New Delay Could Challenge DOE’s Ability to Meet 2017 Commitment
Mike Nartker
WC Monitor
2/6/2015
In a move that appears set to place a key regulatory commitment at the Energy Technology Engineering Center (ETEC) site in California in increased jeopardy of being missed, the Department of Energy is again pushing out the schedule for completing a necessary Environmental Impact Statement for the site. DOE now expects to complete the final EIS by September 2016, according to the Department’s Fiscal Year 2016 budget request, released earlier this week. Last summer, though, DOE projected that the EIS would be finalized by March of this year.
The schedule slip could make it even more difficult for DOE to complete the soil cleanup at ETEC by mid-2017 as required under a consent order reached with California regulators since the Department must first complete the EIS and issue a Record of Decision before the work can begin. Failure to abide by the consent order, though, could result in penalties of approximately $15,000 per day.
California Regulators ‘Will Hold DOE Accountable’ to Commitments
A DOE official said late this week that the Department “continues to be fully committed” to completing the ETEC cleanup, adding, “The Department plans to complete the NEPA evaluation expeditiously to enable the implementation of facility decontamination and decommissioning and site remediation activities, while ensuring there is adequate time for public comments to be submitted, evaluated and addressed.” The DOE official did not answer, though, when asked if DOE believed the consent order requirement could be met with the latest schedule for completing the EIS.
A spokesman for the California Department of Toxic Substances Control said this week that DTSC has not yet received “in writing” a schedule change from DOE. The DTSC spokesman also said, “We do take the schedule very seriously and will hold DOE accountable to their commitments. They are responsible to clean up the site as per our agreements.”
DOE Now Expects to Issue Draft EIS This Summer
The ETEC site is located at the Santa Susana Field Laboratory, owned by Boeing, and was used for research into nuclear-powered space vehicles and sodium coolant mediums from the 1950s to 1988. In recent years, DOE and the Environmental Protection Agency have conducted radiological and chemical characterization studies at the site to aid the development of the final EIS. “Preliminary results of DOE’s soil chemical investigation … and the radionuclide investigation conducted by EPA indicate that soil volumes potentially to be remediated could range from approximately 1 million to 1.7 million cubic yards of chemically contaminated soil, including approximately 82,000 cubic yards of radiologically contaminated soil,” DOE said in a notice issued in February 2014. According to that notice, DOE had planned to issue a draft EIS by the end of 2014. Now, though, the Department expects to issue the draft by July of this year and to begin work on the final version by September, according to DOE’s FY16 budget request.
