Volume 2, Number 4, Winter 1994
Advisory Board Looks Ahead, by Hazardous Scarp Heap, by Opening Channels, by Bridge Builder, by CEB Advisory Committee Sets Ambitious Agenda, by Center Publications, Film Garner Awards Staff Citing
InSites is a quarterly newsletter that highlights the personalities and projects of the Waste Management Research and Education Institute (WMREI) of The University of Tennessee. WMREI is an affiliate of the EERC.
WMREI was created in 1985 as a state-funded Center of Excellence. Research areas include solid-, hazardous-, and nuclear-waste management; waste minimization; and pollution prevention.
Biotechnology is the focal point of the institute's technical research, while issues
involving public attitudes and federal/state policies related to waste-management issues
are the primary concerns of the institute's policy research.
For additional information about InSites, or to be added to our mailing list, please write InSites, WMREI, The University of Tennessee, 311 Conference Building, Knoxville, TN 37996-4134, call 865-974-1156, or fax 865-974-1838. Or, if you prefer, e-mail Constance Griffith
cbgriffith@utk.edu.Advisory Board Looks Ahead, by Hazardous Scarp Heap, by Opening Channels, by Bridge Builder, by CEB Advisory Committee Sets Ambitious Agenda, by Center Publications, Film Garner Awards Staff Citing
Each year since its inception in 1985, the Waste Management Research and Education Institute (WMREI) of The University of Tennessee (UT) has turned to its advisory committee for guidance on both individual projects and its overarching mission.
The advisory committee, comprising 16 representatives drawn from industry, academia, and government, has contributed a wealth of experience in the many facets of waste management.
This year's committee meeting, held September 22 and 23 at UT, represented a departure from years past in terms of its structure.
According to Gary Sayler, WMREI's acting director, in the institute's early years, the advisory committee drew a project-by-project focus on the institute's research initiatives and offered specific critique on how those projects could be strengthened.
"When we were trying to define our niche, that was the kind of guidance we needed," says Sayler, who is director of UT's Center for Environmental Biotechnology (CEB). Sayler also serves as director of WMREI's Environmental Science and Biotechnology Division.
The committee's role, he says, has evolved toward a more holistic approach.
"It's been my pleasure to watch WMREI grow into a nationally respected research institute," says advisory committee chairman Frank Parker, professor of engineering for Vanderbilt University.
"Though the committee has always been concerned with the overall direction of the institute," Parker adds, "it has become imperative that we devote most of our time to strategic matters rather than the details of the individual projects."
In years past, most of WMREI's principal investigators gave presentations on their individual projects. This year, only directors of the institute's various programs addressed the committee, providing an overview of their research agendas.
Though the committee's role has changed, says Sayler, the institute will remain responsive to committee recommendations, as it has in the past. And such responsiveness has not escaped committee notice.
"We have been greatly impressed with the institute's responsiveness to the suggestions we made a year ago," says committee member Abdul S. Abdul, section manager with General Motors' Environmental Sciences Department. "There has been progress in nearly all the areas we felt needed greater attention."
In its previous report, for instance, the committee awarded the institute high marks but pointed to a few research areas it felt could be strengthened. The advisory committee suggested that the institute:
* Increase research into risk assessment as it pertains to the field of waste management.
The institute's Operations and Policy Division, under the direction of Jack Barkenbus, has hired two full-time researchers who are now developing risk-assessment methodologies and exploring the role of risk assessment in setting environmental priorities.
* Move some of the techniques developed at CEB from the laboratory to the field.
CEB, under Sayler's direction, has responded by developing several field research projects. One project, slated to begin next spring, will involve the release on the Oak Ridge Reservation of genetically engineered microorganisms (GEMs) for in-situ bioremediation of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH).
* Bridge the gap between WMREI's Environmental Science and Biotechnology Division and its Operations and Policy Division.
The field release scheduled for the Oak Ridge Reservation has provided an opportunity for such collaboration. In fact, CEB will look to the policy division for guidance in boosting public awareness about GEMs.
"The policy division has tremendous strengths in the arena of public participation," says Sayler. "We can capitalize on that strength in merging the contributions of policy, technology, and public participation in this one project."
Barkenbus shares Sayler's enthusiasm for the collaborative effort.
"This field release will mark the world's first use of GEMs for waste management," he says. "This will allow us to test--and also help shape--the regulatory system governing their use."
* Strengthen ties between the Environmental Science and Biotechnology Division and industry.
