2
Hearing Charter.................................................. 3
Opening Statements
Statement by Representative Brad Miller, Chairman, Subcommittee
on Investigations and Oversight, Committee on Science and
Technology, U.S. House of Representatives...................... 7
Written Statement............................................ 9
Statement by Representative Nick Lampson, Chairman, Subcommittee
on Energy and Environment, Committee on Science and Technology,
U.S. House of Representatives.................................. 10
Written Statement............................................ 11
Statement by Representative F. James Sensenbrenner, Jr., Ranking
Minority Member, Subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight,
Committee on Science and Technology, U.S. House of
Representatives................................................ 12
Statement by Representative Bob Inglis, Ranking Minority Member,
Subcommittee on Energy and Environment, Committee on Science
and Technology, U.S. House of Representatives.................. 14
Written Statement............................................ 14
Prepared Statement by Representative Jerry F. Costello, Member,
Subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight; Member,
Subcommittee on Energy and Environment, Committee on Science
and Technology, U.S. House of Representatives.................. 18
Prepared Statement by the Honorable J. Gresham Barrett, Third
Congressional District of South Carolina, U.S. House of
Representatives................................................ 19
Panel I:
Hon. John Barrow, a Representative of the State of Georgia, 12th
District
Oral Statement............................................... 20
Written Statement............................................ 23
Panel II:
Dr. Paul M. Bertsch, Former Director, Savannah River Ecology
Laboratory, University of Georgia; Georgia Power Professor of
Environmental and Soil Chemistry [NOT HEARD]
Panel III:
Dr. Jerald L. Schnoor, Professor, Civil and Environmental
Engineering; Co-Director, Center for Global and Regional
Environmental Research, University of Iowa
Oral Statement............................................... 25
Written Statement............................................ 27
Biography.................................................... 83
Dr. F. Ward Whicker, Professor, Radiological Health Sciences,
Colorado State University
Oral Statement............................................... 84
Written Statement............................................ 86
Biography.................................................... 93
Discussion
Private Contractors Vs. SREL................................... 93
National Environmental Research Parks.......................... 94
The Value of Long-term Ecological Research..................... 94
National Laboratories' Overhead Costs.......................... 95
Radiation Hormesis............................................. 97
Competitive Grants and Peer Review............................. 99
Environmental Remediation Research Done By SREL................ 100
Fate and Transport Studies..................................... 101
The Department of Energy's Support for the Savannah River Ecology
Laboratory (SREL), Part II
C O N T E N T S
August 1, 2007
Page
Witness List..................................................... 104
Hearing Charter.................................................. 105
Opening Statements
Statement by Representative Brad Miller, Chairman, Subcommittee
on Investigations and Oversight, Committee on Science and
Technology, U.S. House of Representatives...................... 111
Written Statement............................................ 113
Statement by Representative Nick Lampson, Chairman, Subcommittee
on Energy and Environment, Committee on Science and Technology,
U.S. House of Representatives.................................. 114
Written Statement............................................ 115
Statement by Representative Ralph M. Hall, Ranking Minority
Member, Committee on Science and Technology, U.S. House of
Representatives................................................ 120
Written Statement............................................ 122
Statement by Representative F. James Sensenbrenner, Jr., Ranking
Minority Member, Subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight,
Committee on Science and Technology, U.S. House of
Representatives................................................ 116
Written Statement............................................ 118
Statement by Representative Bob Inglis, Ranking Minority Member,
Subcommittee on Energy and Environment, Committee on Science
and Technology, U.S. House of Representatives.................. 118
Written Statement............................................ 120
Prepared Statement by Representative Jerry F. Costello, Member,
Subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight; Member,
Subcommittee on Energy and Environment, Committee on Science
and Technology, U.S. House of Representatives.................. 126
Panel I:
Mr. Clay Sell, Deputy Secretary of Energy, U.S. Department of
Energy
Oral Statement............................................... 127
Written Statement............................................ 129
Biography.................................................... 130
Discussion
SREL Funding Sources for Fiscal Years 2006 and 2007............ 131
Details of the Cooperative Agreement........................... 133
Does the Department of Energy Award Noncompetitive Funding?.... 135
Mr. Sell's Role in the Cooperative Agreement................... 135
New Funding Criteria for SREL.................................. 136
DOE Support for SREL........................................... 137
Who Knew About SREL Funding Changes?........................... 140
Who Will Fill SREL's Role?..................................... 141
Documents Provided By SREL..................................... 142
SREL Budget.................................................... 144
Guaranteed Funding Sources..................................... 145
Article From the University of Georgia......................... 146
Competition for Tasks Performed By SREL........................ 147
Environmental Characterization Without SREL.................... 147
More on SREL Competition....................................... 148
Environmental Responsibility to Local Communities.............. 149
Budget Allocations............................................. 150
More on SREL Funding........................................... 151
May 20th Memo.................................................. 152
Government Versus the Private Sector........................... 152
Panel II:
Dr. Paul M. Bertsch, Former Director, Savannah River Ecology
Laboratory, University of Georgia; Georgia Power Professor of
Environmental and Soil Chemistry
Oral Statement............................................... 154
Written Statement............................................ 156
Biography.................................................... 161
Ms. Karen K. Patterson, Chair, Savannah River Citizens Advisory
Board
Oral Statement............................................... 162
Written Statement............................................ 163
Biography.................................................... 167
Discussion
Conversation About Reduced DOE Funding......................... 168
Playing Mr. Allison for a Chump................................ 169
July 2005 Newsletter Quote..................................... 169
Competing in the Work Done for SREL............................ 170
Understanding SREL Funding From the DOE in 2007................ 170
University of Georgia SREL Funding............................. 171
Broadening SREL's Funding Base................................. 172
SRS Funding for SREL and Jill Sigal............................ 172
Savannah River Ecology Laboratory Long-term Funding............ 174
More on Broadening SREL's Funding Base......................... 176
Office of Science Grants....................................... 176
Ms. Sigal and Mr. Anderson..................................... 177
More on University of Georgia Funding.......................... 178
SRS Environmental Research..................................... 178
SREL Peer Review............................................... 179
Community Relationship With SRS Without SREL................... 179
More on Ms. Sigal and Mr. Anderson............................. 180
Credibility of For-profit Contractors Versus SREL.............. 180
Panel III:
Mr. Charles E. Anderson, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary,
Office of Environmental Management, U.S. Department of Energy
Oral Statement............................................... 182
Written Statement............................................ 189
Biography.................................................... 190
Mr. Jeffrey M. Allison, Manager, U.S. Department of Energy--
Savannah River Operations Office
Oral Statement............................................... 191
Written Statement............................................ 192
Biography.................................................... 193
Mr. Mark A. Gilbertson, Deputy Assistant Secretary for
Engineering and Technology, Office of Environmental Management,
U.S. Department of Energy
Oral Statement............................................... 194
Written Statement............................................ 195
Biography.................................................... 195
Ms. Yvette T. Collazo, Assistant Manager for Closure Project,
Savannah River Operations Office, U.S. Department of Energy
Oral Statement............................................... 196
Written Statement............................................ 198
Biography.................................................... 199
Discussion
2005 SREL Cooperative Agreement................................ 199
Rejection of Tasks Submitted to the DOE........................ 201
Mr. Allison's Background With SREL and the DOE Agreements...... 202
Mr. Anderson's Involvement With the SREL Funding Issue......... 204
Dr. Bertsch and the Agreement.................................. 204
Mission Critical Work.......................................... 206
Amphibian Mutations............................................ 207
More on Mr. Anderson's Background.............................. 208
Nature of the Agreement........................................ 209
More on Ms. Sigal.............................................. 209
SREL Becoming Self-funded...................................... 210
General Background From Mr. Gilbertson......................... 210
More on Mr. Anderson........................................... 212
Future Projects in the Community............................... 213
Decision to Eliminate SREL's Budget............................ 214
Raising Money for SREL......................................... 216
Dr. Raymond L. Orbach, Under Secretary for Science, U.S.
Department of Energy
Oral Statement............................................... 217
Written Statement............................................ 218
Discussion
Background on the Involvement of the Office of Science......... 219
Confidence in SREL............................................. 221
More on SREL Funding........................................... 221
Peer Review of SREL Tasks...................................... 221
SREL Competition............................................... 222
Office of Science Funding Process.............................. 223
Why Was SREL Funding Zeroed Out?............................... 223
Cutting Environmental Remediation Sciences Program Budget...... 224
How the Office of Science Provides Funding..................... 225
SREL Funding Decision.......................................... 226
Prioritizing Surface and Subsurface Contamination.............. 226
SRS Complying With Environmental Laws Without SREL............. 227
Congressional Funding for SREL................................. 228
More on Subsurface Versus Surface Contamination................ 229
Discussion..................................................... 230
Appendix: Additional Material for the Record
Cooperative Agreement No. DE-FC09-07SR22506 for Operation of the
Savannah River Ecology Laboratory (SREL) Program, December 1,
2006........................................................... 234
Material produced by Dr. Paul M. Bertsch, Former Director,
Savannah River Ecology Laboratory, University of Georgia at the
request of Jill Sigal, then-Assistant Secretary for
Congressional and Intergovernmental Affairs, May 2005.......... 364
THE DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY'S SUPPORT FOR THE SAVANNAH RIVER ECOLOGY
LABORATORY (SREL), PART I
----------
TUESDAY, JULY 17, 2007
House of Representatives,
Subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight,
Subcommittee on Energy and Environment,
Committee on Science and Technology,
Washington, DC.
The Subcommittees met, pursuant to call, at 10:05 a.m., in
Room 2318 of the Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Brad
Miller and Honorable Nick Lampson [Chairman of the Subcommittee
on Investigations and Oversight] presiding.
joint hearing charter
SUBCOMMITTEE ON INVESTIGATIONS AND OVERSIGHT
and the
SUBCOMMITTEE ON ENERGY AND ENVIRONMENT
COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
The Department of Energy's Support
for the Savannah River Ecology
Laboratory (SREL), Part I
tuesday, july 17, 2007
10:00 a.m.-12:00 p.m.
2318 rayburn house office building
Purpose:
The purpose of the hearing is to examine the past and current work
of the Savannah River Ecology Laboratory (SREL), its relationship to
the Savannah River Site and the Communities bordering the Site, and the
events leading to the Department of Energy's decision to withdraw
funding for the laboratory in fiscal year 2007.
Background:
SREL was established in 1951 to track the ecological changes and
environmental consequences of establishing nuclear weapons production
facilities on the Savannah River Site (SR or SRS). It is unique within
the DOE complex because it is the only lab that is not ``owned'' by
DOE. Rather, the University of Georgia founded the lab and has always
had a relationship with DOE that has allowed them to be present on the
site and funded by the Department (and the Atomic Energy Commission
before DOE was established).
SREL has been a very productive scientific lab with a distinguished
record of publication and an amazing amount of unbroken data sets on
the ecology of the site. While the site itself was a center for weapons
production and contains enormous amounts of waste, with ongoing waste
processing that will stretch out for a generation or longer, it is also
an enormous physical site--much of which includes pristine
environmental conditions. Largely untouched by development, the
Savannah River site hosts the most diverse and complex ecology in North
America and contains all representative ecosystems of the southeastern
U.S.
Recognizing these unique features of the site, in 1972 the Atomic
Energy Commission created the first National Environmental Research
Park (NERP) located within the DOE complex at Savannah River. There are
seven NERPs located at DOE sites around the country. SRS has 30 set-
aside areas where no development of any kind is allowed to go forward.
SREL has monitored the ecology in these set-asides ever since they were
established. Another facet of the SREL work in the NERP is that they
are a major way that the Savannah River Site carries out its
``stewardship'' responsibilities--to show to the Nation that they are
caring for the site in a way that justifies their occupation of the
land at these sites. The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA)
established environmental protection as a mission of all federal
agencies. SREL has carried out this function through very successful
public education programs to bring the public and students to the site
and show them the unique qualities of the ecology there.
SREL also collects data that is used by the site to demonstrate its
compliance with a number of environmental laws. IF SREL does not
provide these data as part of their base work, the site will have to
hire a contractor to collect that information. The communities that
border the site in Georgia and South Carolina and that are located
downstream from the site also rely on the lab to be a trusted,
independent voice that will tell them the truth about the nuclear
wastes on the site, the remediation activities on the site, and the
safety of being near or downstream from it.
DOE Funding and Cooperative Agreement with SREL and University of
Georgia:
The Bush Administration's budget requests for SREL have varied
considerably, but with a general downward trend since FY 2002. The
first budget they composed, for FY 2002, included a 30 percent cut in
the request for the lab by Environmental Management (EM). Then in FY
2003 and FY 2004, the lab's funding line was moved to the Office of
Science accounts and did well (requests of around $8 million). In FY
2005 the budget request eliminated all funding for the lab. The Georgia
and South Carolina delegations secured funds in the FY 2005
appropriation to reverse this decision. These delegations met with DOE
and an agreement was made that the Administration would fund the lab at
$4 million in FY 2006 with $1 million coming from Science and $3
million coming from DOE. It is with that deal that the path to closing
the lab begins. What follows is largely based on the documentary record
provided to the Subcommittees by the Department of Energy, SREL and the
University of Georgia (UGA).
Negotiations Begin on a New Cooperative Agreement--May 2005:
SREL and UGA's existing cooperative agreement was to expire in
July, 2006. In May 2005, the Department hosted a meeting involving
then-Assistant Secretary for Congressional and Intergovernmental
Affairs, Jill Sigal, other DOE staff, representatives from the
University of Georgia and SREL, and representatives from the Georgia
and South Carolina delegations. The Department did not want to face an
ongoing string of appropriations earmarks and the delegations wanted
some agreement that the lab would be supported. That meeting led to an
agreement that in FY 2006 the Department would provide $4 million (plus
some money from the National Nuclear Security Administration--NNSA) and
in FY 2007 it would provide at least $1 million from EM accounts.
There is disagreement about whether $1 million was a cap or a
floor, but there was ample discussion at that meeting about the
perceived need for the SRS to use SREL to further their mission.
Director Bertsch said that as long as he could pursue money from the
programs on the site in addition to EM funding he would be able to keep
the lab going. Jill Sigal requested that Dr. Bertsch put together a
plan to show how he would do that, and so the day after the meeting,
Dr. Bertsch forwarded a business plan that included the work SREL would
undertake that was needed by the site. He was never told the plan was
unacceptable. In fact, a subsequent memorandum from the Principal
Deputy for Environmental Management, Charlie Anderson, directed the SR
site manager for DOE to negotiate a new five-year cooperative
agreement. The memo drew extensively from Dr. Bertsch's business plan.
The Director of the SRS, Jeff Allison, then informs Bertsch that he has
been directed to negotiate a new cooperative agreement. Bertsch and
Allison work on this for over a year.
In March of 2006, even as negotiations continue, Mr. Allison tells
Dr. Bertsch to budget for $4 million at SREL from SRS/EM in the FY 2007
budget. When they reach agreement on a new cooperative agreement, it
provides for $4 million a year from 2007 through 2011 with a 2.5
percent escalator to allow for inflation. The agreement is sent up to
DOE Headquarters for notification in August of 2006 and then again (due
to an imperfection in the process) in September 2006. If Headquarters
had approved it, Allison would have been authorized to sign the
agreement. However, the agreement was never approved at Headquarters.
The Cooperative Agreement is Not Approved and Negotiations Begin
Again--September 2006
Instead negotiations are re-opened with new criteria for the
cooperative agreement. Deputy Secretary, Clay Sell, was briefed and he
determined--supposedly with the approval of the Secretary--that the new
agreement would provide $1 million of guaranteed funding in FY 2007
plus additional funding on a task-by-task basis.
The initial reaction from SREL was that this offer would lead to
the closure of the lab, but the SR Site Director, Jeff Allison, assured
SREL their work was needed by the site and he would fund their tasks
using funds the site Director has discretion over to award for site-
based projects. DOE Headquarters was aware of the assurance provided by
Mr. Allison to SREL.
SREL then enters into negotiations once again to secure a new
cooperative agreement. From September 2006 through November 2006, Dr.
Bertsch was working with SRS assistant managers to identify the
projects the site would fund to meet $3 million in identified needs. At
the same time, DOE Headquarters officials were scrutinizing the
language of the cooperative agreement. Headquarters was insisting on
highlighting language that emphasized funds were subject to ``need,
merit and availability of funds.'' They also included a provision that
any funds could be subject to a ``technical peer review.'' Bertsch
believed this would be the kind of review his programs had been through
many times in the past--where evaluators look at the sweep, mix and
quality of science being done by the lab. However, DOE had something
else in mind that was not made clear to the lab until months after the
agreement was signed on December 1, 2006.
New Funding Criteria are Established by Headquarters and Funding is
Denied--February 2007
In January of this year, Dr. Bertsch and SREL believed they had a
new cooperative agreement that made them financially stable. The site
Director repeatedly assured SRS that they needed the SREL's work and he
had the money to fund it (his budget for FY 2007 had $4.1 million
identified for SREL). However, in February, DOE Headquarters announced
there would be a task-by-task peer review process for all of the items
that SREL has proposed. The standard for this ``peer review'' was
established by Headquarters--tasks must be deemed ``mission critical in
FY 2007.''
As it turns out, almost nothing meets this standard at
Environmental Management. EM's primary mission is clean-up.
