A two-state citizen task force responds to Dept. of Energy on defense waste

Successes in public involvement efforts for nuclear waste management are so few that they deserve careful documentation and analysis. This paper chronicles the goals, process, problems and outcomes of one such success, the Northwest Defense Waste Citizens Forum (CF), created by the DOE-Richland manager in 1986 to advise DOE on its plans for nuclear waste disposal and cleanup of the Hanford site in eastern Washington state. DOE under-took an extensive multi-facted public involvement program to gain advice, understanding and support on heretofore neglected defense waste (DW) cleanup problems. DOE sought broad public input for a draft environmental impact statement (DEIS) at an early stage before all characterization data were complete and before a recommended alternative was formulated. In the evolving, often-controversial, highly-visible area of agency-public interactions, citizen task forces (TFs) have been shown to be useful in developing public policy at the local level. For DOE-Richland, the high-risk gamble in undertaking a public involvement program involving reversals of long-term DOE policies of secrecy and unresponsiveness to its host area paid off handsomely in an improved EIS, better relationships with state agencies and regional businesses, and unexpected political support for DW cleanup funding. The Hanford citizen forum was highly successful in both DOE's and participant views, with significant achievements, unusual process and technical findings of its own. By the authors' criteria discussed earlier for public participation efforts, the CF effort was successful in all 3 areas. The success of this approach suggests its use as a model for other federal cleanup activities