Sayler's group has responded by opening negotiations with Olin Chemical, DOW, General Motors, and Eastman Chemical Company, which he hopes will lead to creation of an industry consortium that will sponsor WMREI/CEB research and training activities.
Though the committee's report from the 1994 meeting was pending when InSITES went to press, Abdul, who is drafting the report, says it will contain these recommendations.
First, the institute should nurture greater collaboration with industry. Second, it should bolster interaction between UT's environmental engineering department and CEB.
Third, the institute should seek to boost its national prominence in the field of waste management and continue its growth in the area of clean products and technologies.
The report, says Abdul, will also include praise for the institute's continued development.
"The institute's researchers should commend themselves for a job that, from year to year, is consistently well done," he says.
Around the country, inventories of radiation-contaminated materials--mostly steel and concrete, plus some copper, aluminum, and nickel--are consuming more and more space at our nation's Department of Energy (DOE) waste sites. The problem seems to be that we aren't sure just what to do with these contaminated materials, and so they continue to pile up.
Estimates of the amount of contaminated material nationwide range from 400,000 to 2 million tons. Although estimates vary, nearly everyone agrees that there's a lot of it languishing while government officials, industrialists, and environmentalists debate what to do with it.
These three groups are sharply divided on how the nation should address the radioactive scrap issue. Indeed, government officials would like to reduce the stockpiles of contaminated scrap metal, and industry would like to recycle the scrap and put it to good use. Meanwhile, environmentalists cast a wary eye on both, insisting that officials put safety first. But all involved agree that we must improve on our past performance in dealing with this problem.
What's the best way to handle this material? Bruce Clemens, a senior research associate with The University of Tennessee's (UT) Energy, Environment, and Resources Center (EERC), hosted the second annual conference on that topic in July 1994 to probe for answers.
The conference drew together representatives of government, industry, and environmental groups intent on discussing the radioactive-scrap-metal issue.
"Most everyone who has to deal with radioactive scrap metal recognizes that existing legal standards are inadequate," says Clemens, who hopes that gatherings such as the July conference will generate some solutions to the problem.
In the search for solutions, some prospects are clearly out of the question, however, because of physical or legal restrictions.
"We can't, for instance, just bury everything--there isn't room," says conference participant Cathy Wallace-Smith, a staffer with the Subcommittee on Energy of the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Science, Space, and Technology.
The more promising solutions, Wallace-Smith contends, involve decontaminating the materials and then recycling them. According to Wallace-Smith, legislation pending in the House would create a program that encourages industry to find ways to make the material safe for commercial use. If industry succeeds in finding ways to render the scrap harmless, it can then be put on the market--perhaps as containers in which to bury other, more-hazardous, materials.
DOE, which would spearhead the program, hopes that companies will band together, combining their unique capabilities to work on the project. According to Wallace-Smith, DOE will remain flexible about how such agreements are made.
Says Wallace-Smith: "Each project will be negotiated on a case-by-case basis with the companies who propose it." No matter how much potential contaminated scrap metal may pose as a resource when managed properly, it presents a serious health-risk when it shows up unannounced.
Steel scrap typically passes through many intermediate dealers before it arrives at a steel mill to be melted down and reused. Sometimes, unknown to either the scrap dealers or the mill workers, contaminated material is mixed in with the scrap. That happens, on average, more than 200 times every year, according to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, resulting in health risks for mill workers and cleanup costs for the mills themselves.
"If this situation is not brought under control, it could seriously affect the U.S. steel industry," reports Jim Dacey of Auburn Steel.
"Steel mills, using radiation-detection equipment, must check for radioactive scrap as well as for any lead that might be shielding radiation in materials coming into the plants," says Dacey. "Scrap dealers are also beginning to use radiation-detection equipment."
Eric Epstein of the EFMR Monitoring Group, a nonprofit organization that monitors radiation near Three Mile Island in eastern Pennsylvania, wants more participation by labor, consumer, and environmental groups in setting new safety standards for radioactive scrap metal.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission established existing standards decades ago. For the most part, these standards were set, not on the basis of protection of public health, but on the limits of the detection equipment available at the time.
"Trickle-down regulation does not work," Epstein says. "Decisions about radioactive scrap metal should be made by a coalition of government, industry, labor, environmental, and consumer groups.
"The public is too well educated now to allow radioactive scrap metal to become another nuclear shell game," he adds.
