A CONFERENCE ON AN ENVIRONMENTAL CLEANUP STRATEGY FOR THE DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY�S BROOKHAVEN NATIONAL LABORATORY   Friday, January 12, 2026 Convened by: Citizens Campaign for the Environment (CCE), the Global Resource Action Center for the Environment (GRACE) and The STAR Foundation   Hosted by: St. Joseph�s College, Patchogue, NY   SUMMARY This one-day conference will focus on the environmental cleanup of the DOE�s Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) and on an overall strategy to protect public health and Long Island�s water supplies from the radioactive and chemical contamination at BNL. The conference will take place in the context of a recent report from the National Academy of Science�s National Research Council (NAS) which found that the U.S. Department of Energy�s long term stewardship plan for managing nuclear waste is insufficient. Indeed, the NAS concluded that the DOE needs a long term program that "actively seeks out and applies new knowledge." In an effort to foster this strategy, the conference will be open to the pubic and will include the participation of independent national and local experts, business leaders, the DOE, Brookhaven National Laboratory, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, state and local governments, and citizen organizations. Among the issues the conference will address are: Near and long-term environmental cleanup goals; Funding, contracting and management of the BNL cleanup effort; Accountability by the DOE, BNL and state and federal regulators; Protection of water supplies; Alternative cleanup remedies and solutions.       Justification: a) Site and Cleanup History: Brookhaven has a formidable environmental legacy created over 50 years of nuclear operations. Among this legacy are radioactive and hazardous waste such as contaminated landfills, contaminated groundwater and river sediments, contaminated waste treatment and storage facilities, above and underground waste tanks, and three defunct nuclear reactors. This large collection of contaminated facilities are already impacting the Peconic River and Long Island�s sole source aquifer. In January 1997, ground water samples revealed concentrations of (radioactive) tritium that were twice the allowable federal drinking water standards -some samples taken later were 32 times the standard. The tritium was found to be leaking from the laboratory�s High Flux Beam Reactor�s spent fuel pool into the aquifer that provides drinking water for nearby Suffolk County residents. Because Brookhaven employees did not aggressively monitor its reactor�s spent-fuel pool for leaks, the leak had been occurring for at least twelve years at a rate of 6 -8 gallons a day. In the spring of 2000, the lab released a clean-up plan for the Peconic river. This plan was largely considered to be hasty and inadequate by the community and as a result, the clean-up has been delayed so that alternative remedies can be considered. As a component to this reconsideration, the Suffolk County Legislature has created an oversight committee that is charged with making recommendations for alternative clean-up technologies and eventual remediation choices. Furthermore, numerous citizen groups have recommended clean-up technologies for the river and for groundwater clean-up of tritium and other contaminants. These technologies have been somewhat innovative and as such we feel they have not been given adequate consideration by BNL. In light of the recent recommendations by the National Academy of Science, Commission on geosceinces, environment and resources, that DOE sites need to address cleanup with more foresight, transparently clear and realistic thinking and accountability. (See section c below). Yet, the DOE has yet to offer a comprehensive strategy to ensure that the large environmental legacy at BNL will be cleaned up in a manner that protects public health and safety and the island�s precious water supplies. Instead, the DOE and Brookhaven are proceeding with a piecemeal approach, an approach that was judged to be inadequate by the NAS report. Indeed, the BNL plan fails to follow the NAS recommendation for a "broader institutional management framework that equally balances contaminant reduction, physical isolation of waste, and custodial activities such as surveillance of waste migration, changes in the landscape and human activity around the site. About 180,000 cubic yards of radioactive and hazardous wastes are estimated to be generated from the Brookhaven cleanup effort. This is enough to fill a football field 180 feet deep. This estimate does not include the large volumes of wastes that will be generated by the decontamination and decommissioning (D&D) of Brookhaven� s two closed reactors. According to the DOE , in 1996, the cost of cleaning up Brookhaven over several decades is about $867 million. However, Brookhaven�s cleanup costs will certainly escalate since cleanup of the reactors were not factored into this estimate. b) Cleanup strategy: The procurement decisions regarding the cleanup of BNL are major elements in the overall success of cleaning up Brookhaven National Laboratory. These procurement decisions must be tied to a strategic plan that addresses the protection of Long Island�s water supplies and a major reduction of the contaminant burden of the BNL site. We would expect the DOE to base its� decision to award a very large environmental cleanup contract on such a strategy that has the support of the community. The DOE has yet to articulate such a strategy for public review and comment. Therefore, we are organizing a workshop/conference that will examine the potential for the deployment of new and possibly better cleanup technologies that differ from the conventional methods. BNL is a perfect place to conduct this exercise because there is active involvement from environmental, health, civic, and community organizations that can provide insight into strategic cleanup goals -- such as protection of water supplies, return of as much land to unrestricted use as possible, containment and storage of wastes that will be generated from the cleanup, and changes necessary to retain existing workers. We seek to ensure that there is an open & competitive bidding process where the deployment of innovative technologies that garner widespread community support is one of the important criteria.  