SYNOPSIS
Two Counties – One
City
Long-term
Stewardship Information
Ben Adams and Alfred
Brooks
The dispersed, contaminated sites of the DOE Oak Ridge
Reservation containing approximately 36,000 acres lie in Anderson
and Roane County
and the City of Oak Ridge, TN. The End Use Working Group under the auspices of
the Site Specific Advisory Board recommended that the information necessary for
long-term care reside in a system which would transcend the presence of the
Department of Energy. CERCLA requires filing a contamination notice and plat
map with the county register of deeds. The Working Group recommended that this
plat map be placed into the GIS system of the county property assessor and has
already conducted a successful pilot study in Anderson
county to test the concept. What better place to store land contamination in
formation than in the official county property record system?
The text of the contamination notice is now available
on-line to the public via the existing Anderson County Register's document
retrieval system at no cost. The plat information, now a waste parcel on the
ORR, will be routinely transferred quarterly to the existing City of Oak
Ridge's GIS system where it will be available on line
at no cost to the public, tax office, land use authorities, developers and
realtors. It will also be routinely transferred annually to the Tennessee Base
Mapping system for use by all manner of state organizations. All of these
systems have copious redundancy and backup and it is mostly free except for a
small filing charge for the notice and plat and service charges for the Roane
County Register's system.
Roane County
is now bringing up an identical system and has agreed to extend the tests into
its system. No serious problems are expected. Cooperation between jurisdictions
has been excellent.
The presentation will contain the above information along
with some view graphs showing the beginning DOE data and finished county
mapping. For the benefit of interested attendees, names, telephone numbers and
email addresses will be furnished.
Two Counties – One City
Long-term Stewardship Information
Ben Adams and Alfred
Brooks
February 12, 2004
ABSTRACT: This paper deals with a
method for permanent retention of a minimal set of LTS information in an
ongoing system that will be available to the general public in an on-line
manner. The methodology starts with the CERCLA requirement that a copy of a
"contamination notice" and corresponding plat for the contaminated
area be filed with the local "Register of Deeds". Use of existing GIS
systems operated by state and local governments plays a key role in the method.
The Department of Energy (DOE) Oak Ridge Reservation (ORR)
was established in late 1942 as the Clinton Engineering Works, a part of the
Manhattan Project, to produce bomb-grade enriched uranium and carry out reactor
research and development. During the Cold War, the Oak Ridge Gaseous Diffusion
plant continued its enrichment mission, the Y12 Production Facility was
converted to the manufacture of nuclear weapons parts and other exotic metals
fabrication, and the Clinton Laboratory, under the name of the Oak Ridge
National Laboratory, continued its reactor development program and added a wide
range of basic and applied science endeavors. This wide range of activity gave
rise to an equally diverse range of disposed wastes, some in the millions of pounds
and curies. Coupled with the diverse wastes was the unfortunate nature of the East
Tennessee geology and climate (annual precipitation = 55 inches)
which brings the water table to the surface, Seasonally, the waste is buried in
the ground water not above it. These sites are being remedied by the DOE
Environmental Management Program. There is a total of about 100 remediation
sites and projects.
The DOE ORR lies in two Tennessee
counties (Anderson and Roane) and entirely within the City of Oak
Ridge (CoOR). The closest approach of the residential
neighborhoods to the production areas is about 2000 feet. See the map in Figure
1.This means that aside from the federal agencies involved, there are four
state and local jurisdictions that have varying interests in the safe
remediation of the many ORR contaminated areas. In 1998, the local DOE Site
Specific Advisory Board (SSAB) sponsored the End Use Working Group
(EUWG) which while making recommendations to DOE for remediation of
contaminated lands for long-term uses realized that a recommendation to leave
waste or contamination in the ground was invalid without a corresponding Long
Term Stewardship (LTS) plan to assure its continued safety. The Working Group
therefore developed
such a plan in 1988 and it was further researched and improved
in 1999 by the Stewardship Working Group (SWG). A permanent LTS subcommittee of
the SSAB has continued to pursue and promote LTS at ORR. It also serves as a
DOE Interim Citizens' Advisory Committee.
An online map is not available at this time. Maybe soon.
Figure 1 – Map of the DOE ORR Showing Plants, Watersheds
and City Boundary
Among the many aspects of LTS that the working group
addressed was the need for the truly long term storage of the essential
information: 1) where was the contamination, 2) what are its characteristics,
and 3) what were the restrictions on the land. This was judged the minimum
necessary to regain control of the waste and included by reference more
extensive information stored elsewhere. Further, there was the question of its preservation
and its availability to the public. Fortunately, the Comprehensive
Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act (CERCLA) and Land Use
Controls Assurance Plan (LUCAP) required DOE, on transfer land ownership, to
file the necessary information and a plat map with the local register of deeds.
Even more fortunately, DOE/ORO has committed to filing the same information on
all completed remediation sites regardless of ownership transfer. Although not
well publicized, this filing process has been going on at the ORR.
In 1999, the State of Tennessee,
several counties, including Anderson and Roane, and the CoOR were pursuing
computerized, document retrieval systems and coordinated Geographic Information
Systems (GIS) for use by the register of deeds, the property assessor and a
compatible State Parcel Mapping System (SPMS). After delays for funding, the Anderson
County and the CoOR systems are
operable on a routine basis (2003) and available to the public; the Roane
County system is still being shaken
down.
