Federal Facilities Environmental Journal最新文献

One of the strategies now in vogue in hazardous waste cleanup is basing remedial strategies on future land use. The initial thrust of CERCLA for permanent and complete remedies has given way, pushed by concepts like “brownfields” and base closure and reuse, to strategies often based on “institutional controls” that attempt to stabilize future land uses at a site based on residual risk. The heart of this concept is that instead of removing all wastes from a site, some wastes can safely remain so long as in the future the site is not used in such a way that the residual contamination poses an unacceptable risk to human health and the environment. “Institutional controls” is a term for land use management strategies that do not rely on engineering approaches to reduce risk, but rather seek to ensure that the site is not used in an inappropriate way in the future.

This article cautions that such a strategy has inherent residual risks that must be understood by those involved in implementing hazardous waste cleanups and those responsible for future uses of contaminated property. Simply put, institutional controls are only as good as the processes that are in place to ensure they are respected in the future. This presents particular problems for active duty installations because most of the protections commonly available to private sector sites are not useful at active installations. This article discusses an initiative by the Air Combat Command to develop a handbook on instituting and maintaining land restrictions. It will also discuss that effort in light of the April 21 EPA Region IV guidance on assuring Land Use Controls at Federal Facilities. This article is based on a paper and presentations given at the 1998 ACC Environmental Training Symposium.

This article addresses the subject of indemnification provisions found in “old” (pre-CERCLA) government contracts. Government facilities and their lawyers are increasingly being presented with ancient contract documents containing indemnification provisions that purport to shift the responsibility for paying for CERCLA or CERCLA-like response actions from the contractor to the government. While the government should honor indemnification provisions where appropriate, it is unclear that these general provisions were intended to address environmental liabilities comprehended by CERCLA. The article points out a number of issues which should be considered, in the opinion of the author, before a government lawyer agrees that indemnification is proper. The article concludes that these old indemnification provisions must be reviewed in context and with full consideration of all arguments for and against their application.

As federal government agencies shift funding away from non-core operations and activities, new approaches will be needed to accomplish those important, but underfunded, non-core functions. One of those important functions is environmental training, certification, and record keeping. A new company called AdvanceONLINE^TM has developed an on-line distance learning approach to environmental training that transfers many of the features relied on in the classroom to a virtual world. AdvanceONLINE's approach is gaining recognition and increased use within several agencies and commands, each with a different need for continuing education and training of its personnel. This article will review the key elements of distance learning, examine the AdvanceONLINE system, and consider applications within the federal community.

This article reviews emerging trends in the federal environmental market and evaluates the risks and opportunities for environmental firms into the 21st century. While the Department of Energy (DOE) and Department of Defense (DOD) continue to face substantial environmental compliance and cleanup requirements, funding levels are expected to remain flat and could actually decline due to the trade-offs involved in the political calculus to achieve a balanced budget by the year 2002. Nevertheless, the article identifies a number of opportunities for environmental firms seeking federal business, including DOE privatization initiatives, performance-based contracting, cleanup of DOD closing bases, and technology development (especially that focused on pollution control and prevention). The author concludes that firms that can navigate the difficult waters of the environmental market are likely to experience real growth in the future.