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Mixed wastes management at Fernald: Making it happen quickly, economically and compliantly
At the end of calender year 1992, the Fernald Environmental Management Project (FEMP) had approximately 12,500 drums of mixed low-level waste in storage and the Fernald Environmental Restoration Management Corporation (FERMCO) had just begun to develop an aggressive project based program to treat and dispose of this mixed waste. By 1996 the FERMCO mixed waste management program had reduced the aforementioned 12,500 drums of waste once in inventory to approximately 5800 drums. Projects are currently in progress to completely eliminate the FEMP inventory of mixed waste. As a result of these initiatives and aggressive project management, the FEMP has become a model for mixed waste handling, treatment and disposal for DOE facilities. Mixed waste management has traditionally been viewed as a singular and complex environmental problem. FERMCO has adopted the viewpoint that treatment and disposal of mixed waste is an engineering project, to be executed in a disciplined fashion with timely and economic results. This approach allows the larger mixed waste management problem to be divided into manageable fractions and managed by project. Each project is managed by problem solving experts, project managers, in lieu of environmental experts. In the project approach, environmental regulations become project requirements for individual resolution, as opposed to what had formerly been viewed as technically unachievable environmental standards