Establishing a metric for a project that requires progress on clean up
within six months--because by April or May of 2007, the fiscal year is
half-over--ensures that no projects done by a research lab will meet
the criteria. On May 7, SREL is informed that only $800,000 of its
proposed $3 million in work would be funded. This process was led by
Headquarters in the sense that HQ invented the review process and
established the standard. The site was left to carry out the directions
of Headquarters.
The Department asserts they were living up to the terms of the
cooperative agreement of providing $1 million plus projects deemed to
be ``needed.'' The Department also embarks on a campaign of lies and
distortions that can be tracked in the letters sent to Mr. Barrow and
to the Subcommittee Chairmen. DOE portrays the lab management as having
been lazy for not seeking out more non-DOE funding and the University
as neglectful of management at the lab. There are rumblings that EM may
ask for an IG audit of the books at SREL. As to whether the lab closes
or not, the Department says that is entirely up to the University and
the Department has nothing to do with that--as if their funding
decision and prior promises were irrelevant to the situation at the
lab.
Subcommittees of the Committee on Science Begin Their Investigation--
May 2007
The Subcommittees sent a letter to DOE within 10 days of Dr.
Bertsch receiving notice that funding was not to be continued. The
University of Georgia announced it was extending lab personnel's
salaries through the end of June--even though DOE money would run out
at the end of May. The University decided not to formally close the
lab, but 40 people had their last day at the lab on June 29--some who
had been there over 20 years. Approximately 30-40 more are being moved
back to the University campus in Athens, GA in one capacity or another.
The remaining 30-40 will stay on site to carry out work funded through
grants already in place from other agencies. The future of the lab and
the long-term data sets it maintains is unclear unless DOE restores
funding for its work. Without that core funding, the lab cannot
continue to operate. Dr. Bertsch was asked to resign by the University
at the request of the Secretary of Energy, Mr. Bodman. Bertsch's ten-
year run as Director ended because it appears the Department resented
efforts by SREL to explain to the Congress and the public that they
were on the edge of being closed.
Witnesses:
Panel I
Representative John Barrow (GA) represents the Georgia communities that
border the Savannah River Site.
Panel II
Dr. Paul Bertsch is the former Director of the Savannah River Ecology
Laboratory. Dr. Bertsch is a fact witness to every major action
regarding this lab from May 2005 until his forced departure in June
2007.
Panel III
Dr. Jerry Schnoor, University of Iowa, is an expert in sub-surface
science and engineering. He is Editor of the Journal of Environmental
Science and Technology and a member of the National Academy of
Engineering. Dr. Schnoor will testify to the quality of the work done
at SREL on remediation and sub-surface fate and transport of
pollutants.
Dr. Ward Whicker, Colorado State University, is a radio-biologist and
the winner of the Department of Energy's prestigious Lawrence Prize. He
has done research on the Savannah River site and is very familiar with
the importance of SREL's research to the wider scientific community and
to State regulators. Dr. Whicker will also discuss the importance of
the surface science work involving animal populations on the site done
by the lab.
Chairman Miller. Good morning. This hearing will come to
order. This is a hearing of both the Subcommittee on
Investigations and Oversight and the Subcommittee on Energy and
Environment of the Science and Technology Committee. We will
have another hearing that is a joint hearing of the two
Subcommittees on Thursday of this week.
Today's hearing is entitled The Department of Energy's
Support for the Savannah River Ecology Laboratory, Part I. An
enormous amount of effort has gone into undermining support for
a very small but very important independent laboratory. The
Savannah River Ecology Lab, housed at the Savannah River
Nuclear Site since 1931, and run by the University of Georgia,
has an impressive record of scientific contributions to
environmental sciences.
Headquarters staff the Department of Energy, right up to
the former head of Congressional and Intergovernmental Affairs,
the current Deputy Secretary, and the Secretary himself, have
all played a role in trying to eliminate funding from the
Department of Energy for the lab.
The overall budget of the Department of Energy is $26
billion. The total funding for the laboratory has been about $4
million. I certainly don't want to say that $4 million is too
little an amount for the Executive Branch to sweat. We
certainly want them to be concerned about amounts of that size,
but to give you a benchmark or a point of comparison, a few
weeks ago we heard that the Administrator of NASA spoke to the
Inspector General's staff and told them not to bother with
investigations except investigations into fraud and only
investigations in fraud that would result in savings of at
least a billion dollars. Less of that just wasn't worth the
trouble.
So it is curious that the Department of Energy, with a $26
billion a year budget, has spent so much attention on an
independent lab that receives about $4 million a year in
funding. And why, the question becomes, why?
The question could also be asked by this committee. Why are
we holding this hearing, and it is Part I. There will be
further hearings on this laboratory, and the reason for our
interest is that we care that, although the lab is small, the
amount being expended is small relative to the federal budget,
the scientific importance of the lab has been enormous. It has
certainly been enormous in the work that they do in radiation
measurements and detecting the effect of radiation at a time
when we are worried about a dirty bomb as the most likely form
of a terrorist attack. It is certainly important when we are
looking at almost certainly relying more on nuclear energy in
the near future than we have. The importance of a lab that does
ecological research into the effect of radiation is very
important.
Scientific research has been the core mission of the lab
for most of its 51 years. It is hard to put a price tag on the
value of the lab's research. The lab has contributed to the
mission of the Department of Energy on the site in very direct
ways. The documents that we will enter into the record today
and the story of the former Director, Dr. Paul Bertsch, will
tell, the story they will tell will make it abundantly clear
that the Department managers at the site value the lab for all
of its contributions. And the lab does play an essential role
in the Savannah River Site's need to meet environmental
regulatory compliance requirements. Compliance requirements of
the actual Environmental Policy Act, the Endangered Species
Act, the Comprehensive Environmental Response Compensation
Liability Act, the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, and
the lab has also helped the Savannah River Site, a national
environmental research park, through public education and tour
efforts.
The lab conducts environmental outreach programs that, for
the Department of Energy, give the site more credibility in the
eyes of folks in the community around the site because it is
independent, and they think they can trust what the lab has to
say. In all those ways and more, the lab is essential to the
functioning of the Savannah River Site, and certainly appears
to be worth every bit of the $4 million dollars the Department
of Energy has spent on it in the recent past.
But the folks at the Department of Energy's headquarters
believe differently. They thought that the best face to put on
the conduct for the Department of Energy over the last several
months has been that they directed the local site manager, Jeff
Allison, and his staff to negotiate with the lab in bad faith
to change the rules, to change the purposes, to change the
objectives frequently and to leave the lab dangling without
funding to continue.
They never told the lab exactly what was happening, but
they stepped in. The headquarters, DOE headquarters, stepped in
to guarantee the lab would not receive the resources necessary
to keep it operating. Headquarters' actions left the University
of Georgia halfway through a fiscal year to figure out whether
to close the lab or let it limp along to fill out remaining
federal grants from other agencies. And the Department washed
its hands of the outcome and misrepresented everything they
have done to anyone who has asked--the public, the press, and
Congress.
These conclusions are not based on hearsay. They are not
based on speculation. They are based upon a review of the
documents of the Department's own materials, and many of those
materials are being made public today, and public scrutiny for
the Department of Energy's conduct with respect to the Savannah
River Lab is long overdue.
Just as an example, the tasks that the Department of Energy
asked the lab to submit in February went through what was
called a technical peer review. Among other places in a letter
to Representative Barrow and a statement from a Department of
Energy spokesman that was prominently placed in local news,
supposedly went through scientific peer reviews. But no peer
review of any kind ever occurred. The Department of Energy
staff now concedes that. A different kind of review was done at
the behest of the headquarters, one that seems unprecedented
and invented solely for the occasion and solely to produce the
outcome of closing the lab. The headquarters instructed the
site to evaluate each task on whether it met a mission-critical
need in 2007, this year. No one at the lab knew what that
meant, and most of the research that they have done over their
51 years has been long-term research, not research designed to
bring an immediate result.
And it appears the Department of Energy meant by that only
research done to do immediate cleanup, and no other research
performed at the lab was worth funding. The process appears to
be designed to reach a result and, the result was to close the
lab. No science lab in the country does research that pays
dividends in the next six months. That is just not what science
is about. A handful of people at headquarters really
eviscerated the lab, a lab that is internationally renowned for
work that has saved the taxpayers millions, maybe billions of
dollars, and the question is, why? Why have they worked so hard
to close a lab that has received $4 million a year? Is it
really about the $4 million?
We will hear from the Department at our next hearing. Mr.
Clay Sell has agreed to appear. He agreed to appear today, but
his schedule and personal circumstances have made that
impossible, so we will hear from him at a later date. I know
there are some folks from the Department of Energy here today
observing the hearing. We welcome you, and we hope that we do
receive all the documents that we have requested in time to
review them thoroughly before Mr. Sell does testify.
And we look forward to hearing the Department to explain
their side of events.
I would now like to recognize Mr. Nick Lampson,
distinguished Chairman of the Energy and Environment
Subcommittee.
[The prepared statement of Chairman Miller follows:]
Prepared Statement of Chairman Brad Miller
An enormous amount of effort has gone into undercutting the support
for a very small, but very important lab. The Savannah River Ecology
Lab, housed on the Savannah River nuclear site since 1951 and run by
the University of Georgia, has an unparalleled record of scientific
contributions to the environmental sciences.
Headquarters staff at the Department of Energy, right up to the
former head of Congressional and Intergovernmental Affairs, the current
Deputy Secretary and the Secretary himself, have all played a role in
trying to eliminate funding from the Department for the lab. Why would
any of these figures spend even one minute worrying about a $4 million
a year lab when they have to manage a $26 billion a year enterprise?
The question could just as easily be put to the Committee: why do
we care about the loss of such a small lab?
The answer is easy: We care because while the dollar impact of the
lab is small, the scientific importance of the lab has been enormous.
Scientific research, and that was the core mission of the lab for most
of its fifty-one years, is not about a return on an investment today
but about giving us understanding that will guide our actions tomorrow.
It is hard to put a price tag on such knowledge.
The lab certainly contributed to the mission of the Department of
Energy and the site in very direct ways. The documents we will enter
into the record today, and the story that the former Director, Dr. Paul
Bertsch, will tell makes it abundantly clear that the Departmental
managers at the site valued the lab for all its contributions.
The lab plays an essential role in the Savannah River site's need
to meet environmental regulatory compliance requirements under the
National Environmental Policy Act, the Endangered Species Act, the
Comprehensive Environmental Response Compensation and Liability Act,
and the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act. The lab also has helped
manage the SRS National Environmental Research Park through public
education and tour efforts. The lab conducts environmental outreach
programs for DOE that give the site more credibility in the eyes of the
local communities because the lab is seen as being independent of the
Department. In all these ways and more, the lab was essential to the
functioning of the site--or at least it was so viewed by site
management. And, all of that for $4 million dollars a year.
These conclusions are not based on hearsay or speculation, but a
careful review of the Department's own materials. Many of those
materials are being made public today and public scrutiny is long
overdue.
Just as an example, the tasks that DOE asked the lab to submit in
February went through a ``technical peer review.'' In other places,
including a letter to Representative Barrow and a statement from a DOE
spokesperson that was prominently placed in the local press, the tasks
supposedly went through scientific peer reviews. No peer review of any
kind ever occurred--DOE staff admitted that to Subcommittee staff in a
meeting some weeks ago.
A different kind of review was done at the behest of headquarters--
one that seems unprecedented and invented solely for the situation.
Headquarters instructed the site to evaluate each task to see if it met
a ``mission critical'' need in 2007. No one at the site knew what that
meant. In the environmental management offices that invented the
standard, ``mission critical'' meant one thing--does it clean up waste
right now, today, or not? If work doesn't do that, then the work is not
worth funding.
It is a process designed to give one outcome and one outcome only.
No science lab in the country does research that pays dividends in the
next six months. That is just not what science is about. A handful of
people at headquarters gutted a lab that is internationally renowned
for work that has saved the taxpayer millions, maybe billions of
dollars.
One question eludes us: Why?
It is hard to believe that the effort to close the lab is really
about $4 million.
We look forward to Departmental witnesses joining us at a later
date. Mr. Clay Sell had agreed to appear today, but personal
circumstances have pulled him away. We are working to find another date
before the recess where we can have the Department in to explain their
conduct and their letters to the Subcommittees and the Congress.
Now, I would like to recognize Mr. Lampson, the distinguished
Chairman of the Energy and Environment Subcommittee.
Chairman Lampson. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Chairman Miller.
I think it is excellent that our Committee on Energy and
Environment joins the Subcommittee on Investigations and
Oversight for this very important hearing. I certainly concur
with all of the things that you have said here today and
certainly we are here to attempt to solve a mystery, a mystery
involving the Savannah River Ecology Laboratory, SREL, a
laboratory associated with the University of Georgia and
located on the Department of Energy's Savannah River Site.
What is SREL? It is a laboratory whose work has saved the
taxpayers millions of dollars in remediation costs. A
laboratory that has the confidence of the local communities in
South Carolina and Georgia adjacent to the Savannah River Site,
and the enthusiastic support of the Citizens Advisory Council
associated with the site. A laboratory that has been in
existence since the 1950's when the Savannah River Site was
established. It was founded by one of the Nation's foremost and
imminent ecologists, Dr. Eugene Odum, and it is maintained
invaluable continuous long-term data sets on important animals
and plants.
This laboratory in conjunction with the University of
Georgia has trained hundreds of environmental scientists and
has run popular and successful public education and outreach
programs on the Savannah River Site. SREL has also assisted the
site in its efforts to comply with federal and State
environmental laws. It also manages one of the seven National
Environmental Research Parks in a network of ecologically
important sites that exist on DOE property across the country.
The Savannah River Ecology Laboratory has provided these
services to the taxpayers of this country at a cost of less
than $10 million a year.
Well, this is a record of achievement that any organization
would be proud of and certainly one that deserves recognition.
And what is their reward for those 50 years plus of service?
Well, they have certainly been recognized by the DOE
headquarters. They have been, unfortunately, rewarded with a
loss of funding in the middle of the fiscal year leading to
layoffs and essentially the closure of the laboratory, a move
that places the ongoing research and the continuity of long-
term data sets in grave jeopardy. Bad faith bargaining in the
renewal of a cooperative agreement with their federal partner,
the Department of Energy, and the dismissal of the laboratory's
director, apparently by personal request of the Secretary of
Energy to the President of the University of Georgia.
I simply do not know what to make of it. I feel as if I am
in the middle of Wonderland with Alice.
The callous treatment of the employees of SREL is
disgraceful. Beyond the hardship inflicted on them by the
sudden and unexpected job loss, this decision is absurd. It is
not in the interest of the people of South Carolina and
Georgia, the Savannah River Site, the Department of Energy, or
the rest of this nation.
And we have witnesses with us today who will be able to
begin to tell us about this laboratory, its history, and its
work. Dr. Paul Bertsch, the former Director of the lab, will be
able to tell us about the events of the past few years that
have brought us here today.
We will hear from the Department of Energy at another
hearing, but I am not confident that we will ever fully
understand why the headquarters of the Department of Energy has
spent a great deal of time and effort to close a world-class
laboratory with an excellent record of service to the
Department, to the Nation, and to the local community. I
believe the ultimate reasons for this absurd and ill-advised
decision may be and continue to be a mystery that will not be
able to solve. Hopefully, though, we will reverse this decision
and restore this laboratory so that it may continue its good
work.
And I yield back the balance of my time, Mr. Chairman.
[The prepared statement of Chairman Lampson follows:]
Prepared Statement of Chairman Nick Lampson
We are here today to try to solve a mystery involving the Savannah
River Ecology Laboratory (SREL)--a laboratory associated with the
University of Georgia and located on the Department of Energy's
Savannah River Site.
What is SREL? Well it is a laboratory whose work has saved the
taxpayers millions of dollars in remediation cost. A laboratory that
has the confidence of the local communities in South Carolina and
Georgia adjacent to the Savannah River Site and the enthusiastic
support of the Citizens Advisory Council associated with the site. A
laboratory that has been in existence since the 1950's when the
Savannah River Site was established. It was founded by one of our
nation's most eminent ecologists--Dr. Eugene Odum--and it has
maintained invaluable continuous long-term data sets on important
animals and plants. This laboratory in conjunction with the University
of Georgia has trained hundreds of environmental scientists and has run
popular and successful public education and outreach programs on the
Savannah River Site. SREL has also assisted the Site in its efforts to
comply with federal and State environmental laws. It also manages one
of the seven National Environmental Research Parks in a network of
ecologically important sites that exist on DOE property across the
country. The Savannah River Ecology Laboratory has provided these
services to the taxpayer at a cost of less than $10 million dollars per
year.
Well, this is a record of achievement that any organization would
be proud of, and certainly one that deserves recognition. And what is
their reward for these 50 years of service? Well they have certainly
been recognized by DOE Headquarters. They have been rewarded with a
loss of funding in the middle of the fiscal year leading to layoffs and
essentially the closure of the laboratory--a move that places the
ongoing research and the continuity of long-term data sets in grave
jeopardy; bad faith bargaining in the renewal of a cooperative
agreement with their federal partner--the Department of Energy; and the
dismissal of the laboratory's Director--apparently by personal request
of the Secretary of Energy to the President of the University of
Georgia.
I simply do not know what to make of this. I feel as if I am in the
middle of Wonderland with Alice.
The callous treatment of the employees of SREL is disgraceful.
Beyond the hardship inflicted on them by the sudden, unexpected job
loss--this decision is absurd. It is not in the interest of the people
of South Carolina and Georgia, the Savannah River Site, the Department
of Energy, or the rest of the Nation.
