Lessons from Lower East Fork Creek
This page is under development.
The Oak Ridge, TN Lower East Fork Creek and its floodplain was contaminated in about 1960 by mercury released by the AEC Y-12 Weapons Production Plant. In 1983 this became public knowledge and a thirteen year study and public debate process occurred before remediation efforts began. Strangely, landowners and members of the public considered the floodplain to be safe while the EPA did not and proposed truly destructive remediation measures. The resulting debate between the professionals of the Oak Ridge public and the DOE and EPA risk assessors revealed much about the true nature of the risks of LEFPC and even more about the EPA risk assessment process. Briefly the public concluded that the EPA cost model was unsuitable to the Federal funding constraints, was based on ill-advised biased data ,and was politically flawed in that a misinformed lay public could not properly contribute to the debate. The pages of this topic are papers written during and after this process. It includes suggested wording changes to the current Senate Bill S.8 - Superfund Cleanup Acceleration Act of 1997 as well as other pending legislation.
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