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Lesson 1 - Idaho Environmental Monitoring - Page 2 |
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Who are the agencies and organizations monitoring conditions at the INEEL? |
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government or government-funded groups monitor conditions
on and around the INEEL. Some programs are run by
subcontractors working for the DOE, others provide
information to regulatory agencies such as the
Environmental Protection Agency, and a few have been
monitoring the site for decades. In fact, one of the
earliest organizations, the Air Resources Laboratory of
NOAA has been monitoring meteorological conditions at the
INEEL site since 1949.
Over the years, the inital NOAA meteorological tower
network has grown from a half a dozen stations into a
total of 31 meteorological towers, complete with standard
weather instruments, radio telemetry, and a 915-MHz radar
wind profiler, a radio acoustic sounding system (RASS),
and a Doppler sodar for monitoring INEEL weather
conditions. The Shoshone-Bannock Tribes of the nearby Fort Hall Indian Reservation are also strong participants in the Idaho Environmental Monitoring Program. Many of the natural features on the INEEL—its prehistoric archaeological sites, natural resources, and indigenous wildlife—are of religious and cultural importance to the Native Americans, and the Shoshone-Bannock Tribes and the DOE maintain a formal Government to Government agreement which respects and solicits the Shoshone-Bannock's Tribal right to oversee daily operations at the INEEL. As one result of this continuing cooperation between the Tribes and DOE, the monitoring station at Fort Hall became an operating, integral part of the Idaho Environmental Monitoring network on May 1, 1997.
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| Most of the
other state, federal, and scientific agencies involved in
monitoring at the INEEL began their sampling and testing
programs in order to comply with new standards being
created for handling and storing contaminated materials.
Actually, when regulations and laws for environmental
restoration were first being introduced as federal and
state legal issues, there was some confusion over exactly who was supposed
to do exactly what.
In the late 1980s, the U.S. Secretary of Energy decided
that each state had both the right and responsibility to
oversee, or "monitor", DOE-funded environmental
activities within their boundaries. In 1990, Idaho became
the first state in the country to shoulder this
responsibility by establishing the Idaho Environmental
Oversight and Monitoring Agreement. This Agreement,
supported by actions taken by the 1989 Idaho Legislature,
made it possible for the State of Idaho to create the
INEEL Oversight Program, known as the INEEL OP. As the
agency's name implies, the INEEL OP became responsible
for monitoring certain aspects of environmental projects
being conducted at the INEEL.
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