In Backyards and Bedrooms: Challenges and Successes in Gaining Access to Homes for Radiological Testing - 18204

The Port Hope Area Initiative (PHAI) is a federal environmental clean-up program. Its mandate is the remediation and local, long-term, safe management of approximately 1.7 million cubic metres of historic low-level radioactive waste in the adjacent communities of Port Hope and Port Granby in Southern Ontario, Canada. The PHAI is being undertaken by Canadian Nuclear Laboratories (CNL), on behalf of Atomic Energy of Canada Limited, a federal Crown corporation. It is currently one of the largest environmental remediation projects in Canada The safety of workers, the public and the environment while delivering the PHAI on time and within budget is CNL's number one priority. The PHAI is being carried out as two projects - the Port Hope Project and the Port Granby Project. The Port Hope Project is the larger of the two and includes the cleanup of approximately 1.2 million cubic metres of historic waste from various locations within the community. The Port Hope Project includes a unique and important component - the Property Radiological Survey. This survey involves the interior and exterior investigation of approximately 4,800 small-scale properties - primarily residential - in the Municipality of Port Hope for the presence or absence of historic low-level radioactive waste. The Property Radiological Survey began in 2012 and is being conducted in five campaigns with between 450 and 1,250 properties in each campaign. The survey begins with radon monitoring, followed by interior and exterior gamma radiation tests, and concludes with exterior borehole drilling/soil sampling. The full suite of tests take approximately 18 - 24 months to complete at each property. This paper will describe the communications strategy implemented to obtain consent from thousands of property owners for CNL's contractor to conduct radiological testing in private living spaces such as bathrooms, bedrooms and closets, as well as front yards, backyards and outbuildings. This strategy incorporates tactics used to secure consent from residents who are reluctant to participate in the survey for reasons including privacy issues, family situations, life events and misapprehensions about the survey and/or the PHAI in general. The paper will include information about how residents' concerns are addressed, the stepped approach to securing access from owners who do not respond to repeated attempts at contact, and the importance of close coordination with the contractor to ensure that all components of the investigations are aligned so that work is conducted in a safe, timely and systematic manner. The authors will also describe the process for keeping the regulator and the municipality informed of survey outreach efforts, challenges and successes, and will outline the process for notifying the approximately 800 owners of properties on which historic low-level radioactive waste is expected to be identified and transitioning those owners from the survey to the remediation phase. (authors)