Evaluation of Contaminated Groundwater Cleanup Objectives

Abstract

The U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Environmental Restoration Program will be responsible for remediating the approximately 230 contaminated groundwater sites across the DOE Complex. A major concern for remediation is choosing the appropriate cleanup objective. The the cleanup objective chosen will influence the risk to the nearby public during and after remediation; risk to remedial and non-involved workers during remediation; and the cost of remediation. This paper will discuss the trends shown in analyses currently being performed at Oak Ridge National Laboratories’ (ORNL’s) Center for Risk Management (CRM). To evaluate these trends, CRM is developing a database of contaminated sites. This paper examines several contaminated groundwater sites selected for assessment from CRM’s database. The sites in this sample represent potential types of contaminated groundwater sites commonly found at an installation within DOE. The baseline risk from these sites to various receptors will be presented. Residual risk and risk during remediation will be reported for different cleanup objectives. The cost associated with remediating to each of these objectives will also be estimated for each of the representative sites. Finally, the general trends of impacts as a function of cleanup objective will be summarized.