We have witnesses with us today who will be able to tell us about
this laboratory, its history and it work. Dr. Paul Bertsch, the former
Director of the laboratory, will be able to tell us about the events of
the past few years that have brought us here today.
We will hear from the Department of Energy at another hearing, but
I am not confident that we will ever fully understand why the
Headquarters of the Department of Energy has spent a great deal of time
and effort to close a world-class laboratory with an excellent record
of service to the Department, to the Nation, and to the local
community. I believe the ultimate reasons for this absurd and ill-
advised decision may be a mystery we will not be able to solve.
Hopefully, we will reverse this decision and restore this laboratory so
that it may continue its good work.
Chairman Miller. Thank you, Mr. Lampson. The Chair now
recognizes Mr. Sensenbrenner for an opening statement.
Mr. Sensenbrenner. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I had
a prepared opening statement that I was prepared to read into
the record, but after hearing both the distinguished Chair from
North Carolina and the other distinguished Chair from Texas,
let me state that I am really disturbed that what appears to be
a piece of bad faith on one side is being reciprocated with
another piece of bad faith right here on the other side of the
aisle.
The Deputy Secretary of the Department of Energy had to
leave town for a funeral. We can't help those kinds of things.
Sometimes we have to leave town for funerals as well, whether
it is a family member or a very close, personal friend, or a
mentor or something like that. And there was a request that was
made at the Majority staff to postpone this hearing until Mr.
Sell could come on back to be able to testify on behalf of the
Department of Energy on why the decisions were made. The
Majority rejected that request, and I think that that in and of
itself was unfair.
Now, after hearing both Mr. Miller and Mr. Lampson's
opening statement I think the purpose of the hearing is now
clear. It is not to investigation the contributions of SREL,
something that all of the witnesses that are here can testify
to, and I think which is not at the heart of the controversy.
The purpose of this hearing is to attack the Department of
Energy, and specifically Deputy Secretary Clay Sell, which
isn't able to be here to be able to defend itself.
Now, I have heard from the other side of the aisle that we
are going to go to the expense of having a second hearing where
Mr. Sell will come on in and testify some time later on. That
is not really necessary, and I think the purpose of having an
investigation is to be able to hear both sides of the argument.
Now, the argument I don't think is the contributions that
SREL has made over the years. That really is not the issue. The
issue is a disconnect between the Department of Energy people
who were on site at SREL and the headquarters office of the
Department of Energy that apparently made the decision to
discontinue the funding.
And the attack that I have heard from both of the
distinguished Chairmen can't fairly take place when DOE can't
be here to defend itself. The witness did have to leave
Washington to go to a funeral, and it simply is not fair for
this hearing to proceed without DOE being able to be present.
You know, I come to these hearings like this with an open mind,
but when there is a procedural overreach, and there clearly is
a procedural overreach in the case of this instance because of
Mr. Sell's necessity to go to a funeral, I would ask the two
distinguished Chairs to postpone this hearing so that we can
hear about all these issues at one hearing. And if you don't do
so, I think that shows that you folks are hell bent to hang DOE
in a time when DOE cannot be there to defend itself.
And I yield back the balance of my time.
Chairman Lampson. May I interrupt one second?
Mr. Sensenbrenner. I yield to the Chairman.
Chairman Lampson. And ask that----
Chairman Miller. Well, and Mr. Sensenbrenner, I certainly
agree that funerals of family members or close family friends
or close friends is something we should respect, but what you
just said I am advised by our staff is not correct. The
Department of Energy did not request that the hearing itself be
postponed, only that Mr. Sell be excused from appearing today.
Mr. Sensenbrenner. Well, I am requesting, reclaiming my
time. I am requesting that the hearing be postponed because I
think that to use kind of a tried phrase that we hear on one
television network, we ought to be fair and balanced. And we
can't be fair and balanced because Mr. Sell is attending a
funeral. If you want to be unfair and unbalanced, go ahead. I
think we ought to be fair and balanced, and when I held
investigative hearings, I always had people on both sides
testify, and if they couldn't come, we rescheduled the hearing
so that everybody could see exactly what the issues were,
starting with the Committee Members.
Chairman Miller. Well, Mr. Sensenbrenner, you were not part
of the telephone conversations that I was part of with the
Department of Energy, and if you were under the impression that
they were eager to have Mr. Sell come and appear before this
committee, my experience is no, that that is not the case.
Mr. Sensenbrenner. Well, reclaiming my time, of course,
when we are investigating them they are not eager to have
somebody appear before the Committee. My point is we ought to
listen to both sides, and by going ahead with this hearing, you
are not going to listen to both sides.
Chairman Miller. My immediate concern is the convenience of
several witnesses who have come to Washington today. Mr.
Lampson, you wish to be recognized as well.
Chairman Lampson. Well, and that is the point.
Mr. Sensenbrenner. Well, it is my time, and I yield to the
gentleman from Texas.
Chairman Lampson. Thank you, Mr. Sensenbrenner. I, too, was
concerned about the folks that had already been scheduled. I
just wanted to ask of whom we had heard or to whom the
statements from the Department of Energy were directed so that
we could know about the request for postponement. And it is
going to be only a postponement. We will have Mr. Sell here on
August the 1st.
Mr. Sensenbrenner. Reclaiming my time, this all goes to
show that because the Majority wants to attack the Department
of Energy, I guess we are going to have two hearings to attack
the Department of Energy when we could very easily have done it
with one and have both sides speak and have both sides on the
witness stand at the same time and Members of the Committee can
ask questions to actually get to the bottom of this. From
everything I know the problem is DOE headquarters. It is not
the DOE personnel that is down at SREL, and the only way we are
able to get DOE headquarters to be able to testify
knowledgeably is to have Mr. Sell here.
I have made my point. It is now up to the Majority to
decide whether we are going to have a fair and balanced hearing
or not, and I see my time is up.
Chairman Miller. Thank you, Mr. Sensenbrenner. Mr. Inglis.
Mr. Inglis. Mr. Chairman, I do recognize the significance
of Mr. Sensenbrenner's questions. I think they are well placed
before this committee, before the Chairs to--the hearing goes
forward. It is, I think, important to get to the bottom of
these things. I wish that we were having a balanced hearing
here, and it is important to find out what is going on. For
more than 50 years the Savannah River Ecology Lab at the
University of Georgia has been a helpful resource as I
understand it to the Savannah River Site. Savannah River
Ecology Lab's research projects and educational outreach
activities help Savannah River Site understand the ecological
impacts of the site's operations.
Today we will hear from several witnesses, not as many as
we would like to hear from, who will attest to the usefulness
of the lab's projects, both to SRS and to the surrounding
community. And they will assert the need to continue funding
these programs.
I look forward to hearing their testimony. I also look
forward to hearing what the Department of Energy has to say,
and I yield back the balance of my time.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Inglis follows:]
Prepared Statement of Representative Bob Inglis
Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for holding this joint hearing.
For more than 50 years, the Savannah River Ecology Lab (SREL) at
the University of Georgia has been a helpful resource to the Savannah
River Site (SRS). SREL's research projects and educational outreach
activities help SRS understand the ecological impacts of the site's
operations.
Today, we'll hear from several witnesses who will attest to the
usefulness of SREL's research projects to both SRS and the surrounding
community, and the need to continue funding these programs. I look
forward to hearing their testimony.
Thank you again, Mr. Chairman, and I yield back the balance of my
time.
Chairman Miller. Well, again, Mr. Sensenbrenner said it is
for the Majority to decide. I would like to take a quick recess
for Mr. Sensenbrenner to discuss this matter on the Minority
side and with the Minority staff, because, again, my
understanding of what has happened is different from what Mr.
Sensenbrenner just said. I am not accusing Mr. Sensenbrenner of
misrepresenting the facts. I think perhaps our understanding is
different.
And I would like to take a brief recess, and I also would
like to inquire quickly, and we are looking at a really long
hearing if we try to do everything in one day. The hearing in
less than two weeks is three panels of the Department of
Energy, and this is today three panels if we count
Representative Barrow.
We, I have a long line of questioning prepared to go to Mr.
Barrow's credibility as a witness, but my staff has advised me
that is probably not appropriate. But for the other Members who
are, the other witnesses who are here, I know it was not
convenient to come to Washington. It would not be convenient to
come back a second time, but what is your availability on
August 1? Because I would rather have this hearing be about the
decision and the conduct of the Department of Energy, not about
procedural fairness.
What is your availability? How inconvenienced will you be?
I know you are all sitting on the front row. Could you, those
who are set to testify in later panels today.
Mr. Bertsch, what is your availability on August 1? I am
sorry. What?
Okay. Dr. Whicker. Dr. Schnoor. I yield to Mr. Hall.
Mr. Hall. Chairman, I appreciate your efforts to approach
fairness here, and there would be opening statements that I
would ask permission to give in a little bit and name other
people that probably ought to be here that were really a part
of the line there----
Chairman Miller. Again, Mr. Hall, there will be a hearing
with three panels on August 1. Three panels all from the
Department of Energy on August 1.
Mr. Hall. Well, I think there are at least maybe three
other people from the Department of Energy that were either--or
those that, under his direction that have some information that
the Chair would value, and Members of this panel in arriving at
your decision.
Chairman Miller. The reason, again, Mr. Sell was scheduled
to testify today. It is his schedule, and I am----
Mr. Hall. Yeah, and I recognize that.
Chairman Miller.--sympathetic to his need to attend the
funeral of someone close to him, but Mr. Sell was more than
politely invited.
Mr. Hall. I don't question that, and these gentlemen have
indicated that they could come back.
Chairman Miller. Well, actually, the two witnesses who will
testify to the value of the research at the lab, I mean, I
assume the Department of Energy, if they wish to tell their
side of the story, it has to, with the negotiations with the
lab about funding. And for that Dr. Bertsch has said that he
believed he could come back. But it would, but the two
scientists who are familiar with the work of the lab have
traveled some distance to be here, and we have heard one of
them say that he would have to interrupt a family vacation to
come back on August 1.
Mr. Hall. I don't like to do that.
Chairman Miller. Well, I wouldn't like to do that either.
Mr. Sensenbrenner, if Mr. Bertsch comes back and that the
testimony be, and I am not terribly concerned about Mr.
Barrow's schedule. I believe he is probably going to be in
Washington regardless, but the two scientific witnesses could
testify today, and we could hold Mr. Bertsch to testify on
August 1. It would be a long day of hearings.
Mr. Sensenbrenner. If the Chairman would yield----
Chairman Miller. I do yield.
Mr. Sensenbrenner.I don't think the issue is the scientific
value of what has been done at SREL. I can stipulate to the
fact that the scientific value is there. The issue is why the
DOE headquarters had a different view of the DOE personnel that
were on site, and that is what we ought to be investigating.
Now, you know, I would ask unanimous consent that the witness's
prepared statements at today's hearings be included in the
record, and if, you know, we want to get to the bottom of this,
I think we ought to be looking into what went on at DOE
headquarters on this.
You know, I guess, you know, my point is, is that when Dr.
Sell, you know, could not appear because of the necessity of
him attending the funeral, there should have been sensitivity
on the part of the Majority staff to reach a decision on
whether to go ahead with this hearing before the witnesses
ended up leaving wherever they were to come to Washington, D.C.
You know, I certainly don't want to inconvenience them, but I
do want to make sure, you know, that we have a fair and
balanced hearing.
I thank the Chair for yielding.
Chairman Miller. All right. If Dr. Bertsch can come back on
August 1, I believe that the contested, the factual issues,
contested, disputed factual issues all have to do with Dr.
Bertsch's testimony.
Mr. Sensenbrenner. That is true.
Chairman Miller. Not with the testimony of Dr. Schnoor and
Dr. Whicker, who will testify to the value of the scientific
research done at this laboratory.
Chairman Lampson. Mr. Chairman, may I be recognized----
Chairman Miller. Mr. Lampson.
Chairman Lampson.--for a request? Can we take a five-minute
recess and discuss this?
Chairman Miller. We can take a five-minute recess. The
Subcommittees will be in recess for five minutes.
[Recess.]
Chairman Miller. We are back in order. The first I had
heard from anyone from the Minority, from the Minority Members,
from Minority staff, from the Department of Energy, that there
was any complaint at all about this hearing going forward was
Mr. Sensenbrenner's opening statement. I am not hard to find. I
have found Mr. Sensenbrenner on the Floor to discuss matters
before this committee. I have tried to consult with him. I
think that is the way to proceed in a collegial fashion, as
cooperatively as we can. His locker is across from mine in the
House gym. We see each other. We talk. The first I have heard
of any objection at all to today's hearing was in the opening
statement.
Now, Dr. Bertsch has said that he can come back. Dr.
Bertsch, your testimony is very important. We need you back. I
believe that the only factually-contested issues pertain to
your testimony, Dr. Bertsch, and we will take that up on August
1.
The Department of Energy, it was my personal experience,
not just what I heard through staff but my personal experience
is the Department of Energy has been less than cheerful in
dealing with this issue. We need your documents, we need all
that we have requested. We don't need them in dribbles and
drafts. We need the rest of what we have requested, and we need
them well before August 1 so our staff has a chance to review
them thoroughly so that everyone, the Minority, is prepared to
ask questions of Dr. Bertsch, we are prepared to ask questions
of the Department of Energy, everyone is prepared for the next
hearing.
But Dr. Bertsch's panel today will be postponed until
August 1, which will be a long day. I also encourage the
Minority Members to talk to the Minority staff, because my
understanding, again, of what has happened with respect to this
hearing is very different from what has been represented here.
Mr. Sensenbrenner. Will the gentleman yield?
Chairman Miller. I will yield in a moment. And it is the
first that I have heard the Department of Energy objected in
any way with going forward with this hearing as scheduled
today. We will go forward on August 1. There will be four
panels, three that we have already scheduled, the
representatives of the Department of Energy and Dr. Bertsch.
And we will hear the factual discussion of what happened, how
the decision was made.
Today we will hear from Representative Barrow, and we will
hear from the two scientific witnesses who can testify to the
value of this lab's work.
Now, I now yield to Mr. Sensenbrenner.
Mr. Sensenbrenner. Well, let me say that it is not my
intent to further inconvenience the two scientific witnesses,
except to reiterate the point that the scientific value is not
the issue that is in contention, that we are investigating.
What I will say is that I was not aware of Mr. Sell's
personal problem where he had to leave town for a funeral until
late last night or the first thing this morning. I was not in
the gym this morning working out. I didn't see the Chairman
there. But, you know, let me say in order to make sure that we
do have a complete record, it is my hope that on the August 1
hearing that in addition to Mr. Sell that the Chair call
Charlie Anderson, who is the principle Deputy Assistant
Secretary for the Office of Environmental Management, and Jill
Sigal, who is the former Assistant Secretary of Energy for
Congressional and Intergovernmental Affairs. She has left the
DOE in April of 2006, but she was around and dealing with this
at the relevant time when the decision was made.
I would hope that if we are accommodating to the Majority
and going ahead with the hearing today, that they would be
accommodating to us in having all three of these individuals as
Minority witnesses. Failing that, the Minority will have no
opportunity except to invoke that part of the rule that allows
for a Minority day of hearings. Then we end up having three
hearings on this, whereas if the Majority were sensitive, we
could have rolled this all into one.
And I yield back.
Chairman Miller. And Mr. Sensenbrenner, all those witnesses
are scheduled is my understanding, are scheduled on August 1.
So we should hear from everyone. If the Minority has other
witnesses to suggest, we certainly are willing or we certainly
will try to accommodate the Minority and to have a procedurally
fair hearing, that our inquiry into this will be procedurally
fair. That does not mean the Department of Energy will like the
outcome, but we will, it will be procedurally fair.
And, again, I am not that hard to find. My office has a
telephone number, all the Members have a directory of all of
our offices' telephone numbers. I have a Blackberry. I actually
read my messages, somewhat compulsively like most people who
have Blackberries. I am easy to find on the Floor. It is not
hard to find me, and I believe that our staff talks constantly.
The Minority and the Majority staffs talk constantly.
Mr. Lampson.
Chairman Lampson. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I just want to
express my chagrin at this. There hasn't been very much
fairness up to this point on DOE, and there has been, there
have been many things said and many actions made that many
people are finding absolutely abhorrent. SREL has been treated
unfairly. I think they should be able to tell their story to as
best as possible get us prepared for those future hearings.
It disappoints me to hear the kind of things that we are
hearing here this morning. To me there has not been balance in
the way the budget or the people at SREL have been treated. The
budget has been cut, people have been terminated, jobs have
been lost as of June the 29th, I believe. There is the
potential for significant amount of data that has been
continuously gathered since 1951, to not be able to be
gathered, and the longer that we wait before, as I said
earlier, this mystery begins to unfold, the harder it is going
to be for it to be put back together again, and the potential
for valuing what is going to be potentially lost.
So if we postpone this based on a technicality, and I think
that we were notified on Wednesday, the 12th of July, that Mr.
Sell would have to be out of town for a funeral, today is the
17th, so that was five days ago. I am not going to say that
there have been additional shenanigans being played, but I
think the question of fairness on the part of that agency, to a
lot of lives and to a lot of information that means a great
deal to the lives of citizens across the United States of
America, is at least questionable.
It disappoints me very significantly that an issue like
this would be raised in the manner in which it has been raised.
I for one am embarrassed with it, and I think that this
committee should be.
I will yield back my time.
