Jeremy L. Dillon
RW Monitor
1/30/2015
After months of calls for the public release of the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) for the Shallow Land Disposal Area (SLDA) site in Armstrong County, Pa., the Army Corps of Engineers’ Formerly Utilized Sites Remedial Action Program publicly released the document last week. The agreement clarifies the roles of the Corps, the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management, the National Nuclear Security Administration, and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission at the site after different, more radioactive material was discovered in 2011 causing a suspension of remediation activities. According to the MOU, the Corps will head the site cleanup, including the procurement of a prime contractor for remediation as well as preparing the work plan, but the other three agencies will offer technical review of the plan and associated documents.
Should the Corps encounter additional special nuclear material (SNM), unsuitable for disposal in a commercial facility, the MOU triggers additional help from EM and NNSA. DOE-EM will provide “technical and contractual support through NNSA’s Nevada Field Office, to include development and review of waste profiles within normal Nevada National Security Site (NNSS) timeframes, waste packaging assistance, transportation assistance, and disposal, consistent with applicable requirements, at NNSS,” the MOU said. The NNSA, for its part, will provide “onsite staff and laboratory support within 45 calendar days of such request from USACE, and technical and contractual support, to include developing detailed plans to manage recoverable SNM quantities in a safe and secure manner, material packaging, transportation assistance, and removal from the site.” The NNSA will also remove recoverable SNM from the site as soon as possible, the MOU said.
Sen. Casey Calls for Continued Transparency
Sen. Robert Casey (D-Pa.), who previously called on the Corps to publicly release the MOU, celebrated the released document. “I’m pleased that the Army has decided to release this document so the public has more information about the cleanup plans,” Casey said in a statement. “Moving forward it’s incumbent upon all the federal agencies with jurisdiction to make sure the community has all appropriate information about the remediation process.” Casey has been applying pressure to speed up the cleanup process, especially after a report last year from the NRC Inspector General concluded that that the Corps’ remediation plan for the SLDA site “grossly underestimates” how much radioactive material remains on site while a lack of documents inhibits the government’s ability to know exactly what is buried on site.
Procurement Expected This Summer
The SLDA site is one of the larger projects in FUSRAP. USACE is currently working on amending the Record of Decision for the site, with a completion date set for this summer. According to a recently released proposed ROD, the cost of the cleanup has jumped to $350 million under an increased 46 month timeline. Following the ROD amendment completion, the agency plans to issue a Request for Proposals for the remediation contract for the site this summer and award the new contract by early 2016. On-site infrastructure construction is planned for 2016, and the Corps hopes to begin excavation in 2017.
