Oregon Department of ENERGY

Natural Resource Damage Assessment at Hanford

Sara LovtangAugust 8, 2017

OUTLINE OF PRESENTATION

• Brief explanation of Natural Resource Damage claim• The Natural Resource trustees• General road map for typical NRDA• How Hanford Trustee Council breaks down Hanford projects• Walk through Aquatic working group project • Questions

NATURAL RESOURCE DAMAGE CLAIMS

• NRD claims are brought by governments on behalf of the public for harm to natural resources

• NRD claim may come under state or federal statutes, or common law

• The Hanford NRD Assessment uses CERCLA guidelines, aimed at damages for injury resulting from release of hazardous substances – including physical damage caused by cleanup

TRUSTEES TASKED WITH:

• Ensure services that would have been provided by injured resources – but for Hanford-related contamination – are restored to the public.

• Define the scope and scale of restoration required.

• Document decisions and actions.

• Two states (Oregon and Washington)

• Three Native American tribes (Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation, Nez Perce Tribe, Yakama Nation)

• Three federal agencies (US Department of Energy, US Fish and Wildlife Service, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration)

Decisions are by consensus

Eight trustees

NRDA AT HANFORD

DAMAGE ASSESSMENT OVERVIEW

Determine: injury > pathway > quantify > damage evaluation

Injury: an observable or measureable adverse change in a natural resource, or impairment of ecosystem services.

- Injury is measured compared to “baseline” condition

Damage: what the responsible party must do or pay 1) cost to restore, replace or acquire the equivalent, and 2) value of the services lost during recovery (lost use)

CHALLENGES TO HANFORD NRDA

• Scientific evidence that follow EPA’s guidelines and will be part of legal case

• Keeping eye on future damage determination and restoration

• Habitat Equivalency Analysis, valuation, other economics

• Final product a Restoration Plan, with handover to Legacy Management to do long term monitoring

• Restricted budget, so need to prioritize

NRDA AT HANFORD

• 1993: First organization meeting at invitation of US DOE

• 1996: Hanford Natural Resource Trustee Council (HNRTC)• defines expectations for cleanup and future use of Site

• 2007: Trustees begin formal NRDA process

• 2012: HNRTC becomes more active after legal settlement establishes US DOE funding for trustee organizations

WORKING GROUPS FOCUSED ON INJURY

• Aquatic/near-shore

• Sampling of soil in non-process areas

• Mapping terrestrial disturbance

• Vegetation restoration

• Groundwater

• Tribal service loss

OTHER WORKING GROUPS

• Data management and sharing • Threshold memos for priority contaminants of concern • Legacy pesticides (orchard lands) • Bylaws and MOUs • Budgets and updates to Project Execution Plan

• Studies funded by HNRTC:• 2 lab studies on juvenile salmon exposure to

contaminated groundwater seeping into Columbia River• Fall Chinook parr ability to detect/avoid chromium • Western pearlshell mussels tested in lab

• Expert panel narrowed focus

• Pressure on US DOE to test groundwater upwelling in river

Building on past work

AQUATIC WORKING GROUP

AQUATIC WORKING GROUP

• Modelling Chinook salmon population to assess impacts of historical chromium contamination

• Mapping habitat

• Organize and assess decades of information • Literature, sampling data, GIS layers, etc

• Education of Council members

Current focus

• Sub-group of the aquatic team working with local fisheries biologist

• Mapping habitat using: • Depth, from Lidar to identify holes and shallows• Substrate, from maps generated by USGS• Flow, using published data monitoring effects of dam

Oregon’s work-in-progress on mapping habitat

AQUATIC WORKING GROUP

Bathymetry from Lidar

River substrate showing cobble, gravel, sand, bedrock, organic matter

COLUMBIA RIVER FLOW

• Stations measure water surface elevation and volume

• No known 2-dimensional map of velocity, but standard principles are well known

Salmon spawning areas, digitized from 2000-2001, 2005 and 2006 aerial photos

Mapping of fall Chinook salmon spawning habitat on Columbia River

Salmon spawning areas with river substrate

Salmon spawning with areas of groundwater upwelling

2010 chromium (purple) plume

2010 chromium and nitrate (orange) plumes

2010 chromium, nitrate, and strontium-90 (blue) plumes

2010 chromium, nitrate, strontium and Trichloro-ethene (yellow) plumes

2010 chromium, nitrate, strontium, Trichloro-ethene and tritium (green) plumes

WHY NRTC HASN’T MOVED FASTER

• 2014 Project Execution Plan forecasts approval of the NRDA Restoration Plan in 2024 – if fully funded.• PEP budget estimated NRDA cost of $85 million,

resulting in an annual average cost of $ 8.5 million. • Budget allocations by the DOE for the NRDA have

averaged $3.1 million/year. • All data/analyses must go through quality control • The HNRTC operates under consensus

•Hanford Natural Resource Trustee Council

www.hanfordnrda.org

•U.S. Dept. of Energy Hanford web site

www.hanford.gov/page.cfm/HNRTC