Soil Cleanup Planning PER AEP BONE OyHTETf Roeeeteat ty . ais 5 i effective and acceptable.!!! This position had its foundation in the fact that the Bair Committee recommendations were based on 6 years’ additional information and understanding of the problems considered by the AEC Task Group and that the cleanup effort and moneyshould be spent to permit more beneficial use of the islands by the people. With the information now known about Runit contamination levels and the subsurface ‘‘marble cake”’ effect there, coupled with the fact that the allowed upper level criteria had been changed by the Bair Committee, it no longer appeared to make good senseto spend a great effort on Runit with the possibility of never reaching levels which would make that island usable for any purpose. The choice between these two principal alternatives raised the question of which would have more beneficial results: cleaning a residence island which possibly could not be used until strontium and cesium levels in its soil and water dropped; or cleaning of Lujor, Boken. and—to a degree— fo intended to clean up the worst hazards first, the bits of plutonium and concentrations over 400 pCi/g on Runit, Aomon, Boken, and Lujor, to insure that people would not be exposed to them during the thousands of years after the cleanup was completed. The proponents of this position were skeptical that, should any of these islands not be cleaned to prescribed levels, the people would abide by any quarantine placed or remaining in effect indefinitely. The dominant counterposition was that the resources should be used to clean Enjebi to provide more.residential land for a growing population and to restore the traditional home island of the dri-Enjebi. Proponents of this position, which included some Field Commandstaff members, considered some of the EIS mission, such as the cleanup of Runit, to be peripheral and not the best use of resources. They urged that an attempt be made to clean Enjebi to as near residential level as possible on the assumption that the 40 pCi/g criteria need not be absolute or that plowing might prove . During the conference deliberation of this issue, the relative merits of the AEC Task Group recommendations, the EJS mission statement, and the Bair Committee recommendations were discussed at length. One dominantposition, which was supported by Field Command, was that the AEC Task Group recommendations and EIS Case 3 cleanup were ae such as the reduction of concentration on Lujor or Runit.!!0 DEAECEPRah! METEORLTS The next issue was to decide which islands would be cieaned and to what levels in order to provide the most effective use of resources to the greatest benefit of the people. As in previous discussions, the critical considerations centered on accomplishing a full Case 3 cleanup or cleaning Enjebi to residential status and leaving undone some ofthe original tasks or COMICS SRE STreget ISLAND PRIORITY DECISION