Some information of the well decommissioning program at the Hanford Site in Washington state has not been kept up-to-date, the Department of Energy Inspector General’s Office said in an audit report released on Aug. 31.
The audit was a follow-up to a January 2005 audit on well decommissioning activities, which found numerous problems. Every time a hole is drilled at Hanford, whether to collect a soil sample or for the groundwater program, it is assigned a well number. The site has 12,000 numbered wells or boreholes, of which about 5,600 have been decommissioned. Active wells include those used to extract contaminated water for remediation, inject clean water back in the ground, and sample and monitor groundwater.
After the 2005 audit DOE developed a comprehensive well decommissioning plan and closed 280 wells and boreholes using funds from the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. The report released in August said DOE was effectively decommissioning wells, but that only the well decommissioning plan’s appendixes had been updated since 2008.
The full plan must be updated to improve continuity of the program through contract transition, the audit report said. The plan includes information on various databases and systems that such as well locations, well depths, and construction designs, providing a historical perspective in the development and management of well data for the contractor in charge of groundwater.
CH2M Hill Plateau Remediation Co., which manages soil and groundwater remediation at Hanford, has a 10-year contract now set to expire at the end of September. The Energy Department, though, has said it plans to extend the contract for up to a year.
Also in response to the earlier audit, changes were made to the well database, the Hanford Environmental Information System (HEIS), which includes information such as well attributes, maintenance records, maps, and results of sampling for contaminants. In addition, the Well Attributes Materialized View system was developed to provide a visual representation of the data in the HEIS.
The updated audit picked 15 wells to check and found that CH2M did not document inspection dates in the HEIS for 10 of them. For some of the remaining five, the materialized view did not show the most recent inspection dates.
“Documenting well inspections in the database ensures that the Department has promptly identified any wells that are in disrepair,” the audit report said. “Wells in disrepair can provide potential pathways for contaminants to reach the groundwater, endangering human health and the environment.”
Wells must be inspected to assure they are in adequate condition for a groundwater sample to be collected, the audit said. But no procedure was in place to enter the well inspection dates in the HEIS. Hard copy records were kept. “Not documenting that wells have been inspected and repaired can lead to delays in sampling and result in increased costs to the groundwater program,” the audit report said.
The Energy Department took immediate action to enter inspection dates in the HEIS and is working to develop procedures to assure inspection dates are entered into the system, the audit report said. The agency also agreed that the Well Decommissioning Plan needs to be updated.
