An Energy Department working group is still grappling with recommended changes on management of the payments in lieu of taxes (PILT) program for communities around nuclear facilities, Energy Secretary Dan Brouillette said Feb. 27.
During a hearing of the House Appropriations energy and water subcommittee, the secretary promised to personally brief Rep. Mike Simpson (R-Idaho) on the group’s findings, due out by the end of the month.
Because land held by the Energy Department cannot be taxed, the annual payments are meant to help compensate localities for loss of revenue that could go to government purposes such as roads and schools.
In fiscal 2018, Simpson requested the Government Accountability Office study the program. In its October 2019 report, the congressional auditor said DOE should provide better documentation and clearer criteria on how PILT money is handed out.
The GAO said the agency distributed $23 million in fiscal 2017 to communities near a dozen nuclear laboratory and cleanup sites. But 70% of that amount went to localities around two nuclear complexes: the Hanford Site in Washington state and the Savannah River Site in South Carolina.
“It’s been a pet peeve of mine,” Simpson said, because some localities receive so much PILT funding and others so little. Simpson’s eastern Idaho congressional district includes the area adjacent to DOE’s Idaho National Laboratory.
The GAO report noted very little of the Idaho National Laboratory’s 570,000 acres is eligible for the payments because it was not privately held when DOE assumed management.
The Idaho lawmaker said he is not out to take away others PILT payments. “I’m just trying to make a standard across the department.”
“We’re still working on it,” Brouillette said of the recommendations. “I understand your concerns very, very clearly,” he told Simpson.
The Energy Department, together with the Environmental Protection Agency, and the Idaho Department of Environmental Quality, have launched a site-wide five-year review of cleanup at the Idaho National Laboratory.
Five-year reviews gauge the effectiveness of remediation efforts as required by the Superfund law, the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA), Fluor Idaho said in a Friday press release.
Fluor Idaho has the five-year, $1.86 billion remediation contract that runs through May 2021 at INL. The work includes protecting the Snake River Aquifer, packaging and shipping transuranic waste, and other tasks for the Idaho Cleanup Project.
In February the DOE released a request for proposals for a new Idaho cleanup contract for a term of up to 15 years and $6.4 billion.
The five-year reviews are required by CERCLA when contaminants remain onsite in concentrations that preclude unlimited use of a site. The Energy Department, as the owner of INL, has ultimate authority for putting together the report, according to an online video on an EPA website.
The review is not a decision-making document but rather a “snap-shot in time” that offers a status report on the effectiveness of the remedial actions that have been implemented, a DOE spokesperson said in a Monday email.
The process weighs the past five years of reporting data, such as groundwater monitoring reports.
A draft version of the five-year review should be ready in August and the final version in January 2021.
Such five-year plans for contaminated federal sites grew of out of a July 2011 working group comprising representatives from EPA, DOE, the Department of Defense, and the Department of Interior.
The Idaho National Laboratory was established in 1949 on a former Naval gunnery range site. Parts of INL are contaminated with legacy wastes leftover from World War II and Cold War weapons testing, as well as government research into nuclear power, and spent nuclear fuel reprocessing.
Soil samples taken since last summer along a right-of-way for a stretch of highway near the former Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant have not detected any high levels of radiative contamination, a Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment (CDPHE) said this week.
The Jefferson Parkway Public Highway Authority conducted more sampling along the route of a planned 10-mile toll road after reporting last August it turned up a sample with radiation levels at 264 picocuries per gram – more than five times the 50-picocurie level considered safe for people.
“The department has received all 467 soil sampling data points from the Parkway Authority [in recent months],” CDPHE spokeswoman Lauren Errico said by email Monday. “After initial analysis of the additional soil sampling results and other information, we found that there were no other elevated results.”
The agency is still analyzing data for a report to local governments next month, Errico said. “We have heard and continue to hear community concerns and will continue to evaluate next steps as necessary,” she added.
Since the original elevated sample, radiation levels in all additional material have been well within human safety levels, Jennifer Opila, director of the CDPHE Hazardous Materials and Waste Management Division, said in November.
Nevertheless, the City Council of Broomfield, Colo, passed a resolution on Feb. 25 expressing its intent to withdraw from the highway authority because of public concern over possible contamination along the toll road that will skirt the edge of the Rocky Flats National Wildlife Refuge. Broomfield is roughly seven miles from Rocky Flats and is one of several localities active in the metro Denver parkway project.
Rocky Flats made the fissile plutonium pits for nuclear weapons from the 1950s until 1989. In 2005, the Energy Department certified it had completed the $7 billion remediation at the site, now monitored by DOE’s Office of Legacy Management.
The refuge, formerly part of the weapons plant property, was created in 2007 when it was transferred to the Interior Department’s Fish and Wildlife Service from the Energy Department.
