The community environmental monitoring program: a historical perspective
Conference
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OSTI ID:21305409
- Desert Research Institute, Las Vegas, NV (United States)
With the Community Environmental Monitoring Program (CEMP) entering its 26. year of monitoring the offsite areas around the Nevada Test Site (NTS), a look back on the history and the hows and whys of its formation is in order. In March of 1979, the accident at Three-Mile Island Nuclear Power Generating Plant near Middletown, Pennsylvania occurred, and Environmental Monitoring Systems Laboratory-Las Vegas (EMSL-LV), along with other governmental agencies such as the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), was requested to provide monitoring personnel. Public concerns over the accident were high, especially for those living around the power plant. It was found that involving the local community in the sample collection process helped to ease some of the concerns, and the Citizens Monitoring Program (CMP) was instituted. This idea was brought back to Las Vegas and in 1981, the NTS Community Monitoring Program was started to involve the communities surrounding and downwind of the NTS, who were experiencing many of the same concerns, in the monitoring of the Nuclear Weapons Testing Program. By reviewing the history of the CEMP, one can see what the concerns of the local communities were, how they were addressed, and the effect this has had on them. From the standpoint of stakeholders, getting information on radiation safety issues from an informed local citizen rather than from a government agency official living elsewhere can only have a positive effect on how the public views the reliability of the monitoring data. (authors)
- Research Organization:
- WM Symposia, 1628 E. Southern Avenue, Suite 9 - 332, Tempe, AZ 85282 (United States)
- OSTI ID:
- 21305409
- Report Number(s):
- INIS-US--09-WM-07117
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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