EVALUATION OF CONTAMINATED GROUNDWATER CLEANUP OBJECTIVES

The U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE's) Environmental Restoration Prog ram will be responsible for remediating the approximately 230 contamin ated groundwater sites across the DOE Complex. A major concern for rem ediation is choosing the appropriate cleanup objective. The the cleanu p objective chosen will influence the risk to the nearby public during and after remediation; risk to remedial and non-involved workers duri ng remediation; and the cost of remediation. This paper will discuss t he trends shown in analyses currently being performed at Oak Ridge Nat ional Laboratories' (ORNL's) Center for Risk Management (CRM). To eval uate these trends, CRM is developing a database of contaminated sites. This paper examines several contaminated groundwater sites selected f or assessment from CRM's database. The sites in this sample represent potential types of contaminated groundwater sites commonly found at an installation within DOE. The baseline risk from these sites to variou s receptors will be presented. Residual risk and risk during remediati on will be reported for different cleanup objectives. The cost associa ted with remediating to each of these objectives will also be estimate d for each of the representative sites. Finally, the general trends of impacts as a function of cleanup objective will be summarized.