Chairman Miller. I think we have had opening statements of
a sort from the Chairs and the Ranking Members of both of the
Subcommittees. If any other Member has an opening statement, we
will welcome that in writing for the record.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Costello follows:]
Prepared Statement of Representative Jerry F. Costello
Good morning. Mr. Chairman, thank you for calling this hearing to
examine the past and current work of the Savannah River Ecology
Laboratory (SREL) and the events leading up to the current funding
crisis.
SREL was established to track the ecological changes and
environmental consequences of establishing nuclear weapons production
facilities on the Savannah River Site (SRS). SREL evaluates the effects
of SRS operations through a program of ecological research, education,
and outreach involving both basic and applied environmental processes
and principles. SREL has a distinguished record of publications, with
the research staff publishing more than 80 articles in peer-reviewed
scientific publications annually, and an astounding amount of unbroken
data sets on the ecology of the site.
I am concerned that in the past few years, the Bush
Administration's budget requests have decreased funding and, at one
point, called for an elimination of funding all together for this
important laboratory.
Further, I am concerned the cooperative agreement reached on
December 1, 2006 between the Department of Energy (DOE) and SREL did
not fully disclose the terms and scope of the ``technical peer review''
system. It was not until months later that the term was properly
defined by the DOE. As a result of the scope and standards of the new
technical peer review system, the DOE was able to drastically cut
projects and informed SREL that only $800,000 of its proposed $3
million in work would be funded. Due to the lack of DOE projects
funded, the University of Georgia reduced the personnel at the lab and
currently employs 30-40 individuals on site to carry out work funded
through grants already in place from other agencies. I am interested in
hearing from Dr. Bertsch why SREL signed the cooperative agreement;
what SREL's understanding of ``technical peer review'' was; and how the
DOE's implementation has affected their ability to complete projects.
Mr. Chairman, because of the significant impact of the DOE's
decision to withdraw funding for the laboratory, I look forward to
hearing from our witnesses their thoughts regarding the events leading
up to the funding crisis, the decision to withdraw funding, and the
future of SREL.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Barrett follows:]
Prepared Statement of the Honorable J. Gresham Barrett
Third Congressional District of South Carolina
U.S. House of Representatives
Chairman Miller and Ranking Member Sensenbrenner, thank you for
allowing me the opportunity to share my thoughts regarding the Savannah
River Ecology Lab with you. I also appreciate the work you are doing to
find a practical solution which will allow the lab to continue to
operate.
As you are probably aware, the Savannah River Ecology Lab (SREL) is
located on the Department of Energy's Savannah River Site (SRS) in
South Carolina. The only laboratory of its kind in the Department of
Energy's (DOE) complex, the SREL has been operated by the University of
Georgia since its 1951 founding by Dr. Eugene P. Odum. At that time, it
was tasked and funded by the Atomic Energy Administration, DOE's
predecessor, to perform the ecological baseline studies on the Savannah
River Site. Over the past fifty-six years, the SREL's mission has
evolved to include not only an independent evaluation of the ecological
effects of nuclear activities at SRS, but also internationally
recognized research, education, and public outreach programs.
I am proud to represent the Third District of South Carolina in
which the lab is located, and I have been fortunate to see firsthand
the valuable work that the SREL does. As an independent laboratory
staffed with university scientists, the SREL provides a thoughtful and
unbiased evaluation of the effects of SRS operations on the environment
and helps to ensure the safety of the surrounding community. Today, as
environmental cleanup becomes an important part of the overall SRS
mission, we believe the operation of SREL remains critical and will
continue to provide valuable information related to the long-term
stewardship issues at the site.
Throughout the lab's existence, SREL has also been highly-touted
for its insightful research and education on subjects such as
remediation and the effects of environmental contamination, restoring
degraded habitats, and environmental stewardship. It is home to award-
winning scientists who have authored more than 3,050 scientific journal
articles as well as approximately 50 books since its founding, and
students from universities across the United States have studied, co-
authored peer reviews, and developed their dissertations based on
research at SREL. Without a doubt, as interest in nuclear energy
continues to increase worldwide, the value of the scientific work being
done at the SREL will only grow in importance.
In addition to the essential research being done at the lab, the
SREL provides important Environmental Outreach programs to individuals
and families of the Central Savannah River Area (CSRA). Each year, the
lab creates greater awareness of the diverse ecosystems of the SRS
among children and adults across the region by offering Ecotalks, live
plant and animal exhibits, and tours open to the public. Additionally,
the SREL outreach programs supply informative materials regarding basic
ecology and biology to students and teachers throughout the CSRA and
even nationally, greatly enriching students' understanding of the
sciences.
As you can see, for over 56 years, the Savannah River Ecology lab
has served the SRS, South Carolina, and the Nation through innovative
research and outreach. Because of its strong track record, the lab has
received strong bipartisan support from both the South Carolina and
Georgia delegations in the House of Representatives and the Senate. I
continue to be a proponent of the work the lab does and am saddened by
the situation it finds itself in today. While there has been much
argument as to who is at fault, it is my hope that the Department of
Energy, the University of Georgia, SREL, and Congress can work side-by-
side to find a solution that will allow the lab to continue to serve
our country through its threefold mission of research, education, and
outreach. I look forward to any insight this committee may be able to
provide on the matter and again thank you for allowing me to submit my
statement.
Chairman Miller. And now the Chair will recognize Honorable
John Barrow, who represents the district that includes the
University of Georgia campus and the communities that border
the Savannah River Site, who has devoted a great deal of his
time and energy, effort to protect the lab's work and to insure
its future.
And I want to thank him for bringing this, his role in
bringing this to our, to the Subcommittees, the two
Subcommittees' attention, and we look forward to his testimony
today.
And, Mr. Barrow, I am somewhat disappointed. We usually
place witnesses under oath and remind them of the penalties of
perjury, but for whatever reason we are not doing that with
respect to you.
Mr. Barrow.
Panel I:
STATEMENT OF HON. JOHN BARROW, A REPRESENTATIVE OF THE STATE OF
GEORGIA, 12TH DISTRICT
Mr. Barrow. Thank you, Chairman Miller, thank you, Chairman
Lampson. All right. Well, that is the one I started out with,
but someone turned this one away and turned that, flipped that
other one on.
Thank you all for calling this hearing. In the interest of
full disclosure, I don't represent the University of Georgia
campus any longer, but I do represent the part of this country
that is probably most affected by the ongoing work, that is the
entire watershed from the fall line at Augusta all the way down
to the mouth of the Savannah River at the city of Savannah.
I share that interest with my colleagues in South Carolina,
Gresham Barrett, Mr. Inglis to a certain extent, and Joe Wilson
down at the other end.
I want to try and put in my words what it is I think we are
dealing with here, what it is I think we have here, and what I
hope we will take away from this.
First of all, what we are dealing with here. Over half a
century ago our country embarked at the height of the Cold War
on a technological building boom to build the weapons that we
would use to win the Cold War. Now, we either use them by
dropping them or use them by not dropping them. It was our fear
that we might have to drop them, in which case we would all
lose, but it was our hope and our expectation that if we had
them, we wouldn't have to use them. And we embarked on a
building plan that rivals nothing that we have seen in this
country before or since, and it took place at places like the
Savannah River Site, took place at Hanford, took place at Oak
Ridge, Los Alamos, all over the country this was going on.
This was a building program that involved buying up a whole
bunch of land so we could put buffers between the people and
the work that was being done there. We are talking about dirty
work that had never been done before, on a scale that had never
been imagined before, with consequences we never faced before,
and that is what we started to do about half a century ago.
It was all a non-peer-reviewed work done by Government
contractors submitting the lowest bid. At the same time there
was a fellow who had a vision about how to deal with, at least
to monitor the situation by the name of Eugene Odum. He was
literally the father of modern ecology, wrote the book,
practically invented the word, certainly is the guy who was
responsible for the words, currency and usage, in everyday
English.
Dr. Odum had a vision. His vision was something along these
lines. This is something that is worth watching, this is
something that needs watching, and here is an opportunity to
watch it that we have never had before. It is worth watching
because we were involved in all kinds of dirty work on hundreds
of square miles, ascribed a watershed, and what was going on
there wasn't just going on. It was going on all over the
country.
Now, Congress adopted this vision way back in 1972, when we
first adopted the National Environmental Research Parks
Program. The Savannah River Site was the first National
Environmental Research Park, and this ain't a park like the
kind of parks we are used to. This isn't a park where folks can
go. It is a park where animals wander in and wander out. It is
a park where water and the ceaseless cycle of waters comes and
goes. It is a park that was supposed to be open to scientists
in the words of the DOE as a protected outdoor laboratory where
long-term projects can be set up to answer questions about what
we are doing on this scale and in places like this.
These are parks that are unique in the words of the DOE
because they provide opportunities for research to study the
compatibility of the environment with energy technology
options. That is fancy words to say can we survive doing what
we are doing here? Or are we going to kill ourselves in the
process? Are we going to poison ourselves in order to keep
ourselves from being blown up?
Again, these are parks, but they are not real parks. These
are parks that are closed to people but supposed to be open to
scientists.
Now, the thing I want to emphasize is when the DOE talks in
sort of fancy language about how these are places where you
can, a protected outdoor laboratory. This is a normative
statement. This is something we ought to have. We are actually
conducting great big old laboratories. These are laboratories,
in fact, whether we like it or not. We are conducting
experiments on a scale that has never been done before. The
industrial generation of nuclear waste and its ponding and
pooling and amassing in these places is something that has
never been done before. We are experimenting like crazy in
these seven places around the country, and whether or not we
recognize it and treat it as a laboratory is up to us. But
whether or not it really is a laboratory, where we are doing
things that have never been done before, playing God in ways
that have never been done before, that is a fact. And Congress
recognized that back in 1972.
The only issue here as I see it is not whether or not
scientists are going to be allowed to run the lab. It is still
going to be run by bean counters accountable to politicians.
The question is not whether scientists are going to be allowed
to run the lab. The question is whether or not there are going
to be scientists actually in the lab watching what is going on
on a continuous basis.
Now, these parks are, in the words of the DOE, a unique
asset to the country. SREL is unique because it is the only
institution in the entire country where we have actually been
monitoring and treating it like a laboratory from the very get
go. It is the only place in the country where we have set data
to, data sets to use the term, where we know what has been
going and watching what has been going continuously from the
beginning.
And so it is unique. It has a unique role to play for all
the others.
It is also unique because it sets astride an ecosystem that
has more complexity and more diversity than any of the others.
If we can get it right, if we can understand what is going on
in the euphemistically referred to Southeastern Mixed Forest,
swamp, pine, slash, you name it. If we can figure out what is
going on there, we can figure out what is going on in shrub
step, we can figure out what is going on in Juniper, Penyan,
and Grassland, we can figure what is going on in all the other
places where environmentally speaking it is a cakewalk compared
to the complexity and the diversity of what is going on in
Savannah River.
So what I am trying to do is set the stage and point out
that this has enormous implications beyond just the local. This
isn't just a question, although it is a question, of the way we
treat the employees and the loyalty and the support we given
the folks that are doing this work. It is not just that. That
is important to me, it is important to Gresham Barrett. It is
not just important to the immediate environmental watershed of
the Savannah River. That is important to me, it is important to
Barrett, it is important to Inglis, and it is important to
Wilson and the Senators on both sides. It is about trying to
maintain and monitor the lab, and the one place where we have
been doing this from the very get go so that we don't lose
sight of that vision.
We have got to watch what is going on so we don't poison
ourselves in the process of not blowing ourselves up.
Now, what do we have here? What I think we have here is a
five-year plan to defund the SREL by folks who basically think
it ought to be converted into any other kind of commercial
contractor, sort of a gigantic Serve Pro, bidding for some of
the cleanup work at the Savannah River Site.
Now, with all due respect to the Serve Pro folks, I
acknowledge what they do, but this is not that kind of mission.
This is not that kind of asset. It is not that kind of legacy.
What we also have here is a failure to communicate, and you
are all going to get to that, and I encourage you all to get to
the bottom of it. What I hope we will take away from this, let
us talk about what I want to take away from this series of
hearings. This is not about the jobs in the area, although that
is important. It is not about the immediate environmental
impact, although that is important. And it is certainly not
about Dr. Odum's legacy. That gentleman's--I knew the man. He
was the greatest man I have ever met, the most brilliant and
unassuming person you will ever know. He is an amazing fellow,
but his legacy is established far beyond our poor power to add
or detract.
It is about, though, the work of his hands, which is still
running there and which serves as the only institution that has
been doing this work from the very beginning and do it in the
one place where if you can do it no place else, it has got to
be done there for the benefit of all these National
Environmental Research Parks around the country.
It is about, try to take our cue from Dr. Odum. Dr. Odum
did anything in his life. He helped us understand the
connections between things and the importance of things that we
took for granted and the importance of the little things, the
little things that we didn't really think much about until they
were gone. If we can take anything away from this, if we would
apply Dr. Odum's vision toward this problem, then the temporary
elected officials who occupy this political nitch for the time
being can preserve and protect something that we badly need
everywhere. We ought to expand and have SREL in all of the
National Environmental Research Parks. That ought to be what we
take from this is a commitment to expand this elsewhere.
But if we can take his vision, the appointed officials and
the elected officials who are occupying this little nitch for
just the time being won't destroy something that needs to be
protected. We can actually preserve it, enhance it, and that I
think is what we really need to do.
I thank the Chairman for the courtesy of allowing me to
speak here. I thank you all for your stick-to-it-iveness, and I
know I have talked too much. I will yield back whatever time I
may have left.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Barrow follows:]
Prepared Statement of Representative John Barrow
Chairman Miller, Ranking Member Sensenbrenner; Chairman Lampson,
Ranking Member Inglis, and Members of the Committee:
Thank for holding this hearing and thank you for inviting me to
appear before you today.
I am extraordinarily concerned with recent actions by the
Department of Energy that I understand have drastically reduced the
adequate, stable, and mission-based funding for the Savannah River
Ecology Laboratory and have caused the Laboratory, for all practical
purposes, to close.
Over the past five years, the Department's support for the Lab has
been drastically reduced and manipulated, while the University of
Georgia, which manages the Laboratory, has continued to uphold its end
of the financial bargain that has kept the SREL going over the years.
It seems evident to me that the Department of Energy's policy of
reducing funding for the Savannah River Ecology Laboratory (SREL) is
about to take from all of us a valuable research tool to protect our
citizens and our environment. I am convinced that the need for
sufficient and sustained Laboratory funding from the Department is
crucial. The Department's drastic reduction in funding, and the
processes they employed in reducing funding, have come under increased
scrutiny recently, we must learn the truth.
I thank you and your staff for the timely and energetic
investigation of the Department of Energy's current and past plans to
reduce and eliminate funding for this laboratory. The more I learn
about the situation involving the Department's SREL funding, the more
I'm puzzled.
After first becoming aware of the dire funding situation at SREL,
and in my initial contacts with Secretary Bodman and his staff, I
suggested to the Secretary that we work together to develop and plan an
expanded, ample, and stable DOE budget that would support the
laboratory's vital mission. The Department's response to me was vexing.
I was told a story that didn't quite jive with the communications that
I had received from the scientific community, local leaders, and others
who were familiar with the situation.
Specifically, I was told by the Department in a letter from
Secretary Bodman's staff, that the research being conducted at the
facility was not `peer reviewable.' When I checked on this I was
assured by some of the top scientists in the country that the research
at SREL was fully peer reviewable and that the quality of the research
was top-rank. This is only one of the inconsistencies that been
unearthed in the early stages of discovery.
The Savannah River Ecology Laboratory, founded by Dr. Eugene Odum,
one of the most influential figures in the history of ecology in the
20th century, has been studying the effects of the Department's nuclear
production and processing activities on the environment, wildlife
creatures, and habitat at Savannah River Site (SRS) for over fifty-five
years. Currently, the Laboratory supports cleanup missions as well as
providing critical information related to long-term stewardship issues
at the Department of Energy's Savannah River Site. This kind of
research has enormous implications for the surrounding watershed, which
includes a large part of the 12th District of Georgia, and quite
frankly for nuclear production sites around the world.
SREL is an independent academic laboratory that provides
significant credibility among the general public and regulators on
issues related to environmental impacts of nuclear facility operations,
as well as the overall health of Savannah River Site ecosystems.
Through its partnership with the DOE, the Savannah River Ecology
Laboratory has established a strong international reputation for
conducting high quality ecological research. In fact, SREL is often
cited as an institution whose expertise and research forms the basis of
stakeholder support critical to the Department for conducting existing
and future missions at the Savannah River Site.
The Laboratory is unique in its focus and mission, and the body of
research that it has produced in over a half century of scientific
exploration, is important not only for our country, but this body of
work is recognized and utilized throughout the scientific world.
To this end I believe it is critical to have an independent and
credible source of information on how activities at our nuclear
productions sites affect wildlife, habitats, and our ecosystems. In
addition to its ongoing research activities at the Savannah River Site,
SREL is the organization that has the expertise, institutional memory,
and academic credibility to develop and implement long-term monitoring
plans at SRS and potentially at other DOE production sites that will be
accepted and trusted by the general public, regulators, and other
stakeholders.
After this investigation is concluded, and the findings published I
would like to offer a view for the future. I would like to draw the
Committee's attention to the issue of the best utilization of the
National Environmental Research Parks. There are seven of these parks
located on DOE sites throughout the country. The first one was
established in 1972 on the Savannah River Site itself. Called the
Savannah River Park, the site contains the greatest diversity of plants
and animals in the entire southeastern region and has every major
ecosystem found within the southeastern U.S. within its borders.
