Internationally Recognized ECOLOGY LAB Shrinks Its Operations SREL
Leaders of two congressional subcommittees still don’t know why U.S. DOE officials kept the lab staff in the dark about the plan to halt federal funding. CATHERINE M. COONEY
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hy has the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) zeroed-out $4 million in annual funding for a 57-year-old, highly respected, independent ecology lab in Aiken, S.C.? Supporters consider the Savannah River Ecology Laboratory (SREL) a beacon in the federal lab system, noting that it began under the leadership of Eugene Odum, known worldwide as the father of modern ecology. The lab’s location on the 310 square mile Savannah River Site (SRS) provides “extremely rare opportunities to study the ecosystems that are not impacted by human activities,” F. Ward Whicker, a professor emeritus and radioecologist at Colorado State University, told a congressional subcommittee that is investigating the lab’s funding. As much as 85% of the land consists of pristine forest and aquatic ecosystems of streams, ponds, and wetlands, which support a “very rich and diverse flora and fauna,” Whicker added. More important, perhaps, is that the largely undeveloped nature of the site allows SREL researchers to study the soils, ecosystems, and fish in areas that may be affected by chemical and radiological agents resulting from DOE’s SRS, a federal nuclear materials processing facility. The Savannah River National Laboratory (SRNL), also located on SRS, is one of DOE’s national labs. SREL “is one of the premier radioecology labs in the world,” says Brian Looney, an advisory scientist for SRNL. Two congressional subcommittees jointly sponsored two hearings last summer to examine the elimination of federal support for SREL. All of the witnesses, with the exception of DOE officials, agreed that the work conducted by the lab was exceptional, and they questioned DOE’s decision to cut funding. “Why did top-level © 2008 American Chemical Society
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In a nutshell, half of the lab’s 80-some employees had their positions terminated in June 2007, while the rest have remained on-site to carry out work through grants already in place from other agencies. The lab, a well-known training ground for new ecologists, has a few graduate students left. The facility will move forward under what UGA Vice President for Research David Lee calls a “Cooperative Agreement” with DOE. The buildings and grounds are owned by DOE, but government officials have committed to keep the buildings and equipment available to the researchers through 2011, Lee says. Lee is optimistic about the future of SREL, saying he envisions a much smaller “virtual ecology laboratory” where a few resident scientists carry out work funded via grants. Annually, various guest scientists can conduct work at the site for a few weeks or months at a time and then return to their home laboratories to analyze their observations. “We envision a lab that DOE
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staff at the Department of Energy put so much time and energy into eliminating a lab that costs so little but makes such enormous contributions to environmental science?” asked Investigations and Oversight Subcommittee Chairman Brad Miller (D-NC) during the first hearing on July 17. Researchers at SREL, which is managed and partially funded by the University of Georgia (UGA) in Athens, have been studying the effects of DOE’s nuclear production and processing activities on the environment for more than 50 years. They have traditionally held professorships at UGA in applied sciences and terrestrial and aquatic sciences, and they have spoken at international meetings and published scores of papers in peer-reviewed journals. SREL’s work is truly independent, because all research is published without a DOE review, says I. Lehr Brisbin, an avian ecologist who retired from SREL in October 2005 after 37-plus years.
For years, SREL ecologists have taken children into the field and animals into local area schools to spread the word about SRS’s 310 square miles of untouched habitat.
This independence of the research conducted at the site has generated great credibility among the neighboring public as well as the state and local regulators, many of whom are concerned about the radioactive elements being handled at SRS, lab supporters say. Demand for credibility about radioactive materials will only increase as the U.S. moves toward a carbon-constrained future, notes Karen Patterson, chair of the SRS Citizens Advisory Board (SRS CAB), a DOE-sponsored federal oversight board made up of 25 citizens. “Many people have limited information about the science and technology supporting nuclear power,” Patterson says. “Research, such as that done by SREL, increases the public’s confidence in nuclear energy as a safe way of producing electricity,” she adds. Federal funding to support SREL research began to dwindle at the start of the 2006 fiscal year (FY ’06). From a high of $8 million requested for FY ’04, funds were eliminated in President Bush’s FY ’06 budget; lobbying on SREL’s behalf by congressional representatives from Georgia and South Carolina reversed that decision. The picture becomes murkier after that point as DOE and SREL employees differ in their interpretation of what DOE promised. 10 ■ Environmental Science & Technology / January 1, 2008
is very entrepreneurial,” Lee explains, with a small amount of university funding to pay for electricity and other operating and maintenance costs, while the researchers generate their own salaries with outside funds.