John MacKinney of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency contends that the benefits of finding uses for radioactive scrap metal include revenues from the sale of materials, reduced costs for the purchase of new metal, and extended lives for existing waste facilities.
"But would a radioactive scrap-metal recycling regulation succeed?" he asks. "The key issue is whether the public would accept it."
Clemens insists the public would embrace such regulation because of its pro-recycling message, provided it contained assurances that people would be protected from potential hazards.
"People are recycling more metals today because of the emphasis on environmental protection, and that's good," he says. "But it means we must have better standards for ensuring the safety of these recycled metals."
In the end, the public, through its elected officials and with input from industry and environmental leaders, will decide what is to be done with radioactive scrap metal and other nuclear-contaminated materials.
For more information, contact Bruce Clemens or Tad McGalliard, University of Tennessee, EERC, 311 Conference Building, Knoxville, TN 37996-4134, or call 865-974-4251.
It's no secret that the public is becoming increasingly alarmed over the side effects of technology. Chemical spills, radioactive contamination, and air and water pollution have all contributed to a climate of fear and an increasing reluctance on the part of the public to allow additional development of nuclear- and chemical-related technologies.
"In large measure," says Mary English, a senior fellow with the Waste Management Research and Education Institute (WMREI), "the public's trust has been eroded by government's failure to give people an adequate voice in the decision-making process."
English believes, however, that "this climate of hostility is easing," in part because the government is becoming more inclined to invite citizen involvement in its decisions.
Indeed, state and federal agencies now want and need public participation on such issues as the siting of waste-management facilities, the cleanup of contaminated sites, and the licensing and construction of power plants.
Many of these agencies, in fact, are legally obliged to inform and involve the public in their decision-making processes. But beyond their legal obligations, agencies have learned that they need to involve affected parties early in the process, if only because attempts to disenfranchise the opposition can lead to long and costly delays in making and implementing important decisions.
The Program for Environmental Issues Analysis and Dialogue (PRO-DIALOGUE), a new program of the Energy, Environment, and Resources Center (EERC), is meant to help bridge the gap between federal and state agencies and their stakeholders.
"PRO-DIALOGUE is a new focus aimed at enhancing communication in environmental- and energy-policy issues," says English, who co-directs the program with EERC Senior Research Associate David Feldman.
In pursuing its mission, PRO-DIALOGUE will help structure public participation through focus groups, citizen advisory boards, town meetings, and individual interviews. Such measures, English and Feldman contend, will help give voice to stakeholder concerns that otherwise might not have been articulated.
"We hope to look holistically at complex and controversial issues encountered by agencies and help them structure dialogue with stakeholders who ultimately will be affected by their decisions," says English.
But defining just who counts as a stakeholder is not always easy, English says.
"We have to consider both those who are affected now and those who may be affected in the future," she says. "Furthermore, we must recognize that some people are affected more than others by agency decisions and actions."
PRO-DIALOGUE will identify key stakeholder perspectives and help set the stage for meetings involving the affected parties. PRO-DIALOGUE is not the first organization bent on facilitating communication and stakeholder involvement. However, it hopes to succeed where others have failed through careful analysis of the issues and well-structured dialogue and by remaining a neutral partner in the discussions.
"Agency attempts to involve stakeholders are sometimes viewed as biased because the public suspects that employees are pressured by management to gloss over the truth," Feldman points out. "Because we are a university program, we can offer advice without appearing to impose a point of view, and we feel that our neutrality will encourage wider participation."
Through the program, English and Feldman hope to address such issues as how contaminated waste sites should be used in the future, which in turn will affect how they should be cleaned up. Sites that will be used for parks or residential development, for instance, will have to be held to stricter cleanup standards than sites that may be devoted to industrial uses.
Currently, PRO-DIALOGUE is involved in the Common Ground Process, a program aimed at exploring future-use options for the 35,000- acre Oak Ridge Reservation. The reservation, situated within Oak Ridge, Tennessee, contains sites occupied by the Department of Energy and its predecessor organizations in support of its nuclear-based programs. Parts of the reservation are contaminated by radioactive and hazardous wastes.
PRO-DIALOGUE's contribution to the process will include structuring stakeholder involvement, evaluating stakeholder representation, gauging stakeholder concerns, and informing stakeholders of the process as it evolves.
"In addressing these issues, we hope people--whether concerned citizens or federal employees--will begin to see how their self-interest can be incorporated into the greater good for society as a whole," says Feldman. "We believe that we should strive for a justice that goes beyond a me-first philosophy."
