Groundwater Protection Group
The Groundwater Protection Group (formerly know as the Long Term Response
Action (LTRA) Group) was formed in 2004 as part of
the Environmental Protection Division. The GPG
Group is responsible for the long-term surveillance, monitoring,
maintenance, operating, reporting, and community involvement activities
required to complete the CERCLA environmental cleanup activities at
Brookhaven National Laboratory.
Recent Update:
The Five-Year Review
The
U.S. Department of Energy has completed a Five-Year Review for the
Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) site, as required by the Comprehensive
Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA). This
review serves to ensure that the implementation and performance of the
selected cleanup remedies continue to be effective in protecting human
health and the environment. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency concurs
with the protectiveness determinations as reported within this Five-Year
Review. This is the second site-wide Five-Year Review of all the remediation
work performed at the BNL site. This includes remediation of groundwater
contamination on and off of BNL property, excavation and disposal of
contaminated soils and river sediments, removal of above- and below-ground
storage tanks, capping of landfills, decommissioning activities and
long-term surveillance and maintenance at the former Brookhaven Graphite
Research Reactor (BGRR) and High Flux Beam Reactor (HFBR). Land-use
restrictions and institutional controls are in place to ensure that any
residual contamination left in place is not dispersed and does not adversely
affect human health or the environment.
Both Five Year Review reports produced by BNL can be found at this
link.
Ongoing Projects:
The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE),
the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and the N.Y. State
Department of Environmental Conservation (NYSDEC) have agreed on a
remediation plan for Brookhaven National Laboratory’s (BNL) g-2 tritium
source area and groundwater plume, the Brookhaven Linac Isotope Producer
(BLIP), and eight former underground storage tanks (USTs). The agreement,
reached after extensive regulator and public review and comment, allows the
Energy Department to implement the selected remedies.
The selected remedies are
presented in the
Record of
Decision (ROD) for Area of Concern 16T g-2 Tritium Source Area and
Groundwater Plume, Area of Concern 16K Brookhaven Linac Isotope Producer,
and Area of Concern 12 - Former Underground Storage Tanks. The
selected remedies include several actions that have already been
accomplished, and the implementation of a comprehensive long-term
maintenance and monitoring program. The ROD also includes a "responsiveness
summary," summarizing public comments and the DOE’s responses to them.
Brookhaven National Laboratory’s Groundwater Protection Management
Program is made up of four elements: prevention, monitoring, restoration,
and communication. The Laboratory has implemented aggressive pollution
prevention measures to protect groundwater resources. An extensive
groundwater monitoring well network is used to verify that prevention and
restoration activities are effective. (more)
A number of soil remediation projects have been completed at BNL
including the Current and Former Landfills, the Peconic River sediments, Chemical pits, Animal Pits and Glass Holes, the former Hazardous
waste Management Facility (FHWMF), Buildings 650 and 811, Landscape Soils,
etc. Land use and institutional controls are currently in place to protect
both the remedy and exposure to any residual contamination.
(more)
Land use and institutional controls (LUICs) have been deployed at
Brookhaven National Laboratory to prevent exposure to environmental
contamination and to ensure the long-term effectiveness of the environmental
cleanup remedies. LUICs, along with other mitigating or preventive measures
as necessary, have been implemented to ensure that if one control
temporarily fails, other controls will be in place, or actions will be
taken, to mitigate consequences resulting from the failure. LUICs will be
maintained for as long as necessary in order to ensure performance of the
completed remedies as described and documented in the BNL Records of
Decision (RODs). (more)
The first comprehensive site-wide
Five-Year Review Report of all the remediation work at BNL
was released in 2006.
The mission of the Environmental Information Management System (EIMS) is
to store, manage, protect, retrieve, interpret and archive Brookhaven
National Laboratory’s environmental data. The goal of all EIMS activities is
to provide timely access by its stakeholders to high-quality data. The EIMS
originated in 1993 as a database to store environmental characterization
data generated by the Laboratory’s Environmental Restoration program as part
of its Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act
(CERCLA) activities. As the program expanded, this database was integrated
with a geographic information system (GIS) to add data analysis and
graphical representation capabilities. Data were brought together from many
sources, including other BNL divisions (Plant Engineering (PE) and Safety
and Environmental Protection) and Federal, State, and local government
offices. In 1999 the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) declared the EIMS to be
mission-essential. In 2000, as part of the BNL Groundwater Protection
Implementation and Integration Plan, the EIMS became the direct repository
not only for CERCLA data but also for routine site monitoring data gathered
by the Environmental Protection Division. (more)
The Groundwater Protection Group maintains two required reading texts for
field work. The following are links to the texts:
Last Modified: December 19, 2011
Please forward all questions about this site to:
John Burke
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