[1] The Federal Facilities Policy Group is co-chaired by Alice M. Rivlin, Director of the Office of Management and Budget, and Kathleen McGinty, Chair of the Council on Environmental Quality. The Policy Group is composed of policy officials from the Departments of Agriculture, Defense, Energy, Health and Human Services (Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry), the Interior, and Justice, along with the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. In addition, several White House offices, including the President's Council of Economic Advisers, the Domestic Policy Council, the National Economic Council, and the Office of Science and Technology Policy have participated.

[2] Office of Technology Assessment (OTA), Complex Cleanup: The Environmental Legacy of Nuclear Weapons Production, OTA-0-484 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, February 1991), pp. 32-39.

[3] Ibid., OTA, Hazards Ahead: Managing Cleanup Worker Health and Safety at the Nuclear Weapons Complex (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, February 1993); Portney, Paul, "EPA and the Evolution of Federal Regulation in Dorfman, Robert and Dorfman, Nancy S. (ed.), Economics of the Environment: Selected Readings (Third Edition) (New York: W.W. Norton, 1993), p. 72; Science Advisory Board, Reducing Risk: Setting Priorities and Strategies for Environmental Protection (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 1990), pp. 8, 18.

[4] OTA, Complex Cleanup, p. 94.

[5] National Research Council, A Biological Survey for the Nation (Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press, 1993), p. 95.

[6] Congressional Budget Office, Cleaning Up the Department of Energy's Nuclear Weapons Complex, (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, May 1994), pp. 35-50; OTA, Complex Cleanup, pp. 67-71 and 168-182.

[7] U.S. Department of Energy, Estimating the Cold War Mortgage: The 1995 Baseline Environmental Management Report, DOE/EM-032 (Springfield, VA: National Technical Information Service, March 1995), p. 6.

[8] U.S. Department of Energy, Estimating the Cold War Motgage, p. 5.

[9] U.S. Department of Energy, Environmental Management 1995 - Progress and Plans of the Environmental Management Program (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, February 1995), p. 5.

[10] Ibid, p. 94.

[11] Department of Defense, Defense Environmental Restoration Program: Annual Report to Congress for Fiscal Year 1994 (Washington, D.C.: Department of Defense, March 31, 1995) pg. 63. In addition, many thousands of acres of public lands under the m anagement of DOI and Indian tribes have been used by DOD, State National Guard and militia units for weapons testing and training and are contaminated by unexploded ordnance.

[12] cf. Congressional Budget Office, "CBO Papers: Cleaning Up Defense Installations: Issues and Options," January 1995.

[13] Department of Defense, Defense Environmental Restoration Annual Report to Congress for Fiscal Year 1994, Washington, D.C., p. 9.

[14] Ibid, pp. 14-15.

[15] National Academy of Sciences, Building Consensus through Risk Assessment and Management of the Department of Energy's Environmental Remediation Program (Washington, D.C.: National Academy of Sciences, Jan 1994), pp. 2-3.

[16] Ibid.

[17] Memorandum from Carol M. Browner, EPA Risk Characterization Program, Environmental Protection Agency Jan. 21, 1995, (transmitting EPA Risk Characterization Policy and Guidance, Jan. 21, 1995).

[18] U.S. Department of Energy, Plutonium Working Group Report on Environmental, Safety and Health Vulnerabilities Associated with the Department's Plutonium Storage, (Volume 1: Summary), September 1994, pp. vii, 10-22.

[19] U.S. General Accounting Office, "Federal Facilities: Agencies Slow to Define the Scope and Cost of Hazardous Waste Site Cleanups," RACED-94-73, April, 1994.

[20] Department of Defense, Defense Environmental Restoration Program: Annual Report to Congress for Fiscal Year 1994, p. 6.

[21] Ibid, p. 19.

[22] Ibid, p. 24.

[23] Statement of Sherri W. Goodman, Deputy Under Secretary of Defense (Environmental Security), before the House Appropriations Committee, March 28, 1995.

[24] Including DOE's "Benchmarking for Cost Improvement", September 1993 and "Project Performance Study", November 1993.

[25] These studies include GAO's "Energy Management: Types of Allowable and Unallowable Costs Incurred under Two DOE Contracts," January 1993, and "Nuclear Waste: Hanford's Well-Drilling Costs Can Be Reduced," March 1993, and DOE Office of Inspector Gener al Report "Audit of Health Benefit Costs at the Department's Management and Operating Contractors," June 1994.

