EAST TENNESSEE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY

February 2014 Meeting


Monday, February 10, 2014
6:00 - 7:30 pm

Pellissippi State Technical Community College
10915 Hardin Valley Road, Knoxville
J.L Goins Administration Building, Cafeteria Annex


FEBRUARY PRESENTATION

Oak Ridge Environmental Information System:
No Longer Just a Database

By
Dr. Peter A. Salpas
Salpas Consulting, Inc.
Oak Ridge, Tennessee
and
Deidre Tharpe
Restoration Services, Inc.
Oak Ridge, Tennessee

Abstract

In response to the presence of radioactive and hazardous contaminants, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Oak Ridge Reservation (ORR) was put on the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA) National Priority List (NPL) in 1998. The Federal Facility Agreement between DOE, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and the State of Tennessee that was implemented in 1992 for the ORR requires that all environmental sampling data and State environmental permit data be contained in a single database called the Oak Ridge Environmental Information System (OREIS). Since then OREIS has been the ORR database for storing and retrieving historical and environmental characterization data used for risk assessments to support source remediation decisions under watershed Interim Records of Decision (RODs). In preparation of the first watershed final ROD on the ORR and with over 14 million data records in the database, recent enhancements have been made to OREIS that have transformed it from a data storage and retrieval tool to a database tool designed to facilitate the user’s ability to visualize, obtain, and manage post-remediation data in order to document permit compliance and remediation effectiveness, and to make risk-based groundwater and ecological decisions in future watershed final RODs.

Biographical Sketch

Peter Salpas is the principal of Salpas Consulting in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. He received a Ph.D. in geochemistry from Washington University in St. Louis in 1985 and conducted two years of post-doctoral research at the University of Tennessee. He was a professor in the Department of Geology at Auburn University from 1986 through 1993. At Auburn he taught undergraduate and graduate geology courses, directed graduate student theses, and conducted research funded by the National Science Foundation and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Dr. Salpas entered the environmental consulting field with Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) in 1993 and founded Salpas Consulting in 2003. Currently, Dr. Salpas is a subject matter expert for characterization and regulatory documents and reporting on the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge Reservation.


 

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