Starting from the premise that we owe the future the power of the knowledge of what it’sup against, we define Institutional Controls, explain why they pose a challenge, suggestappropriate time frames for Long-Term Stewardship, propose the institutionalization ofan annual mapping as a snapshot of the evolving state of knowledge of the location andrisks of residual contamination at legacy sites, and apply recent research in TraditionalEcological Knowledge to suggest Native American Tribes as the right people (the rightinstitutions, since they’ve been here a long time before us and a long time longer than theplanning period) to help the United States Geological Survey manage this mapping. Thepaper concludes with examples of current and proposed work to develop knowledge andtools to support institutional controls undertaken by the Subsurface Contaminants FocusArea within the DOE Office of Science and Technology.
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