[26] U.S. General Accounting Office, "Department of Energy: Challenges to Implementing Contract Reform," RACED-94-150, March 1994.

[27] Ibid., pp. 57-61.

[28] U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Inspector General, "Report on Audit of Staffing Requirements at the Westinghouse Savannah River Company," January 1994.

[29] U.S. Department of Energy, Environmental Management 1995--Progress and Plans of the Environmental Management Program, pp. 10-12.

[30] Ibid, p. 11.

[31] Letter, Fernald Citizens Task Force (A U.S. Department of Energy Site-Specific Advisory Board) to the Secretary of Energy and DOE's Assistant Secretary for Environmental Management, April 11, 1995.

[32] U.S. Department of Energy, Estimating the Cold War Mortgage: The 1995 Baseline Environmental Management Report, p. 3-1.

[33] Ibid.

[34] Operation and maintenance costs include costs for labor, power and replacement parts.

[35] cf. Pasternak, Douglas with Cary, Peter, "The $200 Billion Scandal at the Bomb Factories," U.S. News & World Report, December 14, 1992, pp. 34-47; General Accounting Office, op. cit.

[36] National Performance Review, "Department of Energy: Accompanying Report of the National Performance Review" (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, September 1993), pp. 5-13.

[37] Based on the following calculation: numerator [67 percent (percent of DOE 1992 budget spent on contracts per NPR) X $6.1 billion (DOE FY 1994)]; denominator equal $8.8 billion (FY 1994 total Federal facilities cleanup).

[38] U.S. Department of Energy, Making Contracting Work Better and Cost Less: Report of the Contract Reform Team (Washiington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Energy, February 1994), pp. 6-7.

[39] Ibid., pp. 46-47.

[40] Ibid, p. 7.

[41] Ibid, p. 7.

[42] Interagency Review Group, "Interagency Review of the Department of Energy Environmental Restoration and Waste Management Program, Final Report" (April 29, 1992), pp. iv, 32-36.

[43] Op cit.

[44] OTA, Complex Cleanup, op. cit.

[45] Interagency Review Group, "Interagency Review of the Department of Energy Environmental Restoration and Waste Management Program, Final Report", op. cit.

[46] U.S. Department of Energy, The Department of Energy Office of Environmental Restoration & Waste Management Project Performance Study (Reston, VA: Independent Project Analysis, Inc., November 30, 1993).

[47] See NCP, 40 CFR 300.430.

[48] DOD has 12 installations listed on the NPL--88 active and 24 closure installations. All of DOE's major facilities are on the NPL. DOI has only two sites on the NPL, but it is also involved as a third party at numerous other NPL sites. USDA currently has two sites on the NPL.

[49] Executive Order 12088, Federal Compliance with Pollution Control Standards, 3 C.F.R. 243 (1979); as amended by Executive Order 12580, 52 Federal Regulation 2923 (1987).

[50] FFERDC is a Federal advisory committee chaired by EPA and composed of individuals affiliated with various Federal, State, tribal and local government and other organizations concerned with Federal facilities cleanup. FFERDC has recommended a priorit y setting system that attempts to balance the concerns of Federal agencies, regulators and other stakeholders.

[51] "Interim Report of the Federal Facilities Environmental Restoration Dialogue Committee: Recommendations for Improving the Federal Facilities Environmental Restoration Decision-Making and Priority-Setting Processes" (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Environment al Protection Agency, February 1993), p. 44.

[52] U.S. Department of Energy, Risks and the Risk Debate: Searching for Common Ground, "The First Step", Draft (Washington, D.C.: Office of Environmental Management, June 1995).

[53] Approximately 3 million cubic meters of low-level waste (primarily rags, protective clothing, contaminated equipment, decontamination wastes, and scrap irradiated metals) currently exist, although more will be created in the future as we clean up rad ioactively contaminated sites. This waste is currently being disposed of at the Nevada Test Site, the Hanford Site in Washington, the Savannah River Site in South Carolina, Oak Ridge in Tennessee, Los Alamos in New Mexico, and the Idaho National Engineeri ng Laboratory (INEL).

[54] Approximately 2,700 metric tons of spent fuel is currently stored by DOE principally at four sites: Hanford, Savannah River, INEL, and West Valley in New York. The commercial industry stores approximately 30,000 metric tons at more than 100 nuclear reactor sites around the United States. DOE currently stores about 100 million gallons of high-level waste, resulting from spent fuel reprocessing, in 243 underground tanks in Washington, South Carolina, Idaho, and New York. Present intentions are to ultimately store both spent fuel and vitrified high-level waste in the permanent repository. Although not directly addressed, excess weapons grade plutonium (from the more than 100 metric tons produced in total during the Cold War) is also intended for storage in the permanent repository.

