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Show DOE updates cleanup stategy The U.S. Department of Energys (DOE) Office of Environmental Manage- tackling the enormous challenge of cleaning up more than 50 years of contamination from the nations production of nuclear weapons. Ultimately, our goal is to accelerate cleanup and reduce future costs, said James Owendoff, Acting Assistant Secretary for Environmental Management. A central component of Paths to Closure is the development of baselines, which are detailed projections of the scope, cost, and schedules for cleaning up contaminated soil, ground water, and facilities; treating, storing, and disposing of waste; and effectively ment recently released Accelerating Cleanup: Paths to Closure, a draft strategy to accelerate the cleanup andor closure of 353 envi- ronmental projects nationwide. Paths to Closure is a revision of a previous discussion draft, Accelerating Cleanup: Focus on 2006, released in June 1997; the revision reflects 600 comments received from stake- holders, Native American tribes, congress, and reguy lators during the 90-da- comment period. Paths to Closure is a sig- nificant step forward in managing nuclear materi- San Juan County Cibraries Slogan Contest - als and spent nuclear fuel at individual projects. For planning purposes, the draft report assumes a DOE-wid- e funding level of $5.75 billion per year, from 1997 through 2006, to demonstrate what can be accomplished with steady funding over time. With this funding, the number of sites completed by 2006 would be 43 of the current 53 sites. The DOE Grand Junction Office is one of the 43 sites targeted for completion of cleanup. Long term cleanup activities will continue at the remaining 10 sites. Paths to Closure also identifies a potential short- fall between projected selected All if your motto is ages encouraged Deadline April 30 Submit entry with name address phone to Blanding Library Monticello Library or Bookmobile (From an article in the High Country News ) Until this town got involved, mine reclamation was fairly dull. You could say, reclamation lacked No flair. imagination. Then Anaconda, a town that rose and fell on the smelting of ore from the mines in nearby Butte, got the idea of taking a lifeless, sulfur-colore- d dump and turning it into a designer golf course. The first of its kind, says Sandy Stash, Montana facilities for manager cleanup costs and available funding. pany doing huge Superfund cleanups in Anaconda and Butte. Never before has a The DOE Albuquerque Operations Office also prepared a draft Paths to Closure strategy to specifically address its site offices, of which the Grand Junction y Office is one. The public comment period ends on May 1, 1998. Submit written comments to: Audrey Berry, U.S. Department of Energy, Grand Junction Office, 2597 B 34 Road, Grand Junction, CO 81503. Paths to Closure is available by contacting the DOE Grand Junction Office at (970) 248-772- 7. site Superfund com- been redeveloped into another use, Stash says. To qualify for Superfund, a piece of ground has to be ruined, and the ground under the golf course certainly was. The 220 acres had been covered with tailings seven feet deep beginning in the late 1800s, when Anacondas smelter complex was the worlds largest. Since then, the ground had also been an illegal town dump for everything from animal carcasses to broken refrig- erators. Once the last smelter shut reat down in 1980, something had to be done to clean up the and mess, Anacondas leadership saw it as an opportunity. ARCO, which is 1 , r-- ' &. a - Page 11 World class golf course grows from Montana mine tailings project ARCO, the mining 60-da- Win $50 THE SAN JUAN RECORD Wednesday April 8, 1998 r likes spending $100 million on reclamation in Anaconda, went along with the creative impulse, allocating $20 million of the total to install the Old Worlds Golf Course atop the tailings. Celebrity golfer Jack Nicklaus got $1 million to design the course - the only course in Montana with that claim to fame. The Old Works course opened last spring and raked in $1.2 million from golfers and tourists in the playing season. People from as far away as Florida stopped in. Restaufive-mon- th rants, motels and other around town on the traffic. in also cashed Mel Stokke, who worked in the smelter for 32 years and was its last general manager, dusted off an old set of golf clubs and became a regular. Its a tough course, says businesses No doubt the Stokke. toughest course in Montana. Quite impressive. The course winds between piles of slag (a black smelter waste thats stabilized) and other smelter remnants, including two huge ladles that were planted with yellow and red pansies to symbolize molten metal. The sand traps are also black slag. A few problems arose with the irrigation system and a liner that keeps surface water from flowing into the tailings, which still underlie the course. But all in all, Charlie Coleman, the EPAs project manger for the site, told the Montana Standard, Environmentally, Id have to give it an A. Stash says, now that the has taken golf course reclamation in a whole new Everybody: friends, family, pedestrians, other drivers. And your Farmers Insurance Agent. direction, her company wants to do more of this. 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