ECA SUBMITS COMMENTS ON DOE-EM'S 2023 STRATEGIC VISION
ECA Staff| 01/22/2024
On Friday, ECA submitted their comments for DOE-EM's 2023 Strategic Vision. ECA's comments are divided in four categories:
EM Engagement with Frontline Communities and Opportunities for Partnership
Improve and Mitigate Environmental Justice and Climate Change Impacts in Frontline Communities Adjacent to DOE Sites
Engaging Regularly with Local Governments Based on the Communities’ Future Vision for DOE Cleanup Sites
Create an Annual Scorecard to Measure Progress towards EM Goals Outlined in the Strategic Vision
ECA is appreciative to the Office of Environmental Management for the opportunity to provide recommendations' that come directly from the frontline local governments with DOE cleanup missions.
Some highlights from the comments include:
The Strategic Vision should identify the progress that DOE has made with the site workforce meetings and reference the five-year workforce projection plan. EM worked with EFCOG and ECA on various workforce initiatives. In June EM and EFCOG developed and released a set of workforce projections over the next five years at each cleanup sites. As a result of these projections DOE-EM, EFCOG, and ECA held two community oriented workforce meetings in 2023 at the Savannah River Site and Los Alamos County. Both initiatives focus on one of EM’s most pressing priorities and challenges which is ensuring that the next generation of workers is ready and available. The Strategic Vision should highlight EM’s plans to ensure each EM community has a plan to meet their workforce projection goals that are tailored to their unique site. EM should include plans for more meetings with EM, EFCOG and local officials near other cleanup sites.
The Strategic Vision should clarify how long-term stewardship will be integrated by EM and implemented by LM if land is conveyed to LM. Currently, communities are unsure how EM will integrate long-term stewardship into the cleanup plans for a site, or how the LM will have the capacity to manage large EM sites. All sites are cleaned up to accepted risk levels, necessitating long-term stewardship measures to protect the health, safety, environment, quality of life, and economic future of the sites’ communities. The remedy selection needs to identify the mechanisms and activities of long term stewardship and ensure that they are in place after cleanup is complete.4 An example of an area that shows areas that need improvement in this process is the lack of protocol or policy for emergency responses at previous EM sites that are now under LM. Recently, DOE has had several experiences in Missouri, Ohio and other states where the response by the federal government can be improved.ECA would like DOE and other federal agencies that have responsibilities for these former defense facilities to develop a clear process for such responses. ECA is in the process of drafting a letter to Deputy Secretary Turk that outlines this specific issue and provides recommendations.
The Strategic Vision should include the importance of preserving historic sites and remembering the past after LM becomes their landlord. EM announced an initiative that would focus on the preservation of historic sites, museums, national parks, and others. The Atomic Legacy Preservation Network (ALPN) is incredibly crucial to ensuring that the public and communities remember the history surrounding these sites. Highlighting this initiative is critical in building understanding among the public that showcases how so many communities across the nation have participated not only in the Manhattan Project, but alongside other nuclear weapons productions in the U.S. and legacy of those efforts.