Overview

Long Term Environmental Stewardship (LTES) Overview

LTES is the maintenance of a regulatory required environmental condition once cleanup is complete. DOE Order 436.1 is the governing regulation for this effort.

LTES will include the final conditions of the current environmental remediation efforts funded by DOE-EM (DOE Environmental Management), being performed under the framework of the Order on Consent with the New Mexico Environment Department (NMED). LTES will also include the current Environmental Surveillance Report (ESR) Program, and will be closely tied to environmental compliance activities. This effort will also involve the LANL Environmental Management System as directed in DOE Order 436.1. Environmental surveillance at the Laboratory will integrate across LTES and compliance activities to ensure that past and current operations do not adversely impact the public or the environment.

Completed remediation actions will initially ensure an acceptable level of protection from harmful exposure to any residual contamination under a specific land use plan acceptable to the regulator. Maintenance of this condition is the purpose of LTES. Following remediation by DOE-EM, the site steward (NNSA) accepts the responsibility and authority for maintaining the physical and institutional controls established to maintain the accepted stewardship conditions for a given site.

The final stewardship condition for each remediated site will be maintained through various means (e.g., monitoring, access controls), and through the possible future use of more effective means of reducing long-term risks from any residual environmental contamination. These means are evaluated using decision methods acceptable to the regulator. LTES is not implemented in lieu of remedial action. Remedial action and LTES activities are complimentary and act together to address areas that cannot be released for unrestricted use.

LTES begins as final clean up solutions are implemented in work performed under the Compliance Order on Consent with the NMED, and in conjunction with monitoring requirements that may be required under the LANL RCRA permit. Environmental Surveillance Report monitoring is underway at present, as is monitoring performed as directed by NMED under the Order on Consent.

Monitoring and Modeling

Long Term Environmental Stewardship (LTES) Environmental Monitoring and Modeling

LTES performance will be periodically evaluated to monitor the performance of actions completed through remediation and other environmental protection elements. The effect of LANL facility and operations changes will also be evaluated periodically.

LTES conditions will be assessed through field verification, sampling, analysis, and process models. Modeling of physical processes will be used to forecast future conditions. Actions will be taken based on these modeling results if they show the need for additional work to ensure safe conditions into the future. Note that models must be approved by the site regulators to be a basis for decisions.

Monitoring involves the Compliance Order on Consent with the New Mexico Environment Department (NMED), the Interim Facility-Wide Groundwater Monitoring Plan through the LANL Water Stewardship Program, monitoring requirements specified under the LANL RCRA permit, and the LANL Environmental Surveillance Program . After completion of DOE-EM funded cleanup, site-wide monitoring will be coordinated by a LANL LTES program.

Data Access

Long Term Environmental Stewardship (LTES) Data Access

DOE requires that data used to make decisions concerning LTES conditions be readily accessible to the public. To accomplish this, sample analysis data used to plan and execute remediation cleanup activities, including the location of any contaminants, is available through the independently administered environmental monitoring database, Intellus NM. The purpose of the Intellus NM project for LANL LTES is to provide long- term environmental data storage and retrieval capability, as well as accountability and redundancy.

Links

• DOE Order 436.1 - "Departmental Sustainability"
• Environmental Monitoring Database (Intellus NM)
• LA-UR-06-5387, Summary of Watersheds Potentially Impacted by Los Alamos National Laboratory
• DOE Office of Legacy Management
• Environmental Surveillance Report
• 2008 Interim Facility-Wide Groundwater Monitoring Plan
• Environmental Management System