Strategy for an assessment of cumulative ecological impacts
- PRC Environmental Management, Inc., Aiken, SC (United States)
- USDOE Savannah River Operations Office, Aiken, SC (United States)
The US Department of Energy (DOE) has developed a strategy to conduct an assessment of the cumulative ecological impact of operations at the 300-square-mile Savannah River Site. This facility has over 400 identified waste units and contains several large watersheds. In addition to individual waste units, residual contamination must be evaluated in terms of its contribution to ecological risks at zonal and site-wide levels. DOE must be able to generate sufficient information to facilitate cleanup in the immediate future within the context of a site-wide ecological risk assessment that may not be completed for many years. The strategy superimposes a more global perspective on ecological assessments of individual waste units and provides strategic underpinnings for conducting individual screening-level and baseline risk assessments at the operable unit and zonal or watershed levels. It identifies ecological endpoints and risk assessment tools appropriate for each level of the risk assessment. In addition, it provides a clear mechanism for identifying clean sites through screening-level risk assessments and for elevating sites with residual contamination to the next level of assessment. Whereas screening-level and operable unit-level risk assessments relate directly to cleanup, zonal and site-wide assessments verity or confirm the overall effectiveness of remediation. The latter assessments must show, for example, whether multiple small areas with residual pesticide contamination that have minimal individual impact would pose a cumulative risk from bioaccumulation because they are within the habitat range of an ecological receptor.
- OSTI ID:
- 230896
- Report Number(s):
- CONF-9511137--; ISBN 1-880611-03-1
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
Similar Records
Use of ecological exposure units in ecological risk assessment
Selection of Vadose Zone Flow and Transport Properties with Gravel Fraction Corrections for the Hanford Site Composite Analysis and Cumulative Impact Evaluation