The Oak Ridge Site Specific Advisory Board - How a Recommendation Comes to Life - 18523

The Oak Ridge Site Specific Advisory Board (ORSSAB) is a federally appointed citizens' panel that provides independent advice and recommendations to the DOE's Oak Ridge Office of Environmental Management (OREM). To provide unbiased evaluation and recommendations on DOE's cleanup efforts related to the Oak Ridge Reservation (ORR), the board seeks opportunities for input through collaborative dialogue with the communities surrounding the Oak Ridge Reservation, Governmental regulators, and other stakeholders. This paper describes how a recommendation from the ORSSAB comes to life. There are two stages to the board's process, the planning stage and the execution stage. The planning stage begins several months prior to the start of the fiscal year (FY). During this planning stage OREM develops a list of issues that it would like input from the community on. The EPA and Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation (TDEC) act as consulting parties and provide their input in the form of letters to the board. ORSSAB holds a planning meeting in August, where DOE EM, EPA and TDEC present their suggestions to the board. The board members have opportunity to ask questions and hold discussions on the issues presented but can also present issues of their own. DOE then takes the input from the meeting and develops the ORSSAB Work Plan for the next FY. The execution stage begins with the ORSSAB Work Plan which sets the issues for each month and the specific dates of the activities associated with each issue. The remaining elements of the execution stage include: presentations by DOE OREM at the monthly ORSSAB Meetings, field trips (as appropriate), and additional discussion at the monthly subcommittee meeting of the EM/Stewardship Committee. Early in the FY, members of the ORSSAB are given the opportunity to sign up to be involved with the potential development of a recommendation for the various issues on the Work Plan that interest them and to provide support as an issue manager. Then at the EM/Stewardship Committee Meeting the issue manager is assigned to lead the issue group and a decision is made as to whether to make a recommendation on the specific issue. The issue group prepares the recommendation for discussion and approval by the EM/Stewardship Committee. Once the EM/Stewardship Committee has reached consensus on the wording for the recommendation, the EM/Stewardship Committee Chair presents the recommendation to the ORSSAB Executive Committee for discussion and approval. The Executive Committee then approves the recommendation for presentation and discussion at the next month's ORSSAB General Meeting, providing opportunity for discussion by the full board. The ORSSAB may approve the recommendation as is, approve it with changes, or it may send the recommendation back to the EM/Stewardship Committee for further consideration. Once approved by the full ORSSAB, the recommendation is sent to DOE OREM for consideration. (authors)