DOE originally acquired large tracts of land around its national
nuclear production sites for security. These sites have been protected
from commercial development and public access has been controlled and
limited to the purposes of public education and research. In 1997,
there was a suggestion that DOE divest these properties and the
scientific community argued passionately for their preservation because
of their great value for research and education.
Over the past, almost forty years, these sites have become
ecological sanctuaries and natural laboratories unmatched in their size
and diversity. Whether we talk about sound management of land and water
resources, important species of animals, or better understanding and
mitigation of the impacts of human activities on the environment, we
must have information that has been systematically collected over many
decades. That is exactly the type of information we have at SREL, and
potentially this kind of research could be duplicated at these other
National Environmental Research Parks.
This unfortunate crisis at SREL has brought an opportunity for
Congress to use these parks more effectively. Once we get to the bottom
of this investigation, and we restore Savannah River Ecology Lab
functioning, I would propose that we should have SREL-like labs
throughout the country at these parks, and then offer this model for
interested allies, for most nuclear production sites around the world.
This would be a great tribute to Dr. Odum, and a fitting recognition of
the work that has been carried out by the dedicated scientists and
staff at SREL for the past 55 years. I wouldn't even know how to place
a value on the body of research that has been produced at SREL, it
certainly cannot be duplicated or replaced if this laboratory is
shuttered.
Instead of jeopardizing the future of valuable scientific assets
with arbitrary and malicious budget cutting, the Department should be
working to secure the future of these unique and valuable national
assets that Dr. Odum foresaw these many years ago.
Thanks again for letting me come before you today, and I'd be glad
to answer any questions.
Chairman Miller. And that time is a negative five minutes.
It is not typically that Members ask questions of other
Members, but actually I did ask questions of Mr. Hunter when he
was here a couple weeks ago. Does any Member of the Committee
have a question of Mr. Barrow?
If not, Mr. Barrow, thank you very much, and I will not use
the questions that I had going to the credibility of the
witness.
Our next panel we will receive the testimony of Dr. Ward
Whicker, Professor of Radiological Health Science at Colorado
State University. Professor Whicker, you can come forward now.
Professor Whicker is regarded as one of the founders of the
field of radioecology. He has had more than 98 articles
published in peer-review journals. He is an honorary council
member of the National Council of Radiation Protection and
Measurements. He has also received the prestigious E.O.
Lawrence Award in 1990, from the Department of Energy.
And then the final witness, Professor Jerald Schnoor. If
you could take your seat here. Dr. Schnoor is the Alan S. Henry
Chair in Engineering at the University of Iowa. Dr. Schnoor is
a member of the National Academy of Engineering, a member of
the EPA Science Advisory Board. He is the editor in chief for
the journal, Environmental Science and Technology.
As our witnesses should know, your oral testimony, your
spoken testimony is limited to five minutes, and the Chair may
be a little more likely to enforce that than I was with respect
to Mr. Barrow. And after that there will be questions from any
Member of the Committee. It is our practice typically, except
when we are dealing with one of our colleagues perhaps, to take
testimony under oath. Do either of you have any objection to
being sworn in, to swearing an oath?
All right. You also have a right to be represented by
Counsel. Are either of you represented by Counsel today?
All right. And if you would please stand and raise your
right hand.
[Witnesses sworn]
Chairman Miller. Dr. Schnoor, you may begin.
Panel III:
STATEMENT OF DR. JERALD L. SCHNOOR, PROFESSOR, CIVIL AND
ENVIRONMENTAL ENGINEERING; CO-DIRECTOR, CENTER FOR GLOBAL AND
REGIONAL ENVIRONMENTAL RESEARCH, UNIVERSITY OF IOWA
Dr. Schnoor. Chairman Miller and Chairman Lampson, Ranking
Member Sensenbrenner, Ranking Member Inglis, and Subcommittee
Members, I thank you for the opportunity to testify regarding
the funding crisis facing the University of Georgia's Savannah
River Ecology Laboratory located on the Department of Energy's
Savannah River Site near Aiken, South Carolina.
As the Chairman said, my name is Jerry Schnoor. I am a
professor at the University of Iowa and member of the National
Academy of Engineering, and I serve on the U.S. EPA's Science
Advisory Board.
As Editor-in-Chief of the leading journal in the field,
Environmental Science and Technology, I manage the peer review
process for thousands of scientific papers which are submitted
each year, including several from Savannah River Lab. One of my
personal areas of research is groundwater and hazardous wastes
remediation, especially phytoremediation. That is the use of
plants to try to help clean the environment. It is a promising,
long-term technology for some contamination problems at the
Savannah River Site as well.
I do not have any public or private research grants related
to SREL stock or stock options held in publicly-traded or
privately-owned companies, nor have I received any form of
payment or compensation from any relevant entity connected with
this testimony.
Therefore, I hope and believe that I am qualified to
testify about the quality and importance of the scientific
research being performed at the Savannah River Lab and its
relevance to DOE's strategic initiatives.
The information I am providing is based largely on my
professional interaction with SREL faculty and a visit to the
laboratory, a review of the institution's publication and
history, and other DOE documents that are readily available in
the public record.
Due to time constraints, greater detail and additional
supporting information and documentation has been provided in
my written testimony, and I ask that it be read into the
record.
Since its founding in 1951, SREL's research emphasis has
constantly evolved to meet the changing needs of DOE and SRS in
particular in my opinion, which is reflected in even a cursory
review of SREL's scientific publications and their site
reports.
In response to a growing cost associated with environmental
cleanups at DOD and DOE sites, the National Academy of Science
has issued a report entitled, Groundwater and Soil Cleanup:
Improving Management of Persistent Contaminants, by the
National Research Council in 1999. In the report the committee
clearly recognized the value of the Savannah River Ecology Lab,
noting, ``Ecological risks are better characterized at the
Savannah River Site than at other DOE installations, due in
part to the designation of the site as a National Environmental
Research Park and the presence of the Savannah River Ecology
Laboratory.''
Despite such praise, the discussion concerning the current
funding crisis has directly called into question the technical
expertise of the SREL faculty and indirectly the overall
quality and relevance of its research.
First, I want to address some misconceptions concerning the
type of research conducted at SREL. Over the last decade or so
there has been a clear shift in research emphasis at the lab
with an increasing focus on contaminant fate and transport,
largely in response to a more focused DOE cleanup mission. SREL
faculty have demonstrated expertise in several active fields of
research that are directly relevant to the Savannah River Site
remediation efforts.
In addition to the clear practical benefit, SREL's support
for the SRS pump-and-treat system resulted in four refereed
articles in ES&T, my journal, two in Vadose Zone Journal, one
in Groundwater, and one in the Journal of Contaminant
Hydrology. In addition, SREL researchers have developed three
other patented technologies, including a system that combines
both contaminant immobilization with phytoextraction, the use
of plants. And they have submitted initial paperwork for an
automated environmental monitoring system.
The Savannah River Lab also plays an important role in the
regulatory process by providing independent scientific
credibility necessary for site management to propose and
receive approval for alternative, cost-effective remediation
strategies. In some instances SREL faculty have been asked to
accompany site contractors to regulatory negotiations in case
certain questions arise for which their technical expertise is
required.
Mr. Chairman, my candid overall opinion is that the
Savannah River Ecology Laboratory is providing the DOE and the
Nation with high quality research in a very cost effective
manner. It has long been recognized as perhaps the foremost
land in terrestrial ecology in the country, and in recent years
it is performing extremely useful research related to the date,
transport, effects, and remediation of chemical contaminants
relevant to SRS.
During the past 30 months alone, Savannah River Lab
researchers have published eight rigorously peer-reviewed
journals in ES&T, my journal, on nickel, uranium, mercury,
radio-cesium, and lead, all important contaminants at the site.
In light of these accomplishments, I strongly believe that
SREL's funding should be continued. The survival of the
Savannah River Ecology Lab as an independent academic
institution on the Savannah River Site ensures that long-term
management and remediation strategies and scenarios will be
developed and implemented based on independent, verifiable
science.
Thank you very much.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Schnoor follows:]
Prepared Statement of Jerald L. Schnoor
Chairman Miller and Chairman Lampson, Ranking Member Sensenbrenner,
Ranking Member Inglis, and Subcommittee Members: I thank you for the
opportunity to testify regarding the recent funding crisis facing the
University of Georgia's Savannah River Ecology Laboratory (SREL),
located on the Department of Energy's Savannah River Site (SRS), near
Aiken, SC.
My name is Jerry Schnoor. I am Professor of Civil and Environmental
Engineering and Occupational and Environmental Health, and Co-Director
of the Center for Global and Regional Environmental Research at the
University of Iowa. I am also a member of the National Academy of
Engineering, inaugurated in 1964 to provide technical advice to the
Nation, and I serve on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's
Science Advisory Board (SAB). As Editor-in-Chief of the leading journal
in the field, Environmental Science and Technology, I manage the peer-
review process for thousands of scientific papers which are submitted
each year, including several from SREL. One of my personal areas of
research expertise is groundwater and hazardous wastes remediation,
especially phytoremediation, the use of plants to help clean the
environment, which remains a promising long-term technology for some
contamination problems at the Savannah River Site. I do not have any
public or private research grants related to SREL, stock or stock
options held in publicly traded and privately owned companies, nor have
I received any form of payment or compensation from any relevant entity
connected with this testimony. Therefore, I believe I am qualified to
testify about the quality and importance of the scientific research
being performed at the Savannah River Ecology Laboratory and its
relevance to DOE's Strategic Initiatives.
The information I am providing is based largely on my professional
interaction with SREL faculty and a visit to the laboratory, a review
of the institution's publication history and the faculty's research
accomplishments (available on UGA website), and other DOE documents
that are readily available in the public record. Due to time
constraints, greater detail and additional supporting documentation has
been provided in my written testimony.
Since it's founding in 1951, SREL's research emphasis has
constantly evolved to meet the changing needs of DOE and the SRS in
particular, which is reflected in even a cursory review of SREL's
scientific publications and site reports. In response to the growing
cost associated with environmental cleanup at DOE and DOD facilities,
the National Academy of Sciences issued a report entitled ``Groundwater
& Soil Cleanup: Improving Management of Persistent Contaminants'' (NRC,
1999). In the report, the committee clearly recognized the value of
SREL, noting:
``Ecological risks are better characterized at the Savannah
River Site than any other DOE installation, due in part to the
designation of the site as a national environmental research
park and the presence of the Savannah River Ecology
Laboratory.''
Despite such praise, the discussion concerning the current funding
crisis has directly called into question the technical expertise of the
SREL faculty, and indirectly the overall quality and relevance of their
research. First, I want to address some misconceptions concerning the
type of research conducted by SREL. Over the last decade or so, there
has been a clear shift in research emphasis at the lab with an
increasing focus on contaminant fate and transport, largely in response
to a more-focused DOE cleanup mission. SREL faculty have demonstrated
expertise in several active fields of research that are directly
relevant to SRS remediation efforts.
In addition to the clear practical benefit, SREL's support for the
SRS pump-and-treat system resulted in four refereed articles in ES&T,
two in the Vadose Zone Journal, one in Groundwater, and one in the
Journal of Contaminant Hydrology. In addition, SREL researchers have
developed three other patented technologies, including a system that
combines both contaminant immobilization with phytoextraction (U.S. No.
6719822), and they have submitted initial paperwork for an automated
environmental monitoring system. SREL also plays an important role in
the regulatory process by providing the independent scientific
credibility necessary for site management to propose and receive
approval for alternate, cost-effective remediation strategies. In some
instances SREL faculty have been asked to accompany site contractors to
regulatory negotiations in case certain questions arise for which their
technical expertise is required.
My candid overall opinion is that the Savannah River Ecology
Laboratory is providing the DOE and the Nation with high quality
research in a very cost effective manner. It has long been recognized
as perhaps the foremost laboratory in terrestrial ecology in the
country, and in recent years it is performing extremely useful research
related to the fate, transport, effects, and remediation of chemical
contaminants relevant to SRS. During the past 30 months alone, SREL
researchers have published eight rigorously peer-reviewed articles in
ES&T on nickel, uranium, mercury, radio-cesium, and lead, all important
contaminants at the site. (The references are listed at the end of this
written testimony.) In light of these accomplishments, I strongly
believe that SREL's funding should be continued. The survival of SREL
as an independent academic institution on the SRS ensures that long-
term management and remediation scenarios will be developed and
implemented based on independent, verifiable science.
DOE management in Washington may not be aware that SREL researchers
have assisted in the choice, refinement, and even the implementation of
several high-profile SRS remediation efforts. For example, SREL
researchers actively supported the F- & H-Area pump-and-treat
groundwater remediation system, the Mixed Waste Management Facility's
(MWMF) tritium remediation system, the 488D Ash Basin reclamation, and
reclamation and closure of the SRL basins to name a few. SREL research
was used in designing the water treatment facility for the $120 million
dollar F- and H-Area pump-and-treat operation. These efforts further
led to the development of a patented pump-and-treat technology for
enhancing the extraction of contaminants from aquifers (U.S. No.
5,846,434).
As documented in the latest renewal of the Cooperative Agreement,
SREL research ``provides a further understanding of the environmental
effects of SRS operations.'' More specifically, however, the
Cooperative Agreement lists nine responsibilities in Appendix A,
including the following (see the attached Appendix A from the Coop
Agreement):
SREL will assess the impact of site operations on the
environment, and will continue to provide the public and DOE
with an independent view of the environmental management of the
SRS.
SREL will continue basic and applied environmental research
with emphasis upon expanding the understanding of ecological
processes and principles, and upon evaluating the impacts of
site activities, new missions, and land use practices on the
environment.
SREL will use the information collected in the environmental
research to develop and test hypotheses that will contribute to
the scientific foundation necessary to conduct meaningful
ecological risk assessments and to understand the environmental
consequences of energy technologies, remediation efforts and
other SRS activities.
SREL scientists will work closely with SRS personnel to assist
DOE and other SRS contractors in making wise and informed
decisions concerning land and facilities management. SREL will
continue to publish its scientific findings in peer-reviewed
scientific journals to aid the public and to assist DOE in
making policy decisions by providing a basis of independent,
verifiable science.
Although SREL is well positioned to fulfill these responsibilities
and more, one must note the inconsistency between the language of
Appendix A and the assertion that all DOE funding will be provided only
on a task-by-task basis based on ``mission critical'' needs in the
current year. Two obvious questions quickly come to mind.
How does DOE define mission critical needs?
Through what process does DOE review SREL's research
activities to determine if they are consistent with such needs?
In preparing for today's testimony, I studied the research task
matrix that DOE instructed SREL to provide for the FY07 ``funding
review'' (see attachment), and compared it with the April 2007 Draft
version of the DOE-Office of Environmental Management's Engineering &
Technology Roadmap: Reducing Technical Risk and Uncertainty in the EM
Program, which is available on the DOE-EM website (http://
www.em.doe.gov/pages/emhome.aspx). As noted in the document's
introduction (see attachment), the Technology Roadmap was developed by
DOE-EM, Deputy Secretary for Engineering and Technology, Mark
Gilbertson, under Congressional direction within the FY 2007 House
Energy and Water Development Appropriations Report to identify
technology gaps and develop a strategy for funding proposals that
address such needs.
It is clear that several ongoing SREL research programs (e.g.,
support for the tritium phytoremediation facility and characterization
of grouts and other engineered waste isolation materials) and the
proposed research tasks included in the task matrix, indeed, directly
address many of the strategic initiatives identified in the DOE-EM
Technology Roadmap.
The local public's response to the SREL funding crisis is
indicative of the areas general support for DOE activities, a support
that I contend has been fostered by SREL's presence on the site since
it was established in the 1950s. Given this support, I want to draw
attention to the general consistency between the DOE-EM Technology
Roadmap and the NRC report drafted almost ten years earlier. Both
documents clearly indicate that we lack the technical expertise
required for the safe and cost-effective cleanup of the legacy wastes
and facilities in the DOE complex. As the Roadmap notes:
``. . . the remaining [cleanup] challenges will require a
strong and responsive applied research and engineering
program.''
Although considerable progress has been made in the last decade,
the DOE-EM Roadmap acknowledges that numerous challenges remain.
However, environmental research over the last two decades indicates
that following some initial intervention, like removing the pollutant
source, many environmentally degraded systems will recover through
natural biogeochemical processes, an observation that forms the basis
for the widely adopted concept of Monitored Natural Attenuation (MNA).
Furthermore, adopting a costly, highly invasive remediation strategy
can result in ecosystem disruption that is far worse than the original
contamination. It is my opinion that SREL's presence on the SRS has
easily resulted in continued DOE cost savings that far outweigh the
institutions annual operating budget.
Despite the apparent disconnect with respect to DOE-HQ's perception
of SREL expertise, there are additional reasons for DOE to reinstate
SREL's long-term funding. In contrast to the primary site contractors
that must focus on more immediate management and remediation deadlines,
often dictated by regulatory agreements, SREL's academic independence
allows scientists to focus on more long-term remediation and
stewardship concerns so that the required background information is
available to support responsible decision-making now and in the future.
