What is Long-Term Stewardship
Long-term stewardship as defined in “A Report to Congress on Long-Term Stewardship” (U.S. Department of Energy [DOE], 2001):... refers to all activities necessary to ensure protection of human health and the environment following completion of remediation, disposal, or stabilization of a site or a portion of a site. Long-term stewardship includes all engineered and institutional controls designed to contain or to prevent exposures to residual contamination and waste, such as surveillance activities, record-keeping activities, inspections, groundwater monitoring, ongoing pump and treat activities, cap repair, maintenance of entombed buildings or facilities, maintenance of other barriers and containment structures, access control, and posting signs.
The Hanford Site has taken a holistic, multigenerational and integrated approach to long-term stewardship that includes the following:
- Protection of human health and the environment from the risks associated with the contamination remaining after completion of the cleanup mission.
- Consideration of its unique biological, natural, and cultural resources as DOE conducts and completes cleanup at the Hanford Site and authorizes appropriate new uses.
- Reuse of Hanford Site assets within the framework of the Hanford Comprehensive Land-Use Plan (CLUP), such as land, facilities, technologies and skilled personnel that are no longer required to support Hanford Site missions.
Although the use of the term “long-term stewardship” is relatively new, long-term stewardship activities began when the Hanford Site was first used to support national defense in 1943. Only a small part of the site has been used for actual production purposes with the rest managed as a buffer zone. With cleanup well underway, long-term stewardship has become a major focus on the Hanford Site.
Why is Long-Term Stewardship Important?
Because the completion of cleanup will not result in the total elimination of all contamination (radiological and/or hazardous), long-term stewardship activities will be required for portions of the Hanford Site to ensure protection of human health and the environment. Restoration of contaminated areas to their original condition is often not feasible because of associated worker and environmental risks, costs, and technical and logistical issues. At the conclusion of the cleanup program, residual hazardous contamination will remain, both on the surface and subsurface.
DOE is committed to maintaining the protection of human health and the environment and to meeting its long-term, post-cleanup obligations in a safe and cost-effective manner. Although eventual transition to Office of Legacy Management remains some time off, actions are being taken today to ensure that LTS is prepared as cleanup decisions are made and dynamic to respond to lessons learned and be adaptable to handle changing financial, operational and environmental conditions.
2015 Vision
Hanford officials have developed a road map for finishing the cleanup activities on the 218-square-mile River Corridor portion of the Site by the year 2015. DOE-RL’s objective is to reduce the footprint of the Site’s active cleanup operations by 45 to 60% and 85 to 90% in calendar years 2011 and 2015, respectively, as described in DOE/RL-2010-18 - Hanford Site Active Cleanup Footprint Reduction.
The purpose of this website is share the information that has been developed to illustrate DOE’s commitment to ensuring the long-term effectiveness of the remedial actions and the continued protection of human health and the environment. The documents and links included herein provide additional details regarding the Hanford Site LTS Program.
The Hanford Site Cleanup Completion Framework document outlines the cleanup and its main components. The Hanford Site Long-Term Stewardship Program Plan describes the planning, responsibilities and implementation of the Hanford LTS Program.