English agrees. "Our aim is to allow all of those involved in the process to air differences and arrive at mutually acceptable solutions," she says. "It's important for society to try to understand the perspectives of all those who need a voice. If decisions are made openly and with full stakeholder representation, democracy and justice are more likely to be served."
For more information, contact Mary English or David Feldman, WMREI, University of Tennessee, 311 Conference Building, Knoxville, TN 37996-4134, or call 865-974-4251.
In 1990, when Mriganka Ghosh accepted an appointment to the Henry Goodrich Chair of Excellence in The University of Tennessee's (UT) civil and environmental engineering program, his assigned mission was intentionally vague: to create excellence in education and research in environmental engineering.
In executing that mission and settling on a theme for his appointment Ghosh needed to look no further than the soil under his feet--contaminated soil, to be exact.
Ghosh is concerned with the processes that take place at the soil-to-water and soil-to-air interfaces where contaminants concentrate.
Particulates in water tend to accumulate contaminants on their surfaces where these particulates and the water-borne contaminants meet, explains Ghosh. Control that surface, he says, and you're more likely to control the quality of the water.
Then there's the interface between soils and organic pollutants that seep into them. Among these pollutants are polyaromatic hydrocarbons, organic solvents, and pesticides.
"That interface allows the pollutant to bind to the soil," Ghosh says.
"If you pump surface-acting agents--what we call surfactants-- into contaminated soil, you break the contaminant's chemical hold on the soil," he explains.
On a literal level, Ghosh is intent on tinkering with the interfaces that exist between contaminants and air, water, and soil. On a more symbolic level, however, he is determined to nurture new connections in cooperative research.
In fact, the opportunity to establish such new connections lured Ghosh away from Penn State University, where he served as professor of civil and environmental engineering and coordinator of the environmental engineering program.
"What I found most appealing about this position was the chance to create new relationships both among the schools within the engineering department and between this department and others involved in related research," says Ghosh.
In his efforts to bolster the interface between professor and student, Ghosh has created two new courses for graduate students in the civil and environmental engineering program. The first deals with chemistry for environmental engineers, and the second addresses environmental remediation techniques for cleaning up hazardous waste sites.
Creation of the latter course is part of Ghosh's strategy to establish a specialty at UT in environmental restoration and hazardous-waste management. Ghosh reports that more than half of the students who apply for entry into UT's engineering program are interested in environmental restoration. And an environmental restoration research group has been created within the engineering department.
Thanks to this group's efforts to retool an existing lab course, students now receive experience working with contaminated soil. After developing treatment techniques in the lab, Ghosh claims, these students will be better prepared to implement those and other restoration techniques in the field after they graduate.
While Ghosh's efforts to create educational excellence in his department have flourished, the connection Ghosh has been most intent on making--a multidisciplinary interface between his department and the scientists at UT's Center for Environmental Biotechnology (CEB)--has just begun to bear fruit.
CEB, an affiliate organization of UT's Energy, Environment, and Resources Center (EERC), is a research institute devoted to environmental restoration through use of microbes that, in effect, digest and neutralize contaminants in soil and water.
While Ghosh and his engineering colleagues are adept at manipulating the physical and chemical world, biotechnologists add a vital component to the field of environmental restoration. As Ghosh sees it, these two disciplines are two essential parts of a larger whole.
"For one thing, the environmental engineer introduces the physical and chemical systems--including use of surfactants--necessary to break the bond between contaminants and soils and water," he says. "Once the contaminants have been separated, the biotechnologist develops and works with the microbes that remove those contaminants."
For another, says Ghosh, it's the job of the engineer to take the techniques developed by scientists in the laboratory and apply them in the field. For instance, CEB scientists might isolate a bacterium capable of digesting a specific toxic organic compound. But engineers will transport that technology from the test tube to the real world.
"As I see it, the ideal relationship would involve CEB scientists and environmental engineers together," says Ghosh.
Ghosh insists that, though a cooperative relationship between biotechnologists and environmental engineers may be new to UT, it is based on a relationship as old as the field of engineering itself.
"Engineering has always involved taking a technique and applying it in the field," says Ghosh, who serves on CEB's advisory committee. "Engineers are nothing more than applied scientists who make the leap beyond the test tube."
