Application of Risk Assessment Techniques to Evaluate Public Risk and Establish Priorities for Clean-up of Ordnance at Formerly Used Defense Site

摘要

The Defense Environmental Restoration Program (DERP) is congressionally mandated (Public Law 99-190 and 99-499) and directs the Secretary of Defense to carry out a program of environmental restoration. This mission of environmental restoration has been assigned to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE). The DERP Program allows for the restoration of both active Department of Defense (DOD) sites as well as sites that was formerly used by a DOD component. The program for restoration of active installations is commonly referred to as the Installation Restoration Program (IPR) while the program for restoration of former installations is known as Formerly Used Defense Sites (FUDS). The DERP goals are (1) to provide for the identification, investigation and cleanup of contamination of hazardous and toxic wastes, (2) to correct other environmental damage which create an imminent and substantial endangerment to the public or the environment, and (3) to dispose of unsafe buildings and structures. The purpose of this paper is to discuss item 2 above with regard to unexploded ordnance on formerly used defense sites. The Corps of Engineers has been actively establishing a data base of sites meeting the criteria of the DERP-FUDS. That inventory currently stands at over 7,050 sites that fall into the previously mentioned categories of contamination. Of these 7, 050 sites, there have been identified 900 formerly used sites that have a high potential for ordnance contamination. With this magnitude of ordnance contaminated sites, it became evident to the USACE, that some mechanisms for evaluating the degree of risk and prioritizing any investigation and remediation effort would be necessary. On 5 April 1990, an execution policy and criteria for evaluating explosive ordnance (EXO) was established. As a part of this policy, a procedure for evaluating public risks was implemented.