Based on this progress, representatives of the LST committee
met with the Anderson County Register of deeds and Property Assessor to suggest
a simple feasibility test. Both Tim Shelton (RD) and Vernon Long (PA) readily
agreed and before a test could be scheduled Vernon Long had completed it. The
LTS information now resides in the system whose schematic is shown in Figure 2.
Ancillary Services Available On-Line to the Public
No attempt has yet been made to augment the normal input and
output to these information systems as it is the purpose of the test to see
what the "No Special Effort" testing could accomplish to meet LTS
needs. When this question is answered "low effort" augmentations will
be examined such as use of existing comment and zoning fields. The Roane
County system is not as far along
as the Anderson County
system but it is intended to supply the same information to the City of Oak
Ridge and to the State. The City's capabilities have
been judged so far on non-DOE parcels and the Roane County/Titlesearcher system
has had minimal testing due to its newness and lack of DOE information.
In addition to the usual computer screen outputs of the
systems, following user-printed outputs are available to the public at:
1) Contamination Notice – Anderson
County Register's System - Detail
2) Parcel Map and Parcel Information – OR GIS
System
3) OR GIS Maps and associated information for Anderson
and Roane County
4) TN Real Estate Appraisal Card – County Property Assessor by special
request.
5) Contamination Notice - Roane
County via Titlesearcher
Figures 3-6 are copies of available screens, notice of contamination,
GIS map area for Bear Creek Burial Ground, a major Y-12 waste disposal site and
a typical parcel screen and parcel report from the OR GIS system.
INSERT
Figure 3 - Bear Creek Burial Ground Notice of Contamination
as filed
Figure 4 – Section of Plat Map Showing Bear Creek Burial
Ground Parcel
Figure 5 – Typical ORGIS Parcel Map and Parcel Information
Figure 6 – TN Real Estate Appraisal Card for Bear Creek
Burial Ground Parcel
What have we gained by such a simple move?
1) The information necessary to alert future generations and to guide land
use authorities has been placed in the same system that is used to ensure
property rights and fund the local governments. Arguably this system will be
the last to be abandoned by a civilized society. The system is thoroughly
backed up and will be updated and rejuvenated as needed. On-line access to
essential components is available
2) It provides the state and local land use authorities with contamination
information that is a part of systems familiar to them and paves the way for
their participation in the control of potentially hazardous land.
3) The incremental costs are negligible. The system is not funded by the
federal government and thus will transcend the presence of DOE or the federal
government in the ORR future.
4) The information is available to any and all persons both manually and
by computerized access means. Access to all but one part of the system is free
of charge.
5) The CERCLA requirement for filing contamination notices and plats will be
enhanced by broader application and improved access.
6) The LUCAP requirement when clearly defined may also be met.
7) The information can serve as a tool in any public education program or
as a resource tool for those citizens who would study contamination problems.
8) It serves as evidence of the thoroughness and openness with which the
DOE addresses the ongoing contamination problems and its concern for public
health.
9) It reduces the number of questions to which DOE will be required to
respond.
10) It provides an access route into the voluminous detailed information in
the form of DOE reports about each contaminated area.
All of these are objectives of the SWG Long Term Stewardship
Plan which are being proposed to DOE/ORO.
What are the chances of adoption by DOE?
The Oak Ridge
public and DOE ORO Environmental Management program work well together and the
ORO EM management personnel at all levels are well aware of the
"feasibility test". They have given it their blessing and have helped
locate the data to be used. They are enthusiastic about the favorable results.
The prognosis is excellent
The totality of the public's recommendations on LTS will
soon be presented to DOE in the following manner:
The SSAB LTS subcommittee, in consultation with DOE'/ORO's
LTS liaison and following any DOE guidance documents, will prepare an annotated
outline of a DOE LTS implementation plan to be recommended and forwarded to
ORO. This method has three major advantages: 1) it produces recommendations
based on DOE guidance and advice unless substantive differences exist, 2) it
forces the public to organize and detail the concepts it wishes to promote in
terms of the DOE guidance, and 3) it facilitates the DOE conversion of the
recommendations directly into the DOE generated implementation plan. It
promotes an organized discussion of agreements and differences. The method
requires both a strong self-confident EM management and a strong self-confident
public that is willing to work. Oak Ridge
has both. The Remediation Effectiveness Report was successfully revised in this
manner satisfying everyone. Similar success is anticipated for the more complex
LTS Implementation Plan.
Additional Information:
1) Anderson County Register's
Document Retrieval System – http://www.andersondeeds.com
2) City of Oak
Ridge GIS System – http://gis.cortn.org
3) DOE
Information Center,
475 Oak Ridge Turnpike, Oak
Ridge, TN 37830,
Phone: 865 241 4780
4) Oak Ridge SSAB Publications -
http://www.oakridge.doe.gov/em/ssab/pubs.htm
5) Stakeholder Report on
Stewardship Volume II, December 1999
http://www.oakridge.doe.gov/em/ssab/Publications/Stewardship%20Vol%202.pdf
6) Roane County Register's
Document Retrieval System - http://titlesearcher.bisonline.com/
7) Phones: Ben Adams - 865 482
4451, Al Brooks – 865 492 1559
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Bios:
Mr. Adams is a member of the ORSSAB and chair of the LTS
Subcommittee. He is a practicing civil engineer in the City of Oak
Ridge. Mr. Brooks is a citizen member of the LTS
Subcommittee and member of other DOE-related committees. He is a retired
chemist and computer analyst. Both are long-term and active members of the Oak
Ridge community.
