Applying a decision process for long-term stewardship planning at a US Department of Energy site

Long-term stewardship (LTS) can be defined as the system of activities needed to protect human health and the environment from hazards left remaining at a site as a result of a cleanup decision. Although the general consensus has been that remediation decisions and LTS decisions should be made conjointly, the general practice has been to separate them. This bifurcation can result in LTS plans that are difficult to implement and enforce and disproportionately costly for the benefit they provide. Worse still, they can be ineffective and result in harmful exposures to humans and the environment. Sites that have not yet made cleanup decisions and that can still integrate LTS planning into that decision making would benefit from a process built on a systematic review of the LTS risks and costs associated with remedial alternatives that include allowing on-site residual contamination. Sites that must develop LTS plans in response to previously determined cleanup decisions are even more in need of a process that involves close scrutiny of the risks and costs of possible LTS plan components. An LTS planning decision process usable by both categories of sites has been developed and is being used at the US Department of Energy (DOE) Mound site. In addition to facilitating LTS planning, the process demonstrated the need to integrate the work of LTS planners, remediation decision makers, and LTS technology developers and deployers