US DOE Perspectives on Advisory Board Effectiveness - 13539
- US DOE (United States)
Federal missions on the Oak Ridge Reservation began with the Manhattan Project, and continues today with major facilities supporting the Nation's Science and National Security missions. While most of the land area on the Oak Ridge Reservation is free of environmental impacts from these activities, significant legacy contamination is associated with specific facilities and past waste management areas. In 1989, the Oak Ridge Reservation (ORR) was placed on National Priorities List, and DOE established its Office of Environmental Management that same year. Three years later, in 1992, the Federal Facility Agreement for the reservation was signed. Three years afterward, the Oak Ridge Site Specific Advisory Board was established to augment ongoing public involvement activities related to Oak Ridge Reservation cleanup activities. One of the early and most impactful decisions the board made was to organize the End Use Working Group. This broad-based group of board members, DOE representatives, and members of the public was formed in 1997 to study future uses for contaminated areas of the reservation. The group was instrumental in building consensus in the Oak Ridge community regarding the long-term end state of reservation lands. The group's recommendations were a fundamental input into Record's of Decision subsequently developed to establish cleanup requirements across the ORR, and they continue to influence decisions being made today. In developing its recommendations on end states, the End Use Working Group came to the realization that long-term stewardship of contaminated areas of the reservation would be necessary, in some cases in perpetuity. It was from this concept that the Oak Ridge SSAB's 15-year involvement in stewardship would begin. A stewardship committee formed by the End Use Working Group wrote Volume 1 of the Stakeholder Report on Stewardship. This document-and its companion Volume 2, which was written a year later-form a crucial foundation for stewardship planning in Oak Ridge and have been referenced around the DOE complex as other sites consider stewardship planning. From these two broad-based initiatives, the board's focus has evolved to increasingly hone in on more specific, project-based recommendations and initiatives. The Oak Ridge Reservation Site Specific Advisory Board has been a highly effective forum for soliciting community input on Oak Ridge Reservation cleanup. Experience in Oak Ridge indicates that the utility of Board recommendations is far higher when the Board is asked to focus on broad programmatic issues, and less useful when the Board attempts to provide advice and recommendations on matters related to technical or project management issues. In Oak Ridge the Board has helped shape the program on many levels including definition of end-state cleanup objectives, budget development, program sequencing, waste management, and decisions concerning preservation of history related to missions implemented on the Oak Ridge Reservation. (authors)
- Research Organization:
- WM Symposia, 1628 E. Southern Avenue, Suite 9-332, Tempe, AZ 85282 (United States)
- OSTI ID:
- 22225111
- Report Number(s):
- INIS-US-13-WM-13539; TRN: US14V0690046066
- Resource Relation:
- Conference: WM2013: Waste Management Conference: International collaboration and continuous improvement, Phoenix, AZ (United States), 24-28 Feb 2013; Other Information: Country of input: France
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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