Environmental Policy Analysis and Practice

Chapter 4: Economic Criterion: Costs of Environmental Management

96 Introduction During the s — the halcyon days of the environmental movement in the United States — many activists, elected officials, and agency staff behaved as if the costs of environmental management were not important (see the discussion of the Clean Air Act in chapter 8). But cost was always there and was considered. The case study in this chapter focuses on the balancing of economic and other considerations by the people who manage the U.S. nuclear weapons legacy. These stewards face an unprecedented responsibility. Nuclear weapons development, testing, and manufacturing contaminated over  locations in  states. Most of these sites were small, and nuclear and chemical wastes have been removed. But at three massive sites — Hanford (Washington), Idaho National Laboratory (Idaho), and Savannah River (South Carolina) — large quantities of hazardous nuclear and nonnuclear toxic chemicals are stored in tanks above and below ground, in pits, in ponds, and in lagoons. These materials have leaked into the ground. They have sometimes even leaked into underground water supplies and nearby rivers. Some of these hazards will be dangerous for centuries, and they must be managed in perpetuity. It is not an exaggeration to assert that these three sites represent the most difficult environmental management problem in the United States — and one of the most difficult in the world. The economic challenge at these sites is unprecedented. How can we balance costs against the need for environmental management over many generations? From  to , environmental management budgets at the three sites averaged almost $ billion a year (Greenberg, Miller, et al., ; U.S. Department of Energy [DOE], ; DOE, Office of Environmental Management, a, b). This represented  percent of DOE’s total environmental management budget. To my knowledge, environmental management costs at these three sites are the largest focused by a single organization on a single location in the world. 4 Economic Criterion Costs of Environmental Management During the past two decades, I have visited some of most hazardous Superfund waste sites in the United States (see chapter ). The cost of cleaning up and controlling Superfund sites typically runs a few million dollars, reached $ million for some, and in the worst cases exceeded $ million. By comparison, the estimated cost of cleaning up and controlling these three nuclear weapons legacy sites will be tens of billions of dollars (DOE, Office of Environmental Management, a, b). One reason for these off-the-chart costs is the presence of high-level nuclear waste that has been mixed with other materials. Methods to neutralize and manage these wastes have not been proven. A second reason is that these three sites contain multiple hazardous waste sites — literally thousands of them. I will use the vitrification facility at Savannah River to illustrate DOE’s cost containment problems. Vitrification mixes nuclear materials with molten glass to immobilize the waste. The facility at the Savannah River site, the largest in the world, cost $. billion to construct. Vitrification facilities being constructed at Hanford for a slightly different kind of waste could cost five to eight times as much (well over $ billion) (“Hanford Cleanup to Take Four Years Longer Than Planned,” ). While a $ billion dollar project may not raise many eyebrows when it buys a major expansion of the national highway system or sewage treatment plant upgrades across the nation, there is no overlooking this level of cost for a single environmental management project in a few locations. These massive investments have created a large population that depends on continuing DOE expenditures (Greenberg, Lewis, et al., ; Greenberg, Miller, et al., ). Local economic dependency creates tension for a site manager who knows that if he or she cuts the scope of a project and closes a site, there will be a serious economic recession in the area. These stewards also face pressure to spend on risk management because of legal agreements between DOE and the states, tribal nations, and the U.S. Environmental Agency (EPA) that stipulate environmental management accomplishments by specific dates. Failure to meet these obligations, which assumed technological advances that often have not materialized , brings additional pressure to bear on DOE from local groups, the courts, the affected states, tribal nations, congressional representatives, and local media. Failure to meet agreements, whatever the reason, implies to some that DOE is sacrificing the area and/or is incompetent. Yet as stewards of taxpayer dollars, DOE managers are supposed to use environmental dollars prudently. Should they forge ahead with massive construction projects, recognizing that costs may be...