The Department of Energy’s Office of Legacy Management, long-term custodian of 101 previously contaminated sites cleaned up by other federal entities, expects to see its portfolio nearly double over time, a top administrator said last week.
The Office of Legacy Management will take charge of 20 more sites over the next five years, Jay Glascock, deputy director for site operations, told a meeting of citizens advisory board chairs for the DOE Office of Environmental Management on Wednesday Sept. 7 in Santa Fe, N.M.
Legacy management takes over long-term monitoring, surveillance and maintenance of properties once cleaned up by feds such as the DOE Office of Environmental Management, the Environmental Protection Agency or the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
DOE created the Legacy Management in December 2003, carving it out of the Office of Environmental Management, which remediates radioactive contamination at Cold War and Manhattan Project sites.
In response to a board member’s question, Glascock said there is a procedure where a Legacy Management site can revert back to Environmental Management, or another responsible agency, for more cleanup.
“If something were to occur at a site that took it out of compliance,” and it would require $50 million or more to fix, it would be returned to Environmental Management, Glascock said.
Some previously contaminated sites, such as the Rocky Flats plutonium pit plant in Colorado and the Fernald uranium processing plant in Ohio are now wildlife reserves or nature preserve areas.
In addition to being the responsible land manager for cleaned up sites, Legacy Manager also handles the retirement benefit records for thousands of retired DOE contractors along with records for the Formerly Utilized Sites Remedial Action Program or FUSRAP, Glascock said.
Legacy Management is a small outfit compared with the $7.5-billion Office of Environmental Management. By comparison, the Joe Biden administration proposed funding of $196 million for the Office of Legacy Management in fiscal 2023.
