Department of Energy Authorizations (fiscal Year 1979 and 1980) and Energy Emergency Preparedness

mal and expeditious manner, which you would ordinarily think administrative proceedings would allow you to do, but not so here. Mr. FINNEGAN. If the committee were not to agree to changing the remedial order provisions of the DOE Act on this would you consider the possibility of abandoning the step of going through the Office of Hearings and Appeals and going directly to FERC?

Mr. COLEMAN. I do not know. We might be forced to consider that. It was, I assume, the judgment of the responsible officialsand this occurred prior to the time I came to the Department-that it would not be wise to have no administrative proceedings at all on the Secretary's side of the house prior to going to the Commission, that there should be an opportunity for the affected company to know what the allegations of the enforcement officials are and to have a fair opportunity to respond to them and to develop some record of those occurrences, because if you were to do it the other way and just assume that a remedial order is just a complaint, just a piece of paper, and the entire case is to be tried like in the Federal court before the Commission, I think that would be productive of unfortunate consequences and a great use of staff time. Mr. FINNEGAN. So you are saying that the effect of having it before the Hearings and Appeals Office avoids the necessity of a full-blown administrative proceeding before FERC?

Mr. COLEMAN. Yes, it has an effect in the FERC rules and to the extent that there are cases over there yet-and there are not many-I would say it has reduced the extent to which they have to have a full-blown proceeding.

In other words, they can look at the administrative record made before the Office of Hearings and Appeals and, in effect, limit their efforts to those points where the issue was not adequately developed.

Mr. FINNEGAN. What has been the industry response to that kind of a procedure?

Mr. COLEMAN. It has been a varied one, I think. Some of them have insisted that the Office of Hearings and Appeals should conduct no proceedings, that they are entitled to a complete de novo review, to some who have accepted as commonsense with that sort of arrangement.

Mr. FINNEGAN. I see.

So you think that it would be useful if we could possibly adopt amendments to these several items?

Mr. COLEMAN. I believe so. I would like to see the Congress look at that and frankly, I think it would be better to consider it now rather than later when you will have a bunch of cases over there and you will have the problem of what do you do with pending cases. There will be some if you do it now, but not as many as if you concern yourself with it a year from now.

Mr. FINNEGAN. Would you recommend that they be included, if possible, in the DOE authorization bill?

Mr. COLEMAN. I have some hesitancy to suggest that major substantive amendments be in the authorization act, but if that is the ready vehicle for that, I would not have opposition to it.

Mr. FINNEGAN. Well, given the fact that we may not have another piece of legislation to take care of this problem for several months-

Mr. COLEMAN. If it is put to me that way, Mr. Finnegan, I would. Mr. FINNEGAN. I gather that you would also, in connection with some of those provisions in 1004, which the committee has been concerned with, members have been concerned with, that those also could be included in the DOE authorization bill, given the fact that you do not have another bill of that nature in the months to come?

Mr. COLEMAN. They certainly could be.

Mr. FINNEGAN. Thank you very much, Mr. Coleman.

Mr. GORE. I recognize counsel.

Mr. WARD. I would like to return to Ms. Clusen.

The Weldon Springs site in St. Charles, Mo., are you familiar with it?

Ms. CLUSEN. Yes; we are.

Mr. WARD. As I understand it, this site was used in different time periods to store munitions, to store atomic material as well as to store toxic material, and as a result you have a residue of all of these in these bunkers. Is that correct?

Mr. MOTT. I believe that is correct; yes.

Mr. WARD. Is this a unique situation?

Mr. MOTT. I think so, in terms of the other sites that we have that we are dealing with.

Mr. WARD. Does the Department of Energy own it, or the Department of Defense?

Mr. MOTT. The major portion of the Weldon Springs site is owned by the Department of Defense.

Mr. WARD. Now, was there recently an attempt to sell part of this site?

Mr. MOTT. There have been discussions relative to it, yes.

Mr. WARD. I am concerned about the existence of procedures that would catch the sale of such sites before they are actually sold. Do you feel the procedures are adequate?

Mr. MOTT. I am very sorry. I cannot speak to that particular point Mr. Ward, as I understand it, there are no formal procedures to insure that land owned by the Department of Defense, which may have radioactive material on it, or residue, is cleared with DOE and NRC before release.

Mr. LIVERMAN. The Department of Defense recently sent us a letter to try and get us to take over that site. Basically, the site has what are called raffinate pits on a part of the site. The uranium that is in those pits now is actually being wanted by one of the corporations in order to reprocess it; the concentration is high enough, apparently, to be profitable. That whole issue is under discussion with NRC. So at this minute in time, it is a very mixed bag concerning that.

Now, there are some sites like the-not Weldon Springs, but the Middlesex site, in which there has been written into the deeds a necessity to get clearance before sale.

Mr. MOTT. Under the Atomic Energy Act of 1954 in the deed for every piece of property conveyed by the Federal Government there had to be stated certain rules that had to be followed, but that is all I know.

Mr. WARD. On another point, you recently let a contract to Johns Hopkins to study the radiation.

Ms. CLUSEN. Yes.

Mr. WARD. What is the nature of this contract? What is going to be studied?

Ms. CLUSEN. This is essentially a long-term look at the possible health effects of low-level radiation on the employees at seven shipyard sites. Six of the sites are Government shipyards and one is a commercial shipyard which was included in the proposal by request.

The reason for undertaking this contract was primarily the need to know more definitive information in regard to the possible impact, in this case, of low-level effects on employees. It is a unique opportunity, because according to a Johns Hopkins feasibility study, it gives the opportunity to look at a broader range of people. We are talking about 250,000 records. It also gives an opportunity to look at people who were doing the same kind of work but with part of the population not exposed to any kind of effects, where for other persons who performed the same jobs. This contract proposal went through a great deal of scrutiny and, in fact, the scrutiny was still going on when I arrived and I held it up for 2 months so that we could then again look at the design of the study, the feasibility of it, to be sure that there was adequate understanding on the part of both parties as to what the outlook might be down the line, how long it might go on, and we reached agreement with Johns Hopkins that we were looking at a 3- to 5-year period depending on how long it would take to trace the people, find their current residences, how many of them were alive or had moved-matters of that sort.

We believe we could not have found a more reputable source than Johns Hopkins, and the study is something that very much needs to be done.

You might be interested in knowing that this all began when Admiral Rickover requested us to take a look at it. We have been very closely involved with DOD in the course of it, as well.

Mr. WARD. What are you doing to study the health effects on the workers at Oak Ridge and Hanford and Rocky Flats?

Mr. LIVERMAN. Those studies are proceeding fast apace. In fact, as you probably are aware, they were broadened. They covered not only those two sites, but have been broadened to cover the other DOE sites, for precisely the same reasons that Mr. Gore brought out much earlier-the need to investigate those very low levels as intensively as possible.

Mr. WARD. Will these studies be able to distinguish between where the workers in these plants work as to how exposed they were to this material?

Mr. LIVERMAN. Well, the radiation is unique in the sense that you wear a badge to measure exposure. The other environmental insults that are present are not measured in an equivalent manner. That is, therefore, the advantage of the shipyard workers. We have welders who work with the radioactive materials and others who do not. You asked will it be a definitive study? I think only history will answer that, because you are playing a numbers game where the numbers of the people you are looking at are at the bare edge to differentiate those who may have been affected by