Research institutions like SREL are largely evaluated based on
publication record and external grants. Despite the recent loss of
several faculty positions due to budget cuts, SREL has averaged 85
refereed publications a year for the last six years, which is a very
good rate of scientific productivity considering SREL's number of full-
time faculty and the declining budget situation. Earlier this year SREL
reached a significant milestone with the publication of the 3,000th
peer reviewed article. Since 1991 alone, SREL researchers have
published 44 articles in ES&T, a journal ranked #1 in total citations
and articles published out of 140 journals in the field of
environmental sciences, and #4 in Impact Factor, a measure of the
relative number of times a specific manuscript within a journal is
cited. Even a cursory review of the article titles verifies that they
are directly relevant to our understanding of the fate, transport,
ecological impact, and remediation of contaminants on the SRS,
including major contaminants of concern (COC) such as chromium,
uranium, plutonium, cesium, tritium, and chlorinated solvents, such as
TCE and PCE, to name a few. The same is true of the work published in
other journals as well.
Any summary of faculty accomplishments is sure to overlook numerous
outstanding contributions, and so I encourage the committee to review
the concise two-page CV's, typical of the format that is submitted with
funding proposal, that have been attached to my written testimony.
However, a few specific examples are worth noting that are relevant to
the current discussion. SREL researchers have served as Associate
Editors for the Journal of Environmental Quality, the Soil Science
Society of America Journal, and Water Air and Soil Pollution. Members
of the SREL faculty regularly provide scientific reviews of manuscripts
submitted to ES&T and other scientific journals. Dr. Lee Newman is the
Editor of the International Journal of Phytoremediation. A recent
publication in Geochemical Transactions by Dr. A. Neal et al., (2007)
was recognized as the most accessed paper for June 2007 and is the
eighth most accessed for all time in the journal. Another publication
by Neal, Rosso, Geesey, et al. (2003) was listed in top 25 most
downloaded papers for 2003-2004 in Geochimica Cosmochimica Acta. These
accomplishments are evidence of a vibrant and productive faculty who
are publishing articles of high impact in the best journals in the
world.
Recently, Dr. John Seaman served as the guest editor for a special
edition of the Vadose Zone Journal showcasing remediation activities at
the SRS, and he co-authored with Drs. Mary Harris and Brian Looney of
SRNL the introductory article entitled ``Research in support of
remediation activities at the Savannah River Site,'' which highlighted
collaborative research activities of SREL, SRNL, the U.S.-Forest
Service, and other universities in addressing DOE needs. Furthermore,
SREL research activities in support of SRS cleanup were also recently
highlighted in several submissions to a special SRS edition of
Environmental Geosciences. Representative from SREL have served as
technical advisors to the Citizen's Advisory Board (CAB), a local
independent organization established by DOE to provide local
stakeholder input regarding operations and environmental issues
associated with the SRS.
In summary, SREL research activities clearly support DOE's ongoing
site remediation and long-term stewardship goals. The lab's presence
fosters a more open dialogue that promotes stakeholder consensus when
choosing an eventual course of action with respect to federal lands and
resources. As demonstrated in the past, SREL's research efforts can
reduce the long-term cost associated with site management and cleanup,
lessen the public's anxiety concerning possible health risks associated
with continued site operation, improve our fundamental understanding of
subsurface processes that can be applied to other impacted sites, both
government and commercial facilities, and prevent or greatly lessen the
possible impact of future site activities on the environment and the
surrounding public. The quality of SREL's science, the faculty's
research productivity, and the relevance of the science to the DOE and
SRS argues strongly for continued funding of the laboratory.
Appendices:
DOE-EM Technology Roadmap (April 2007 Draft)
SREL FY07 Funding Matrix
UGA Cooperative Agreement Appendix A
Two Page Summary CVs for each SREL Faculty member
References
Van Nostrand, J.D., Khijniak, T.J., Neely, B., Abdus Sattar, M.,
Sowder, A.G., Mills, G., Bertsch, P.M., Morris, P.J. (2007).
Reduction of nickel and uranium toxicity and enhanced
trichloroethylene degradation to Burhholderia vietnamiensis
PR1301 with hydroxyapatite amendment. Environ. Sci.
Technol. 41:1877-1882.
Unrine, J.M. Jackson, B.P., Hopkins, W.A. (2007). Selenomethionine
biotransforamtion and incorporation into proteins along a
simulated terrestrial food chain. Environ. Sci. Technol.
41:3601-3606.
Rodriguez-Navarro, A.B., Romanek, C.S., Alvarez-Lloret, P., Gaines,
K.F. (2006). Effect of in ovo exposure to PCBs and Hg on
Clapper Rail bone mineral chemistry from a contaminated salt
marsh in coastal Georgia. Environ. Sci. Technol. 40:4936-4942.
Hinton, T.G., Kaplan, D.I., Knoz, A.S., Coughlin, D.P., Nascimento,
R.V., Watson, S.I., Fletcher, D.E., Koo, B-J. (2006). Use of
illite clay for in situ remediation 137Cs-
contaminated water bodies: field demonstration of reduced
biological uptake. Environ. Sci. Technol. 40:4500-4505.
Jackson, B.P., Williams, P.L., Lanzirotti, A., Bertsch, P.M. (2005).
Evidence for biogenic pyromorphite formation by the nematord
Caenorhabditis elegans. Environ. Sci. Technol. 39:5620-5625.
Shaw-Allen, P.L., Romanek, C.S., Bryan, A.L. Jr., Brant, H., Jagoe,
C.H. (2005). Shifts in relative tissue del15N values
in snowy egret nestlings with dietary mercury exposure: a
marker for increased protein degradation. Environ. Sci.
Technol. 39:4226-4233.
Stepanauskas, R., Glenn, T.C., Jagoe, C.H., Tuckfield, R.C., LIndell,
A.H., McArthur, J.V. (2005). Elevated microbial tolerance to
metals and antibiotics in metal-contaminated industrial
environments. Environ. Sci. Technol. 39:3671-3678.
Jackson, B.P., Ranville, J.F., Bertsch, P.M., Sowder, A.G. (2005).
Characterization of colloidal and humic-bound Ni and U in the
``dissolved'' fraction of contaminated sediment extracts.
Environ. Sci. Technol. 39:2478-2485.
Biography for Jerald L. Schnoor
(i) Professional Preparation
Iowa State University, Chemical Engineering, B.S. 1972
University of Texas, Environmental Health Engineering, M.S. 1974
University of Texas, Civil Engineering, Ph.D. 1975
Manhattan College, Environmental Modeling (postdoc), 1976
(ii) Appointments
2002-present--Allen S. Henry Chair Professor of Engineering, University
of Iowa
1990-present--Co-Director, Center for Global and Regional Environmental
Research, University of Iowa
1985-1990--Chair, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering,
University of Iowa
1983-present--Professor, Department of Civil and Environmental
Engineering, University of Iowa
1980-1983--Associate Professor, Department of Civil and Environmental
Engineering, University of Iowa
1977-1980--Assistant Professor, Department of Civil and Environmental
Engineering, University of Iowa
(iii) 5 Publications (selected from 150 journal articles, 6 books, 3
patents)
Boulanger, B., J. Vargo, J.L. Schnoor, and K.C. Hornbuckle. ``Detection
of Perfluorooctant Surfactants in Great Lakes Water.''
Environmental Science & Technology, 38(15), 4064-4070, 2004.
Boulanger, B., A.M. Peck, J.L. Schnoor, and K.C. Hornbuckle. ``Mass
Budget of Perfluorooctane Surfactant in Lake Ontario.''
Environmental Science & Technology, 39(1), 74-79, 2005.
McCutcheon, S.C., and J.L. Schnoor, Eds. 2003. Phytoremediation--
Transformation and Control of Contaminants. New York: John
Wiley & Sons. 987 pp.
Mihelcic, J.R., J.C. Crittenden, M.J. Small, D.R. Shonnard, D.R.
Hokanson, Q. Zhang, H. Chen, S.A. Sorby, V.U. James, J.W.
Sutherland, and J.L. Schnoor. ``Sustainability Science and
Engineering: The Emergence of a New Metadiscipline.''
Environmental Science & Technology, 37(23), 5314-5324, 2003.
Schnoor, J.L. 1996. Environmental Modeling: Fate and Transport of
Pollutants in Water, Air, and Soil. New York: Wiley
Interscience, 682 pp.
(iv) Synergistic Activities
1. Editor-in-Chief, Environmental Science & Technology, 2003-present
2. U.S. EPA Science Advisory Board, 2006-
3. Chair, National Research Council Colloquium, Water Implications of
Biofuels, 2007
4. National Research Council, Water Science and Technology Board,
2000-2005
5. Chair, U.S. EPA ORD, Board of Scientific Counselors, 2000-2004
6. Distinguished lectureships:
- Walter J. Weber Jr. Distinguished Lecturer, University of
Michigan, 2004
- Soil Science Society of America Honorary Lecturer, Soils and
Environmental Quality, 2004
- Henske Distinguished Lecturer Award, Yale University, 2000
- Sigma Xi Distinguished Lecturer, 1999-2000
- Association of Environmental Engineering Professors
Distinguished Lecturer, 1998
- Presidential Lecturer, University of Iowa, 1996
7. Awards:
- Paper of the Year 2005, Award for Integration of Human and
Ecological Risk Assessment, HERA Human and Ecological Risk
Assessment, An International Journal
- Soil Science Society of America, Soils and Environmental
Quality, Honorary Lecturer, 2004
- National Academy of Engineering, member, elected 1999-
present
- Best Theoretical Paper Award, Environmental Water Resources
Institute, ASCE, 2004
- Hancher-Finkbine Medallion, University of Iowa, 2000
- Rudolph Hering Medal, American Society of Civil Engineers,
1998
- Distinguished Fellow Award, Iowa Academy of Science, 1996
- Walter L. Huber Research Prize, American Society of Civil
Engineers, 1985
(v) Collaborators & Other Affiliations
(a) Collaborators: Pedro Alvarez, Gregory R. Carmichael, John
Crittenden, Larry Erickson, Charles Haas, Keri C. Hornbuckle,
Peter Jaffe, Craig Just, Steve McCutcheon, James Merchant,
Barbara Minsker, Kenneth Moore, Tatsuaki Nakato, Richard Ney,
Gene Parkin, Gary Pierzynski, John Rosazza, Michelle Scherer,
Ming-Che Shih, Mitchell Small, Peter Thorne, Richard Valentine,
Benoit Van Aken
(b) Graduate and Postgraduate Advisees: Eric Aitchison, Bryan
Boulanger, Joel G. Burken, Annette Dietz, Africa Espina,
Claudia Espinosa, Sumeet Gandhi, Kirk Hatfield, Shan He, Brad
Helland, James Jordahl, Roopa Kamath, Sara Kelley, Thorjorn
Larssen, Sijin Lee, Louis A. Licht, Malva Mancuso, Drew C.
McAvoy, Sara McMillan, Melissa Mezzari, Nikolaos Nikolaidis,
Deborah O'Bannon, Kurtis Paterson, Kimberly Precht, Jeremy
Rentz, Sanjay Singhvi, Philip L. Thompson, Benoit Van Aken,
John Veenstra, Mark Wiesner, Jong Moon Yoon, Bryan Young
(c) Graduate and Postgraduate Advisors: E. Gus Fruh (deceased), Donald
J. O'Connor (deceased), Werner Stumm (deceased)
(vi) Current and Pending Support
Center for Global and Regional Environmental Research
(CGRER), Source of Support: Iowa Department of Commerce, 12/1/
2007--on going, $600,000 per year.
Sensors for CyberEngineering: Monitoring and Modeling
the Iowa River for Nutrients and Sediments, Source of Support:
Iowa Water Center (ISU) and U of Iowa matching, 3/1/2005-2/28/
2007, $109,378.
CLEANER/WATERS Project Office, Source of Support:
University of Illinois (UIUC) and NCSA, 7/1/2005-6/30/2008,
$3,000,000 total (subcontract $400,000 to UI-Schnoor).
Phytoremediation for the Containment and Treatment of
Energetic and Propellant Materials on Testing and Training
Ranges, Source of Support: SERDP (DOD), 9/1/2005-8/31/2008,
$729,975.
Superfund Basic Research Program, ``Effects of
Airborne PCBs,'' Project #5 Schnoor P.I., Source of Support:
NIEHS, 5/1/2006-9/30/2010, $750,000.
Chairman Miller. Dr. Whicker.
STATEMENT OF DR. F. WARD WHICKER, PROFESSOR, RADIOLOGICAL
HEALTH SCIENCES, COLORADO STATE UNIVERSITY
Dr. Whicker. This is supposed to advance, but it is not
advancing. Okay. I am a professor emeritus at Colorado State
University. I have been in the business of doing radioecology
teaching and research for about 45 years now. My familiarity
with the Savannah River Ecology Lab stems from spending three
years there doing research on my own full-time, and I have had
a number of graduate students that have done their research
there for their dissertations and theses.
I think in the interest of time I will come back to this
one. The importance of the Savannah River Site environment is
important to recognize both scientifically as well as in other
areas, educationally and so forth. The upper left slide is an
aerial view of the Savannah River Site taken from a satellite.
It shows mostly green surrounded by farmland and some
urbanization. The large reservoir on the right hand of that
green blob is our pond, which I am going to come back to in a
moment.
But when you are there as a scientist working, you would
almost think that you are you in a national park. It has a
tremendously diverse wildlife and as many people have said, it
has been a National Environmental Research Park since about
1972. These and many other species live there, and they are
exposed to contaminants that have resulted from releases from
the nuclear reactors and other industrial activities at the
site.
One of the main issues and things that the laboratory,
Savannah River Laboratory can do is that they can get involved
in the question about cleanup. The key to this is determining
whether cleanup is really needed at all, not necessarily how to
do it, unless it is important to do it. This requires risk
analysis and the sciences which underpin the risk analysis.
Cleanup costs, if you plot the level of contamination
versus cost, you have two distinct thresholds. The biggest one
of which is when you decide to have engineered cleanup. At that
point the costs go up by many orders of magnitude, and the SREL
science applies directly to that.
I want to give you a case history if I can of Par Pond,
because this is, I think, an example that really speaks to the
value of the laboratory. This is a large impoundment created
for cooling reactors. It operated for about 30 years, and then
it was shut down in 1988, because the reactors were shut down,
but the reservoir was still there. However, there were some
leaks in the dam, and they decided that they needed to figure
out what to do.
In order to reduce risk in case the dam should fail, they
dropped the lake level 20 feet. This exposed cesium-137
contamination led to designation under CERCLA\1\ that something
had to be done. This required a management decision. Yet there
were several alternatives of how to treat this ranging from
draining the reservoir and breaching the dam and repairing the
dam and refilling the reservoir to contain the contaminants.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ CERCLA: The Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation
and Liability Act, commonly known as Superfund.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Risk assessment, one risk assessment was done by an outside
firm. It was a paper assessment that said that it would be okay
for somebody to farm the land, but SREL research showed this
not to be the case based upon actual data. It basically showed
that cesium-137 has extremely high plant uptake and that moves
into the food chain, and it would produce a lifetime risk to
somebody living there that would exceed the EPA guideline of
one chance in 10,000 of getting a cancer some time in your
lifetime. So that was not an acceptable option.
The two remaining options were to fix the sediments in
place or to excavate it. There was no feasible way at the time
to fix it in place, and so one looked carefully at excavation,
and the cost of excavation of this reservoir was going to be $4
billion, at least. So we came down to the best option to repair
the dam and fill the reservoir at a cost of about $12 million.
This is less than one percent of the excavation.
Then the question arose is what about the health and of
humans and ecological impacts of allowing this contaminated
reservoir even to exist. Well, the SREL research demonstrated
that radiation dose rates to plants and animals were well below
the applicable DOE standards. The radiation health risks for
hypothetical sport fisherman or hunter would be well below EPA
standards, and there would be essentially no risk to other
people using the reservoir.
Also, from many years and decades of research on the
reservoir, there was never any clear evidence of ecological
impacts from either radiation or chemicals, and so that gave
one comfort that the radioactivity there was just there, it
could be measured, but it wasn't causing any ecological damage.
The outcome was that they did, in fact, repair the dam and
refill the pond. It was essentially recovered in about five
years. Over $4 billion was saved from this decision. The
research that was done to lead to this outcome cost about
$200,000 or 800 times less than the cost of that of dredging.
In conclusion, I see I am out of time, SREL should be
funded, and I think even expanded as an independent scientific
organization. In fact, the SREL research has saved the
Government more money than it has received. This Par Pond
example I think proves that notion.
A number of these other points have been made by others.
Let us see if there is any here I should state. I guess down to
the very bottom line. The funding required to maintain the
infrastructure is relatively trivial. The cost of not restoring
this funding, I think the costs of that are going to be
extremely high.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Whicker follows:]
Prepared Statement of F. Ward Whicker
I have been a member of the faculty at Colorado State University
(CSU) for about 45 years. I retired from full-time duty about two years
ago, but continue to teach and conduct research as a part-time,
temporary employee. My field of teaching and research is called
``radioecology'' which deals with natural and man-made radioactivity in
the environment, the movement and accumulation of radioactive materials
through the environment and food chains, the effects of radiation on
plants and animals, and the assessment of health risks to people
exposed to environmental radioactivity. Teaching, research and service
have been the primary duties assigned to me at CSU, but I also served
as Head of the Department of Radiological Health Sciences from 1998 to
2002. I have had a number of national and international assignments
outside of the university over my career and these are briefly
summarized in my biographical sketch that accompanies this document.