Since he arrived in Tennessee in 1990, Ghosh has envisioned--and, with other researchers at CEB, actively sought--a multiyear grant that would link CEB with the environmental engineering program under a single funding umbrella. Such cooperative ventures are already in place at The University of North Carolina and The Michigan State University, among others.
Although Ghosh's multidisciplinary vision has earned the support of CEB Executive Director David White and Director Gary Sayler, the trio have yet to hit pay dirt when applying for funds.
"The competition for research monies is stiff," explains Ghosh, who continues to seek money through such federal agencies as the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Air Force's Office of Scientific Research.
The state of Tennessee has yet to find a way to fund such a collaborative venture. Meanwhile, most federal funding agencies are cutting back research spending and are not in a position to underwrite new major research projects.
"Although we've taken some small steps toward cooperative research, true interdisciplinary work between CEB and the civil and environmental engineering program awaits more substantial funding," he laments.
Nevertheless, Ghosh will be the first to acknowledge that the struggle for funding is in some ways emblematic of the struggle against the often tenacious contaminants found in the environment. Both, he says, require persistence.
"The contaminants we're battling to clean up are tough--tougher in many ways than the grant process," he says. "Perhaps this long process to secure funding will provide us with the perseverance we'll need to battle against environmental toxins and win."
The Center for Environmental Biotechnology's (CEB) newly established faculty advisory committee met for the first time in June.
In addition to Mriganka Ghosh, members of the committee include CEB's Paul R. Bienkowski; James A. Drake, a UT associate professor of zoology and ecology; Anthony V. Palumbo, a research scientist at ORNL's Biological Science's Division; Kevin G. Robinson, a UT assistant professor of civil engineering; Gary Sayler, CEB director; and Terry Schultz, a professor at UT's veterinary school.
The committee set an ambitious framework for action based on three interrelated goals:
To secure a small level of base-line funding from UT--approximately $250,000 a year--that could be used as matching funds when applying for grants.
To seek a grant that would encourage multidisciplinary research, especially among CEB, UT's Civil Engineering Department, and ORNL.
To encourage multidisciplinary studies among UT's science graduate students by designing a series of courses co-taught by UT professors and members of the CEB.
"Over the past 10 years, CEB has become one of the nation's most innovative centers for the study of biotechnology," says Gary Sayler.
"It's time to secure our funding base and strengthen our ties with the university. The advisory committee will help achieve these goals."
The Science and Technology Communications Group of the Energy, Environment, and Resources Center (EERC) and Waste Management Research and Education Institute has received the following national and international awards.
* InSITES earned fourth place, and J. Worth Wilkerson won first place for newswriting, in the 10th Annual Editors' Forum Publishing Co.'s contest for newsletter excellence (1994).
* Forum for Applied Research and Public Policy, a quarterly policy journal published by the EERC and Oak Ridge National Laboratory, received an Award of Excellence from the International Association of Business Communicators (IABC) annual Silver Quill Competition (1994).
Forum also was selected from among 4,000 entries to receive an Apex '94 Award for Publication Excellence from Communications Concepts in Washington, D.C.
* Solid Solutions, a 30- minute video co-sponsored by the EERC and TVA's Center for Rural Waste Management, received an honorable mention in the annual IABC Silver Quill competition and a Bronze Award in the International Questar Awards Competition (1994).
David L. Feldman, editor, Global Climate Change and Public Policy (Chicago: Nelson-Hall Inc., 1994).
Rosalyn McKeown-Ice, "Rostov Region, Russia--Tennessee Valley, USA Partnership for Training in Environmental Education and Management," International Research in Geographical and Environmental Education (May, 1994).
Bruce Clemens, "Can Fear and Regulatory Intensity Predict Political Strategies?" Association of Management Conference, Dallas (August 1994).
David L. Feldman and Jean Peretz, "Waste Management and Environmental Restoration at DOE Facilities: The Need for Capacity Assurance Planning," Fifth International Symposium on Society and Resource Management, Colorado State University (June 1994).
Lori Kincaid, "Current Approaches to Cleaner Production: From Pollution Prevention to Lifecycle Design," Cleaner Production Technology Conference, Taipei, Republic of China (September 1994).
Bill Parks, "Case Studies of Volume-Based User Fee Systems in Rural Drop-off Collection Context," 13th Annual Congress of the National Recycling Coalition, Portland, Oregon (September 1994).
Catherine Wilt, "Solid Waste Facility Siting Findings From a Workshop in Knoxville, Tennessee," 87th Annual Air and Waste Conference, Cincinnati (June 1994).