[55] There are approximately 100,000 cubic meters of transuranic waste (any material used in plutonium processing and containing significant quantities of plutonium, americium, or other elements whose atomic weights exceed those of uranium). This includes chemicals used in plutonium metallurgy, air filters, gloves, clothing, tools, piping, and contaminated soil.

[56] OTA, Complex Cleanup, p. 99.

[57] Ibid.

[58] Ibid.

[59] GAO Report, "Nuclear Health and Safety: Consensus on Acceptable Radiation Risk to the Public is Lacking," RCED-94-190 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. General Accounting Office, September 1994), p. 9.

[60] Ibid, p. 28.

[61] Ibid, p. 1.

[62] David P. O'Very, The Regulation of Radioactive Pollution, ed. D.P. O'Very, C. Paine, D.W. Reicher (Boulder, CO: West View Press, Inc., 1994), p. 292.

[63] GAO Report, "Nuclear Health and Safety: Consensus on Acceptable Radiation Risk to the Public is Lacking," RCED-94-190, p. 21.

[64] GAO Report, "Nuclear Cleanup: Completion of Standards and Effectiveness of Land Use Planning Are Uncertain," GAO-RCED-94-144 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. General Accounting Office, August 1994), p. 5-6.

[65] David P. O'Very, The Regulation of Radioactive Pollution, pp. 294-295.

[66] National Performance Review Accompanying Report, "Environmental Protection Agency," (Washington, D.C., September 1993), p. 25.

[67] "Environmental Protection Agency, Superfund Innovative Technology Evaluation Program, Innovation Making a Difference," EPA/540/F-94/505, (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Environmental Protection Agency), p.4.

[68] Congressional Budget Office, "Cleaning Up the Department of Energy's Nuclear Weapons Complex," (Washington, D.C., May 1994), pp. 73-74.

[69] OTA, Complex Cleanup, pp. 70-71.

[70] GAO Report, "Department of Energy: Management Changes Needed to Expand Use of Innovative Cleanup Technologies," RCED-94-205 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. General Accounting Office, August 1994), p. 1.

[71] Ibid, p. 6.

[72]Ibid, pp. 6-7.

[73] Environmental Protection Agency, "Reinventing Environmental Regulation," (Washington, D.C.: Environmental Protection Agency, March 16, 1995).

[74] U.S. Department of Energy, Estimating The Cold War Mortgage, The 1995 Baseline Environmental Management Report, p. 4.4.

[75] Ibid.

[76] National Academy of Sciences, Building Consensus through Risk Assessment and Management of the Department of Energy's Environmental Remediation Program (Washington, D.C.: National Academy of Sciences, January 1994).

[77] U.S. Department of Energy, Risks and the Risk Debate: Searching for Common Ground, "The First Step", Draft, p. ES8.

[78] National Science and Technologies Council, Bridge to a Sustainable Futue: A National Environmental Technology Strategy (Washington, D.C.: National Science and Technology Council, April 1995), p. i-vi.

[79] Department of Defense, Defense Environmental Restoration Program: Annual Report to Congress for Fiscal Year 1994, pp. 31-32.

[80] Ilya Raskin, 14th Annual Symposium Abstract Book: Current Topics in Plant Biochemistry, Physiology and Molecular Biology; Rhizofiltration - using plants for remediation of heavy metals in water (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri-Columbia, April 1995), p. 61.

[81] Burt D. Ensley, 14th Annual Symposium Abstract Book: Current Topics in Plant Biochemistry, Physiology and Molecular Biology; Will plants have a role in bioremediation? (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri-Columbia, April 1995), p.2.

[82] Rufus L. Chaney and J. Scott Angle, "Green Remediation": Potential Use of Hyperaccumulator Plant Species to Phytoremediate Soils Polluted wiht Zinc and/or Cadmium, The Revival Field Project, (Beltsville, MD: USDA-Agricultural Research Service and University of Maryland).

[83] OTA, Complex Cleanup, p. 68.

[84] National Science and Technology Council, Technology for a Sustainable Future: A Framework for Action, pp. 2-28.

[85] Op. cit.

[86] GAO Report, "Department of Energy: Management Changes Needed to Expand Use of Innovative Cleanup Technologies," August 1994.

[87] Ibid, pp. 6-7.