Helping EPA make the most of its money SREL’s ecology work is unique when it comes to assessing remediation choices, supporters say. In the early 1990s, SREL radioecologists advised the U.S. EPA on a cleanup option (which could have cost $4 billion) at SRS for cesium-137, a radionuclide that mostly came from leaking fuel elements in an SRS reactor in the late 1950s and 1960s. Cesium-137 has a 30-year half-life; tends to be mobile in ecosystems; and readily accumulates in plants, in animals, and potentially in people, Whicker says. The radionuclide leak contaminated Par Pond, an impoundment on SRS that has become a large fish and wildlife refuge. Several areas on SRS are classified by EPA as a Superfund site, including Par Pond. To get the cleanup started, EPA set forth four main remediation options. Yet EPA’s risk assessments illustrated very different data than the results from research done at the site by the SREL scientists. With SREL input, EPA chose
and Bertsch were told by these officials that they would receive $4 million in federal funds annually from 2007 through 2011, with a 2.5% increase for inflation. Senior researcher David Scott, who still works at SREL, says the lab appears to have been misled by DOE officials and never had time to plan for a future without federal support. Then in May 2007, “people from DOE’s Office of Environmental Management [in Washington, D.C.] came down and lowered the boom,” says Seaman. SREL
a low-cost option that it had initially determined was not going to be protective of the environment. Long-term data from SREL on the pond and the surrounding plants and animals showed that the lowcost option was the best for the ecosystem and even for the hypothetical farmer who might one day, far in the future, choose to grow food on SRS. SRS CAB chair Patterson says that officials in the local EPA office, known as Region 4, are also concerned about the lab’s shrinking budget and capabilities. “EPA and the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control will determine the final closure actions” at the various Superfund areas on SRS, she told the subcommittee. “Without SREL’s data, EPA will lack sufficient information to determine relative risks and will be forced to err on the less data-informed, more ‘conservative’ side. Simply put, the loss of SREL may very well result in additional and unnecessary remediation . . . at great cost to the taxpayer and at a great loss of valuable natural habitats,” she added. Some local residents and scientists still at SREL say they have another concern about the lab’s lack of funding: DOE’s plan to ship spent plutonium from nuclear power plants in the U.S. to SRS for treatment and stabilization. DOE’s plan to ship nuclear waste to SRS addresses concerns that a nuclear power expansion in the U.S. would be stymied by the lack of a viable waste repository. “We’re worried that we will become Yucca Mountain East,” says SREL senior researcher John Seaman, referring to DOE’s yet-unfinished, long-term storage repository for nuclear waste in Nevada.
The funding story A review of congressional documents and interviews with SREL staff tell conflicting stories about what DOE promised in terms of federal support to SREL. Clay Sell, DOE’s deputy administrator for energy, told the congressional subcommittee that SREL and UGA officials were told in May 2005 that DOE would provide only $1 million for FY ’07 and that all federal funding would halt thereafter. “It remains our collective hope and expectation that the agreement reached in 2005 would permit the laboratory to operate—and even expand its horizons—as has been the case for [SRNL], which has grown its budget to nearly $140 million annually” through “other government and private customers,” Sell asserted. Lab employees and members of Congress tell a different funding story. Talks in May 2005 with DOE officials led to a $4 million commitment for FY ’06 and at least $1 million for FY ’07, plus additional money that would be approved on a project-by-project basis, according to subcommittee documents. After these talks, then-SREL director Paul Bertsch developed a business plan detailing funding options to supplement DOE’s monies and keep the lab in operation. DOE never responded to Bertsch’s plan, the subcommittee notes, but negotiations began for a new 5-year Cooperative Agreement between Bertsch and local DOE officials. In March 2006, SREL ecologists
SREL technician Troy Rea (left) and John Seaman collect SRS aquifer sediments for laboratory studies used in predicting the fate and transport of contaminants derived from the SRS Burial Ground and the decommissioned Fand H-Area Seepage Basins.
UGA’s Lee says the university plans to make use of SREL at least through 2011 and plans to provide funds, “well under $1 million” annually, to the site. DOE spokesperson Julie Pattersen notes that “SREL plans to maintain an active on-site program of ecological fieldwork but will shift much of its analytical work to existing UGA laboratories. As stipulated in the Cooperative Agreement, any DOE funding in FY ’08 and beyond will be decided on an as-needed, task-by-task basis to support critical work scope.” But the ecologists at the lab don’t see a rosy future. “We are working on finding funding ourselves on a task-by-task basis,” Seaman says. “At this point, we have cut our operations, and our expectations, down to the bone.” Catherine M. Cooney is a senior associate editor of ES&T. January 1, 2008 / Environmental Science & Technology ■ 11