I have considerable experience working with scientists at the
Savannah River Ecology Laboratory (SREL), and spent three years (1982,
1991 and 1992) there conducting full-time research. I also mentored 13
graduate students from CSU who each conducted research projects at SREL
over the last 30 years or so. Most of my work at SREL has dealt with
the distribution and transport of radioactive contaminants in reactor
cooling reservoirs located on the Savannah River Site (SRS). I also
spent considerable effort conducting human health risk assessments for
various management options of a large, radioactively-contaminated
reservoir (Par Pond), which had finished serving its main purpose of
cooling hot water from P and R reactors, and which had shown leakage
and internal erosion of the dam. I maintain an informal scientific
collaboration with Dr. Thomas Hinton, a radioecologist at SREL, but
have no financial interest with the laboratory nor with any other
organization at the SRS.
My testimony today is intended to provide my personal assessment of
the overall value of SREL to the Department of Energy and to science
and society in general. The main points I will attempt to make include
the following:
The SRS has enormous ecological, scientific and
educational value, in addition to its nationally important
programs related to defense, and potential programs related to
sustainable energy development.
There will be a need for environmental assessments at
the SRS into the foreseeable future while the government
conducts various programs there in the national interest. These
programs may include national defense, nuclear fuel
fabrication, energy research and production, remediation
technologies, etc.
Portions of this site may be ecologically-threatened
by scientifically unwarranted remediation, privatization or new
programs that may be ecologically damaging.
SREL has and can continue to play a critical role at
the SRS by providing objective, independent science that
contributes information that is vital to decisions on
remediation, land management, stewardship and environmental
assessments of site activities. SREL research can
simultaneously spare valuable ecosystems and save large sums of
federal money.
SREL has a very impressive track record for cost
effective, credible research. Unlike some DOE-sponsored
laboratories, SREL is a University of Georgia organization that
publishes nearly all of its work in peer-reviewed scientific
journals without censorship by DOE or other governmentally-
affiliated organizations.
Unique opportunities remain for education (K-12,
college, graduate levels and the general public) through SREL
outreach programs at the SRS. These opportunities range from
basic biology, ecology and numerous environmental sciences to
fields with direct application to Site activities such as
remediation technology, risk assessment, toxicology,
radioecology and geochemistry.
The SRS encompasses over 300 square miles, approximately 85 percent
of which is relatively pristine forest lands and aquatic ecosystems
(streams, ponds and wetlands). Only about 15 percent of the land area
has been developed for roads, parking lots, utility lines and
industrial structures. The undeveloped land and waters essentially
serve as a large buffer zone that protects the public from potential
accidents or routine activities that could release radioactive and
chemical contaminants to the environment. The buffer zone concept has
functioned extremely well, and only very minor amounts of contamination
have reached the lands and waterways that surround the SRS. A satellite
view of the SRS clearly shows a roughly circular area of green forest
surrounded by farmland and otherwise developed land. The SRS buffer
zone provides a very rich and diverse flora and fauna that flourishes
in the absence of significant human impact. This landscape provides
enhanced air and water quality, not only within the boundaries of the
SRS, but also in the surrounding landscape. The SRS serves not only as
a sanctuary for fish and wildlife, but also as a nursery for plants and
animals that can migrate outside the boundaries of the site, enhancing
the environmental quality of surrounding areas.
Scientifically, the SRS is of tremendous value because of its
largely undeveloped nature and the fact that it is protected from
unauthorized human intrusion. This situation provides extremely rare
opportunities to study ecosystems that are not impacted by human
activities, and those that may be impacted to various degrees by
physical, chemical and radiological agents resulting from site
operations. This situation led to the designation of a large portion
(nearly 200,000 acres) of the SRS in 1972 as a National Environmental
Research Park. The SREL has a distinguished history of over 50 years of
existence on the SRS and has provided a tremendous body of knowledge
that has contributed to Site operations, science in general, and public
education.
Much of the DOE budget in the past 15 years or so has been devoted
to environmental cleanup, or remediation, of radioactively/chemically-
contaminated lands. Because most residual, long-lived radionuclides
such as cesium-137 and plutonium-239 adhere very strongly to soil
particles, their removal from contaminated areas by necessity involves
removal of the soil or sediment in which the contamination is located.
Thus, most cleanup methods require removal of topsoils on land and
sediments in streams and impoundments. The volumes of contaminated soil
or sediment can be enormous, and the material needs to be excavated and
transported to a disposal location elsewhere. This process is not only
extremely costly; it also damages the ecosystem that may be
contaminated but is otherwise healthy, and it unavoidably leads to
damage to the area designated for disposal of the material (see
attached article: ``Avoiding destructive remediation at DOE sites,''
Science 303: 1615-1616 (March 2004)). There have been various DOE
estimates of the total cost of such remediation activities, and most
have been in the range of 100 to 500 billion dollars. As of about 2003,
over $60 billion had been spent on remediation. In many cases,
scientific risk assessments supporting the decision to remediate have
been done poorly, and sometimes not done at all. Clearly, much of the
soil remediation completed in the DOE complex has not actually reduced
real health risks to real people. Instead, they have possibly reduced
future risks to hypothetical people assumed to use the land in very
unrealistic ways. Actually, the cleanup process itself produces risks
to cleanup workers, and it has also caused spreading of otherwise
stable contamination (Science 303: 1615-1616 (March 2004) ).
I believe that the only objective and quantifiable way to determine
the necessity of cleanup of contaminated areas is a rigorous,
scientific assessment of the human health and ecological risks of
proceeding with engineered cleanup, and comparing the results with the
same risks of simply protecting and monitoring the area involved. It
costs somewhat more to isolate and monitor a contaminated area than to
just ignore it, but proceeding with aggressive, engineered soil removal
escalates the costs by several orders of magnitude. The risks resulting
from leaving contaminated soil or sediment in place generally increases
in proportion to the level of contamination, so it is critical to
carefully measure and document the levels of each identifiable
contaminant in the area of concern as a first step in determining what
action, if any, to take. The second action is to use science-based
methods of assessing the human health and ecological risks from such
documented levels of contamination. If the risks resulting from leaving
contamination in place are sufficiently low, and if the costs of, and
damage from, cleanup are sufficiently high, then it is difficult to
justify action to remediate. The SREL is ideally poised to continue the
science needed to make such decisions at the SRS. Just as importantly,
SREL has the necessary credibility with the public and the regulatory
agencies to have their findings trusted and used in the decision-making
process.
It seems instructive at this point to summarize an actual case
study at the SRS that involved choosing between alternative approaches
to managing a contamination situation that required relatively urgent
action. The case study involved Par Pond, a 2,600 acre impoundment that
was used for about 30 years to cool hot water from the P and R military
production reactors. The reactors were shut down permanently by 1988,
so the reservoir was no longer needed for the purpose of cooling. In
1991, there were signs that the dam which created the reservoir was
beginning to erode internally and starting to leak. As a safety
precaution for people living downstream, the water level was lowered by
about 20 feet, which exposed approximately 50 percent of the area of
bottom sediments. The sediments in the reservoir had accumulated
radioactive contamination during various periods of reactor operations,
but most came from leaking fuel elements in R reactor in the late 1950s
and early 1960s. The primary contaminant was cesium-137, a radionuclide
with a 30 year half life that tends to be mobile in local ecosystems
and which readily accumulates in plants, animals, and potentially in
people.
This situation led to the need to examine alternatives for managing
Par Pond and its lakebed. On the one hand, the levels of cesium-137
were sufficiently high to generate concern about protecting
hypothetical people in the future who might use the area to grow crops,
or people who might consume fish living in the reservoir. On the other
hand, the 30 year stability and unexploited nature of the reservoir
allowed the natural development of 30 shoreline miles of rich wetland/
littoral vegetation, a diverse and productive fishery that attracted
bald eagles and osprey, American alligators, turtles and other
wildlife. It also attracted thousands of waterfowl that found sanctuary
from hunters during the winter months. In essence, Par Pond had become
a large fish and wildlife refuge of exceptional quality. It was often
referred to as one of the ``crown jewels'' of the many different and
exceptional ecosystems of the SRS. Clearly, remediation of the
reservoir would destroy this entire ecosystem.
The Par Pond situation did not escape the attention of the
regulatory agencies. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) declared
the exposed lakebed a CERCLA or ``Superfund'' site, a designation which
imposes a defined protocol for assessing all feasible alternatives for
managing the site. The main alternative strategies that were developed
and studied included:
1. Draining, breaching the dam, and converting the lakebed to
forest or other vegetation cover,
2. Draining, breaching the dam, and excavating and removing
the sediments,
3. Draining and attempting to fix the sediments in place, and
4. Repairing the dam and refilling the reservoir to cover the
137Cs-contaminated sediments.
Option 1 initially looked feasible, and a generic, ``paper'' risk
assessment by a non-SRS affiliated laboratory suggested acceptable
risks for a hypothetical self-sufficient site resident who farmed the
lakebed and subsisted on foods grown there. However, SREL research by
scientists who made actual measurements on the lakebed contradicted the
earlier study. Site-specific research showed the 137Cs to be
taken up by food crops to a much greater extent than did the generic
``paper'' risk assessment, leading to a hypothetical risk that could
exceed the EPA-unacceptable threshold of 10-4 by a factor of about 30.
The 10-4 threshold means a one chance in 10,000 of getting fatal cancer
from the exposure to radiation. This meant that Option 1 was an
unacceptable management strategy.
Option 3, fixing the 137Cs in place was not considered
feasible, due to unproven technologies for doing so, and very high
costs. That left Options 2 and 4 for further consideration. Option 4,
repairing the dam and refilling the reservoir initially looked
unfavorable due to the cost, estimated at 10-15 million dollars.
However, when Option 2, excavating and transporting the sediments
elsewhere was examined, the cost estimate exceeded 4 billion dollars!
Furthermore, Option 2 would have destroyed the Par Pond ecosystem and
would have created serious water quality problems downstream due to
erosion of sediments before the soil became stabilized with vegetation.
At this point, Option 4 appeared to be the best solution, but then the
question arose as to the effects of the 137Cs radiation
exposure to plants, animals, and hypothetical fishermen who might
consume fish from the reservoir. Again, SREL research and assessment
provided the answers. The radiation dose rates to plants and animals
living in Par Pond would be well under the DOE protection guidelines
(0.1 or 1.0 rad/day, depending on species), and the risk to the
hypothetical fisherman consuming fish from the reservoir would also be
under the EPA risk guideline of 10-4. Furthermore, decades of SREL
research on the Par Pond biota showed no indication of radiation
effects. On the contrary, the plants and animals living in the
reservoir were diverse, robust and self-sustaining.
In the end, the decision was made to pursue Option 4, repairing the
dam and refilling the reservoir. The dam repair and enhancement was
completed at a cost of about 12 million dollars. The reservoir was
refilled and the ecosystem was almost fully recovered within about five
years. The cost to repair the dam was less than one percent of the cost
of Option 2, engineered cleanup. The cost for the SREL research which
supported Option 4 was approximately $200,000, or at least 800 times
less than the cost of engineered sediment removal. A final way in which
SREL contributed to this sensible decision was to provide tours of Par
Pond for personnel affiliated with State and federal regulatory
agencies. Actually seeing the ecosystem in person and talking with
scientists having first-hand knowledge gave key people a far different
impression than just reviewing piles of documents. I believe that this
kind of success story can be repeated many times over in the future,
leading to preservation of ecologically-valuable areas and saving large
sums of money as well. However, a decision such as this requires
detailed scientific information directly relevant to the problem, and
the information needs to be generated by an independent, credible
laboratory. SREL is that kind of laboratory.
In conclusion, I believe the following points are true and relevant
to the current funding crisis for the SREL:
The SRS is of great social, ecological, scientific
and educational value. SREL should be funded to continue and
even expand its role as an independent scientific organization
that plays a key role in the long-term stewardship of the SRS.
SREL research has saved the government far more money
than it has received. The Par Pond example alone proves this
notion.
SREL research over the last 50 years has demonstrated
time and again how nuclear activities can be compatible with a
high degree of environmental quality.
SREL's work is credible to other scientists,
regulators and the general public because it is an independent
scientific/academic organization with an excellent reputation
for integrity, high-quality work, productivity and educational
outreach activities.
Some of the SREL research will be essential to the
generation of public and political support for commercial
nuclear power, which is expected to be a significant part of
the solution to our over-dependence on foreign oil and global
warming.
In terms of cost per scientific publication, the SREL
has been one of the most, if not the most, cost-efficient
environmental research laboratory in the DOE complex.
Largely as a result of SREL research, the SRS is
probably the most well-characterized site in the DOE complex.
This will continue to save time and resources in the planning
process for new missions and providing required environmental
regulatory documents, if SREL's ``corporate knowledge'' is
retained through restored funding.
SREL provides training unique to environmental
problems of military and industrial sites. Students and
visiting faculty from colleges in every state have come to SREL
for hands-on experience. Few, if any, other sites in the DOE
complex can offer this kind of training in a truly academic
atmosphere.
The funding needed to maintain the infrastructure of
SREL is relatively trivial, while the costs of shutting it down
are not.
I fully believe that shutting down the SREL is a serious mistake
that is not in the national best interest. I sincerely hope that this
is realized before it is too late, and that funding for the laboratory
can be restored.
Biography for F. Ward Whicker
Dr. Whicker has been a member of the CSU faculty since 1965 and,
from 1998-2002, Head of the Department of Radiological Health Sciences.
He played the key role in the development of the internationally-
recognized graduate program in Radioecology, and is widely regarded as
one of the founders of this field, which addresses the fate and effects
of radioactivity in the environment. His formal teaching extends beyond
CSU to numerous organizations, including the International Atomic
Energy Agency, the International Union of Radioecologists, and the U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency. In 1989 he established the Par Pond
Radioecology Laboratory at the Savannah River Site. His over 170
scientific publications include 98 in peer-reviewed journals, 33 book
chapters and five books. His awards include the ``E.O. Lawrence Award''
from the Department of Energy (1990), the ``Distinguished Scientific
Achievement Award'' from the Health Physics Society (2004), and the
``V.I. Vernadsky Award'' from the International Union of Radioecology
(2005). His research on the effects of ionizing radiation on plants and
animals has contributed to the development of national and
international standards and guidelines for protecting the general
environment from radioactive contamination. Dr. Whicker has served on
many committees and advisory panels at national and international
levels. These include the Board of Directors, Scientific Vice
President, Honorary Council Member, and Member or Chair of several
committees of the National Council on Radiation Protection and
Measurements. He has served on Committees of the National Academy of
Science/National Research Council in the area of environmental problems
of the DOE Weapons Complex. He has chaired national and international
working groups and scientific writing teams, for example, for the
International Atomic Energy Agency, the International Commission on
Radiation Units and Measurements, and the National Council on Radiation
Protection and Measurements. He has served on review panels for many
organizations, including the Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S.
Congressional Office of Technology Assessment, Los Alamos National
Laboratory, the National Cancer Institute, the Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention, the States of Colorado and Maine, the Office of
Naval Research, Sandia National Laboratory, Battelle-Pacific Northwest
Laboratory, and the Southwest Research Institute. He has consulted for
many private organizations and has served as an expert witness on
numerous litigation issues concerning radioactivity in the environment.
He served four years as Associate Editor for the Americas for the
Journal of Environmental Radioactivity.
Discussion
Chairman Miller. Thank you. At this point we will open our
first round of questions, and the Chair recognizes himself for
five minutes.
Private Contractors Vs. SREL
First, Dr. Whicker, your example of remediation at Par
Pond, could a contractor have provided similar information to
support the option of remediation in place as opposed to
excavation?
Dr. Whicker. They could not have come in and done the job
very quickly. One of the key things was that the observation of
fish and wildlife in that reservoir had been going on for
decades, and the radioactivity had been there for decades. It
was gradually decaying. If there were going to be effects, it
probably would have occurred 30 or 40 years ago. So, no, I
don't think a private contractor could come in and do the job
properly.
There was a risk assessment done by a private contractor on
what the risks would be of farming the lake bed and someone
living on the lake bed. They are the ones that came up doing a
paper study with the notion that, yeah, it would be safe to
farm out there, but they didn't take any data, they didn't
really factor in the increased mobility of cesium-137 in that
particular kind of soil.
So, and I was told that that research cost about $1
million. It was done very quickly and on paper. They never came
to the site to look at it.
National Environmental Research Parks
Chairman Miller. SREL is one of seven National
Environmental Research Parks associated with DOE installations
in different parts of the country, different ecological zones.
What is the value of having research in each ecological zone?
Is it important that there be a network of sites to allow kind
of a regional understanding of ecological issues?
Dr. Whicker. Yes, it is. Each of the DOE sites, the major
sites, have different kinds of soil and the type of soil
determines the mobility of radio-nuclides and contaminants in
that soil, including how much is taken up into the food chain
and thereby how much risk will there be to someone living on
that side. So, yeah, it is important to do these kinds of
studies at all the major sites. They all differ quite a bit in
terms of their ecology and their geochemistry.
The Value of Long-term Ecological Research
Chairman Miller. What is the importance of longer-term data
for reptiles, birds, amphibians in deciding which is, deciding
on a credible risk assessment for different remediation
options, excavation versus remediation in place?
Dr. Whicker. Well, the long-term aspect is important. It
is, you know, you can go out on the field and observe things in
the field of ecology, but figuring out what is causing what is
very, very difficult. Let us say you see a decline in a
particular wildlife species, and you say, well, gee, is it
because there is a little bit of, there is cesium-137 out
there, or is it a natural cycle? Is it due to some other factor
that we are not even aware of?
Ecology is a science that has to be very innovative to try
to figure out what causes what. You can observe things, but
understanding the causes takes years, if not decades, of
observation.