c) DOE Clean-up problems nationally: Brookhaven is a microcosm of the DOE�s overall situation. Several major facilities are not shut down at DOE sites across the country, leaving behind a large, danerous and unfunded environmental mess. Recently, the National Academy of Sciences, Commission on geosciences, environment and resources completed a look at Long term institutional management of U.S. Department of Energy Legacy Waste Sites (2000). The central message of the committee report is that "effective long-term stewardship will likely be difficult to achieve." Moreover, for any given site, containment reduction, containment isolation, and stewardship should be treated as an integrated, complementary system; one that requires foresight, transparency, clear and realistic thinking and accountability." The report recommends that DOE be "active in the search for new and different solutions" and that the DOE conduct the necessary scientific, technical and social research and development.           Draft Program 1) Introductions & Welcome: [10:00 a.m. - 10:15 a.m] 2) Overview: Scope of the contamination, NAS report and implications locally: Robert Alvarez, Executive Director, STAR, Former Senior Policy Advisor to the U.S. Secretary of Energy. [10:15-10:35] 3) Analysis of the incentive structure under which the clean-up operates and recommendations for change. William Weida: Professor of Economics, University of Colorado, GRACE Board; [10:35-11:00] Originally, the DOE was structured to respond to national concerns and it operated (and still operates) on an incentive structure that is designed to produce products of national interest. However, the enterprise of cleaning up any particular polluted site is not an enterprise that has national interest. It does not provide a national good in any sense of the definition--it provides a regional benefit. In fact, many regions have made use of this by trying to ship the pollution in their area to other regions where they will no longer be affected by the toxins they themselves created. The issue is how one could design an organization that could use new technologies if they were available, extend old technologies, do everything at a lower cost, and really do acceptable cleanup. Obviously, this organization would have to be based on an incentive structure that was grounded in regional, not national concerns. In economics we create similar organization structures by making people internalize the costs of their actions--i.e., making people take responsibility for what they do. The only way to do this in a regional context is to make the organization (in this case, the organization undertaking the cleanup effort) answerable to the citizens of the region. Here are two ways that might work: (A) If the desirable organization is a government entity, it must be locally based--and in this case, local means county, not state. The directors of the cleanup would have to be elected, the money for the cleanup would have to be administered by local groups, and the design and assessment of the cleanup would have to be generated locally. This is similar to the design of most school districts--which also receive and administer large amounts of federal funds. (B) One argument against a government organization is that it is likely to be inefficient and thus, money could be saved by privatizing cleanup. Assuming one wanted to go in this direction, one would then have to find/design a company that ALSO was regionally based and that answered to regional concerns. That means the stockholders of this cleanup company must come from (live in) the region--and they would hold the management of the company responsible for achieving acceptable results. This would put the company in the unique position of answering to its shareholders (regional residents) in terms of both profitability and responsibility--something that is currently missing in the cleanup game. 4)Congressional responsibilities and perspectives: Senator Charles Schumer [11:00-11:15] 5) Citizen and Suffolk County involvement in cleanup at BNL: a) Adrienne Esposito, Associate Executive Director, CCE [11:15-11:30] b) Vito Minei or Joe Baier (if possible) ; Suffolk Dept. of Health [11:30-11:45] LUNCH - 11:45-12:30 6) DOE�s cleanup Strategy, budgeting, and management at Brookhaven National Laboratory: a) Bob San Martin (DOE) [12:30-12:45] b) Dr. Marburger, Director, BNL [12:45-1:00] 7) Regulatory responsibilities and perspectives: a) USEPA [1-1:15] b) NY State [1:15-1:30] 8) Alternative cleanup technologies [1:30-2:15] -Paul Markowitz, Gaia institute: sedimentary systems, dredging, bioremediation -Molecular separations; Tritium separation -Eden Space, phytoremediation -Marvin Resnikoff COFFEE BREAK [2:15-2:30]   9) Focus groups: [2:30-3:30] (The idea is for participants to engage in small group discussion and provide written feedback to be compiled and distributed at a later date) a) Is alternative cleanup technology implementation is difficult at DOE sites? b) Recommendations