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TRANSCRIPT
Oregon Department of ENERGY
Natural Resource Damage Assessment at Hanford
Sara LovtangAugust 8, 2017
OUTLINE OF PRESENTATION
• Brief explanation of Natural Resource Damage claim• The Natural Resource trustees• General road map for typical NRDA• How Hanford Trustee Council breaks down Hanford projects• Walk through Aquatic working group project • Questions
NATURAL RESOURCE DAMAGE CLAIMS
• NRD claims are brought by governments on behalf of the public for harm to natural resources
• NRD claim may come under state or federal statutes, or common law
• The Hanford NRD Assessment uses CERCLA guidelines, aimed at damages for injury resulting from release of hazardous substances – including physical damage caused by cleanup
TRUSTEES TASKED WITH:
• Ensure services that would have been provided by injured resources – but for Hanford-related contamination – are restored to the public.
• Define the scope and scale of restoration required.
• Document decisions and actions.
• Two states (Oregon and Washington)
• Three Native American tribes (Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation, Nez Perce Tribe, Yakama Nation)
• Three federal agencies (US Department of Energy, US Fish and Wildlife Service, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration)
Decisions are by consensus
Eight trustees
NRDA AT HANFORD
DAMAGE ASSESSMENT OVERVIEW
Determine: injury > pathway > quantify > damage evaluation
Injury: an observable or measureable adverse change in a natural resource, or impairment of ecosystem services.
- Injury is measured compared to “baseline” condition
Damage: what the responsible party must do or pay 1) cost to restore, replace or acquire the equivalent, and 2) value of the services lost during recovery (lost use)
CHALLENGES TO HANFORD NRDA
• Scientific evidence that follow EPA’s guidelines and will be part of legal case
• Keeping eye on future damage determination and restoration
• Habitat Equivalency Analysis, valuation, other economics
• Final product a Restoration Plan, with handover to Legacy Management to do long term monitoring
• Restricted budget, so need to prioritize
NRDA AT HANFORD
• 1993: First organization meeting at invitation of US DOE
• 1996: Hanford Natural Resource Trustee Council (HNRTC)• defines expectations for cleanup and future use of Site
• 2007: Trustees begin formal NRDA process
• 2012: HNRTC becomes more active after legal settlement establishes US DOE funding for trustee organizations
WORKING GROUPS FOCUSED ON INJURY
• Aquatic/near-shore
• Sampling of soil in non-process areas
• Mapping terrestrial disturbance
• Vegetation restoration
• Groundwater
• Tribal service loss
OTHER WORKING GROUPS
• Data management and sharing • Threshold memos for priority contaminants of concern • Legacy pesticides (orchard lands) • Bylaws and MOUs • Budgets and updates to Project Execution Plan
• Studies funded by HNRTC:• 2 lab studies on juvenile salmon exposure to
contaminated groundwater seeping into Columbia River• Fall Chinook parr ability to detect/avoid chromium • Western pearlshell mussels tested in lab
• Expert panel narrowed focus
• Pressure on US DOE to test groundwater upwelling in river
Building on past work
AQUATIC WORKING GROUP
AQUATIC WORKING GROUP
• Modelling Chinook salmon population to assess impacts of historical chromium contamination
• Mapping habitat
• Organize and assess decades of information • Literature, sampling data, GIS layers, etc
• Education of Council members
Current focus
• Sub-group of the aquatic team working with local fisheries biologist
• Mapping habitat using: • Depth, from Lidar to identify holes and shallows• Substrate, from maps generated by USGS• Flow, using published data monitoring effects of dam
Oregon’s work-in-progress on mapping habitat
AQUATIC WORKING GROUP
Bathymetry from Lidar
River substrate showing cobble, gravel, sand, bedrock, organic matter
COLUMBIA RIVER FLOW
• Stations measure water surface elevation and volume
• No known 2-dimensional map of velocity, but standard principles are well known
Salmon spawning areas, digitized from 2000-2001, 2005 and 2006 aerial photos
Mapping of fall Chinook salmon spawning habitat on Columbia River
Salmon spawning areas with river substrate
Salmon spawning with areas of groundwater upwelling
2010 chromium (purple) plume
2010 chromium and nitrate (orange) plumes
2010 chromium, nitrate, and strontium-90 (blue) plumes
2010 chromium, nitrate, strontium and Trichloro-ethene (yellow) plumes
2010 chromium, nitrate, strontium, Trichloro-ethene and tritium (green) plumes
WHY NRTC HASN’T MOVED FASTER
• 2014 Project Execution Plan forecasts approval of the NRDA Restoration Plan in 2024 – if fully funded.• PEP budget estimated NRDA cost of $85 million,
resulting in an annual average cost of $ 8.5 million. • Budget allocations by the DOE for the NRDA have
averaged $3.1 million/year. • All data/analyses must go through quality control • The HNRTC operates under consensus
•Hanford Natural Resource Trustee Council
www.hanfordnrda.org
•U.S. Dept. of Energy Hanford web site
www.hanford.gov/page.cfm/HNRTC