Chairman Miller. To set an example to other Members of the
Committee I will now yield to Mr. Lampson for his first round
of questions.
Chairman Lampson. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Let me start
with Dr. Whicker, and I have a question or two.
Radio-nuclides like cesium-137 and plutonium-239 are
tainted in the environment for a long time, and although they
attach to soil particles, they do move in the environment and
sometimes are detected offsite. Now, I understand that the
monitoring of animals and plants helps us to understand those
paths. If these substances moved through the food chain, is it
possible that larger, longer-lived animals carry this
contamination offsite? And so is monitoring of birds, mammals,
fish, and reptiles important from the perspective of insuring
the safety and human health of people in surrounding
communities?
Dr. Whicker. It is true that animals such as birds and fish
do pick up contamination, and yes, indeed, they can migrate off
site. Studies have been done at Savannah River Ecology Lab and
at other sites, and they generally show that just a very tiny
amount of radioactive or chemical materials actually get moved
off site by immigration of individuals from the side.
Clearly observing these pathways of contaminant transport
in animals and so forth does tell us a lot about what humans
might be exposed to, and a lot of the work that has been done
there has even been done in the context of agriculture. It
isn't just pure ecology that we are concerned about. It is
agriculture ecosystems, and we can learn about, a lot about
that from the kind of work that has gone on at the Savannah
River Site.
We planted crops that people eat right on the Par Pond
lakebed, for instance, and we looked at the uptake of cesium
and other radio-nuclides into corn and okra and turnips and
lettuce and so on, and that would be something that a self-
sufficient farmer who might occupy that land in the future
would be exposed to.
Chairman Lampson. Would both of you comment on this
question. Can natural attenuation be used safely as a
remediation option if it is not coupled with a credible long-
term monitoring program?
Dr. Schnoor. By definition monitored natural attenuation
includes long-term monitoring and modeling to make sure that
the contaminants aren't migrating off site or posting an undue
risk to humans or to animals. So, no, it cannot be done without
long-term monitoring.
Dr. Whicker. And I might add that the idea of monitored
natural attenuation is a very effective one. The wisdom of
putting these DOE sites in large areas where there is a buffer
zone has really resulted in extremely small amounts of
contamination ever getting off site. That is not to say that
none does, but the levels that do get off site are extremely
small because they do get tied up in the sediments, they are
taken up in the biota. Actually, I can tell you that the
presence of the Savannah River Site actually helps to improve
both water quality and air quality for that whole region, as
opposed to the idea if that whole area were say agricultural.
The streams coming off the Savannah River Site are largely
black water streams. They are clear. They are generally devoid
of contaminants, where if you look at the streams coming into
the river from the other side where they are coming off
farmland is usually muddy, and that is usually loaded with
pesticides and that kind of thing.
So I think the site engenders a high degree of
environmental quality that extends well beyond the borders of
the plant.
Chairman Lampson. Mr. Chairman, instead of carrying over,
my next question will be longer than five minutes, so I will
yield out my time at this point.
Chairman Miller. Thank you, Mr. Lampson. Mr. Sensenbrenner
for five minutes.
National Laboratories' Overhead Costs
Mr. Sensenbrenner. Yeah. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
Both of you, do you believe as a general rule that research
funds should be parceled out on a competitive peer review basis
or by Congressional or Executive Branch earmarks?
Dr. Whicker. I am not sure I quite understand your point.
If I understand it a little bit, the work that the Savannah
River Ecology Lab does is submitted to peer review journals and
so forth, has to go through peer review before it can be
published. However, it is not subject as far as I know to any
kind of censorship from the Department of Energy.
Mr. Sensenbrenner. I am talking about the grants to do the
research that result in the publication.
Dr. Whicker. Well, yeah. The grants that they get, they
have to compete for grants. When they go after funding that
would be from now DOE sources or non site, you know. It would
be over and above their normal.
Mr. Sensenbrenner. Dr. Schnoor.
Dr. Schnoor. I agree that funding should be competitive,
however, in the case of the Savannah River Ecology Laboratory,
a certain base level of funding I think is necessary to keep
the operation going and to insure and maintain the long-term
research.
Mr. Sensenbrenner. Yeah. I guess, you know, I guess the
observation that I would make or make two observations, you
know. One is is that neither Colorado State University nor the
University of Iowa, or for that matter the University of
Wisconsin, Madison, is able to get a specific line item from
the DOE for things that should be competitively peer reviewed.
You know, they ache to basically have their projects compete
against everybody else's, and if they end up losing out, then
those scientists are not funded by the Federal Government, and
it is up to, in the case of each of these three institutions
that I mentioned or for that matter, the University of Georgia,
to determine whether or not to use their own funds to get from
the legislature to continue that base.
And I guess my question is is why should SREL be treated
differently in terms of competitive peer review funding for
this type of research than most of the other institutions in
the country when they compete for scientific research grants?
Dr. Schnoor. The Savannah River Ecology Lab, their research
is peer reviewed, and my testimony----
Mr. Sensenbrenner. No. I am talking about, you know, this
is after the research is done. I am talking about----
Dr. Schnoor. About the award.
Mr. Sensenbrenner.--the award, because, you know, with you
at the University of Iowa, you don't get the award. You don't
do the research unless you get the state legislature to decide
to fund it. Now, why shouldn't the same hold true with research
that is done at SREL, where if they don't get the award, then
it is up to the Georgia legislature to determine whether or not
to continue the funding?
Dr. Schnoor. A certain amount of funding is necessary at
these laboratories just to keep the doors open and to keep a
base-level research going.
Mr. Sensenbrenner. Uh-huh.
Dr. Schnoor. Then they should compete and do compete for
other outside funds.
Mr. Sensenbrenner. Well, I guess neither of you get my
point, and I am trying to see why SREL ought to be dealt with
differently in terms of funding for the basic research than
practically every other institution in the country, whether it
is a state university or whether it is a private university.
Everybody else rolls the dice, well, with competitive peer
review grants, and they have got to do it year after year after
year. And if they don't win the competitive peer review grants,
then they either go to the legislature or fold up shop. What is
different about SREL?
Dr. Schnoor. I am trying to answer your question, and that
is that at research laboratories and SREL is no different than
other EPA or DOE laboratories, you need a base level of funding
to keep the----
Mr. Sensenbrenner. Uh-huh.
Dr. Schnoor.--infrastructure, the research operation going.
And that is really what we are talking about here, and a
rather, in my opinion, a small amount of funding also. Ten
million dollars is really quite small considering the quality
and level of research that is going on at SREL.
Mr. Sensenbrenner. But why should SREL get a line item and
the University of Iowa doesn't?
Dr. Schnoor. Well, the SREL gets a line item just like all
the other National Research Laboratories.
Mr. Sensenbrenner. Well, I am saying but why should they,
because a peer review committee might decide that research that
is done not at a National Research Laboratory has a higher
priority for funding than SREL.
Dr. Schnoor. I understand your question, and, of course, at
the University of Iowa we would love to have a line item
funding also, but we are not a National Laboratory located in
one of these----
Mr. Sensenbrenner. But, Dr. Schnoor, my time is up. You
know, my point is turning the coin over, you know, and that is
that I know you would like to have, you know, a line item of
funding, but why should SREL's line item of funding take away
the potential of you getting more because your peer review
research proposal is determined to be better by the committee?
I yield back.
Chairman Miller. Mr. Bartlett for five minutes.
Mr. Bartlett. Thank you very much. Is it your understanding
that generally speaking in the community at large and the
scientific community and in the medical community that the
lower the level of radiation the better?
Dr. Whicker. Yes. The lower the better.
Mr. Bartlett. Do you agree, Dr. Schnoor?
Dr. Schnoor. Yes. There is a, in certain types of health
outcomes, health effects, it is still thought that even a
single bit of radiation could be enough to begin the disease
process.
Mr. Bartlett. Are you familiar with Hansey Selea? That name
mean anything to either one of you?
Dr. Whicker. Could you pronounce it again?
Mr. Bartlett. Hansey Selea. H-a-n-s-e-y.
Dr. Whicker. No. I am sorry.
Radiation Hormesis
Mr. Bartlett. Hansey Selea was a, one of the early
investigators from Montreal, Canada, I believe, in stress. I am
81 years old, so my work in the scientific community is 50
years old and more, so he is back in history. But he was the
first investigator to begin to understand the role of stress in
the body. I wish I had come prepared with the actual data, but
there is scientific evidence that appropriate levels of
radiation are beneficial. Because what they do like any other
stressor out there, they challenge the body's defenses, and
these defenses are martialed so that we are then better able to
withstand other stresses.
I know that your perception is the perception of the
general community and it should not be the perception I think
of the scientific community, particularly the medical
community. You know, radiation is just another stressor. As far
as I know there is nothing unique about that, and I think that
we are spending excessive amounts of money in cleanup, which
with a hard look is really silly. It is just another stressor.
Water is a great absorber. Your observation that refilling the
impoundment was the right thing to do. It doesn't take much
water to absorb this radiation, and the organisms living near
it are probably better off for the moderate levels, the
appropriate levels of radiation they are getting because their
residence is built up, the body's defenses work that way.
What do we have to do so that we change this perception
that the less the better? I don't believe that radiation is a
unique stressor. I don't think the scientific evidence
indicates it is a unique stressor, and we just are straining
that and spending all sorts of money we don't need to spend in
cleaning up the last vestiges of this contamination.
All of the ground in these cleanup areas don't have to be
appropriate for establishing a daycare center where the kids
may sit and put dirt in their mouth.
That is the rules that we adhere to, and I think that we
are spending at least an order of magnitude, too much money in
cleaning up these sites, because we don't understand the
science and physiology and the medicine.
Dr. Whicker. Well, I agree with you, and in fact, my
written testimony has an article published in Science that says
basically what you are saying. The thing of it is is that it
takes a lot of science to demonstrate what you are talking
about and oftentimes to convince the regulatory community and
the public that cleanup may not always be warranted because the
damage can be great, the cost can be high.
The notion of a little bit of radiation being good for you,
that is a well-known phenomenon called hormesis, and that has
received a great deal of attention over the years. Of course,
we live in a radiation environment. We are sitting here right
now, and we are getting a fair amount of radiation just because
our environment, cosmic radiation, radioactivity in the earth's
surface that has been there since the earth was formed. And so
but the way that I answered your original question of, is that
for the purposes of radiation protection, they assume that the
dose and response to that dose is a linear phenomenon, but
there is evidence--the trouble is there is not consensus on
that, and getting the data to pin it down at the very low doses
is very difficult.
Mr. Bartlett. Yeah. I don't know of any evidence that says
that this is not true. Thank you very much.
My time is up, Mr. Chairman. Thank you.
Chairman Miller. Thank you, Mr. Bartlett.
I will now recognize myself for an additional five minutes
for a second round of questioning.
Mr. Sensenbrenner's questions regarding peer review I think
foreshadows the testimony on August 1. Both of you are involved
in scientific research and are familiar with what is involved,
what is required typically of peer review. Is that correct?
Dr. Schnoor. Yes.
Dr. Whicker. Yes.
Competitive Grants and Peer Review
Chairman Miller. My impression of peer review for a grant
is that the grant application is very thorough in the
information called for, in the information that the applicant
must provide. Is that correct?
Dr. Schnoor. Yes.
Dr. Whicker. Yes.
Chairman Miller. Okay.
Dr. Schnoor. I might add, Chairman Miller, that there are
grants that are competitive, and there are grants that are part
of a mission agency.
Chairman Miller. Right.
Dr. Schnoor. And I think that----
Chairman Miller. With respect to peer review.
Dr. Schnoor.--you need both kinds----
Chairman Miller. To make a judgment by, to allow a judgment
by others expert in the same field. Would it typically be the
case that the information requested would be very thorough and
would be the information needed to review?
Dr. Whicker. Yes.
Dr. Schnoor. Yes.
Chairman Miller. Okay. If Dr. Bertsch testifies on August 1
that the information required of him was a sentence or two
description of the work they plan to do, does that sound to you
like the information usually required for a scientific or
technical peer review?
Dr. Schnoor. No.
Chairman Miller. Okay. And a second question about peer
review. With respect to peer review, what kinds of documents
does it generate? Are there memoranda describing the failings
of the proposal if peer review is critical? What, are there
documents typically generated as a result of peer review?
Dr. Whicker. Are you talking about in applying for a
research money or----
Chairman Miller. Well, in making the decision.
Dr. Whicker.--when it comes to publishing?
Chairman Miller. Whoever makes the decision with respect to
peer review, are there not generally documents generated as a
result of peer review?
Dr. Whicker. I think----
Chairman Miller. Memoranda, letters, something that would
say what exactly the reviewer was looking for or if the
reviewer found something wanting, exactly what was wanting.
Dr. Whicker. Sometimes the person who submits the grant
proposal will hear about those things, and they will get some
communication back, but not always in my experience. Sometimes
you just find out that you don't get funded, but you never hear
about why.
Dr. Schnoor. Well, normally I would say you, as one who
proposes for research funding, you do receive letters of review
back from panels who have looked at your research, and those
remain anonymous. You don't find out what they were.
Chairman Miller. Okay.
Dr. Schnoor. But you do get to see----
Chairman Miller. Well, that is what you see as having
applied for a grant----
Dr. Schnoor. That is correct.
Chairman Miller.--subject to peer review, but internally,
whether you see it or not, would you expect there to be some
document of some kind that sets forth what the failings were
that led to the denial of funding?
Dr. Schnoor. Yes. That would be my belief.
Chairman Miller. Okay.
Dr. Schnoor. Yes.
Dr. Whicker. I would think so as well.
Chairman Miller. And if the Department of Energy has no
documents that really reflect a peer review, an analysis of the
work done at the Savannah River, the SREL, Ecology Lab, then
perhaps there was not a genuine peer review. Is that----
Dr. Whicker. I would hate to speculate.
Dr. Schnoor. I couldn't speak for the Department of Energy.
I can say that there are, papers from the Savannah River
Ecology Lab have been peer reviewed, their technical scientific
papers.
Environmental Remediation Research Done By SREL
Chairman Miller. All right. Dr. Schnoor, we still have
Superfund sites we are still cleaning up. The sites were on
federal and private lands throughout the country. Are the
studies that have been done at SREL applicable to remediation
of environmental damage and other areas?
Dr. Schnoor. Yes. I think my testimony shows that most of
the papers, especially recently, are related to the problems at
the Savannah River Site. But certainly these problems are
shared by many other sites, and the research is applicable
broadly.
Chairman Miller. What is the status of our developing the
technologies to cleanup safely environmentally-contaminated
sites, particularly DOE sites, particularly radiation sites
with the contaminous radiation?
Dr. Schnoor. Especially where you have mixed wastes, that
is both radio-contaminants as well as other contaminants
together. These are considered to be among the more difficult
sites to clean up, and proportionately more of those remain
than other sites.
Chairman Miller. All right. How would you evaluate SREL as
a candidate for undertaking further research into remediation
as a technique for cleanup? Based upon your experience with
that lab?
Dr. Schnoor. I think this lab is performing extremely well
considering the rather small number of faculty involved in
research there and the small federal funds and state funds
committed to it.
Fate and Transport Studies
Chairman Miller. All right. I think we throw around terms
like all of us know what they mean on this hearing. I think in
hearings like this where members are not willing to betray
their general ignorance of the signs, but what are fate and
transport studies?
Dr. Whicker. Am I part of the questioning here?
Chairman Miller. Yes. Either one of you. Yes, sir. Dr.
Whicker
Dr. Whicker. Fate deals with where contaminants go once
they are released, usually either to air or water. In other
words, let us say you put a contaminant into water. It is, some
contaminants will stay in the water but most of them will stick
to soil particles, silt particles, phytoplankton, little
organisms in the water. Then they might move through the food
chain or they might not, depending on their chemistry. So that
is what we mean by fate, what happens to it, where does it go.
Chairman Miller. And transport. Is that different or is
that part of fate?
Dr. Whicker. It is the same thing basically.
Dr. Schnoor. Transport is sort of where it goes----
Dr. Whicker. Yeah.
Dr. Schnoor.--and fate is sort of what happens to it along
the way.
Dr. Whicker. Yes.
Chairman Miller. Okay. A knowledge of where contaminants go
and what happens to it, is that important beyond cleaning up on
site. Would that be important, for instance, in any kind of
activity at a contaminated site that disturbs the soil,
construction activity, for instance?
Dr. Whicker. Oh, yes. It is extremely important, and in
fact, there are cleanups that have been done in the DOE complex
that the cleanup itself generated dust and that dust blew
offsite, and that led to a multi-billion dollar lawsuit. This
was at Rocky Flats.
Chairman Miller. I think that is all the questions that I
have and since that is all the questions I have, that is all
the questions that any Member has. But thank you for being here
today. We will have a second panel on August 1. Dr. Bertsch,
this will be your second trip to Washington. I understand that
you have time on your hands now, but I appreciate and apologize
for your coming today without testifying. We will try to
accommodate your schedule on August 1. I will let you testify
first and get on with your day.
With respect to the Department of Energy witnesses, I
strongly urge all the witnesses not to make lunch plans, not to
make dinner plans. We will continue until we have completed the
testimony scheduled for August 1.
The best predictor of what a hearing, an Investigations and
Oversight hearing will be like, how searching the questioning
will be, how thorough it will be, is how motivated the Members
are and the staff is. I think you should assume that the staff
and the Members will be very motivated on August 1.
With no further business, we are adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 11:50 a.m., the Subcommittees were
adjourned.]