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DOE News Release
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
August 27, 2002

NEWS MEDIA CONTACTS:
Stacey Francis, 526-0075, syf@inel.gov
Joseph Campbell, 526-3183, campjl@inel.gov

New INTEC percolation ponds brought online to protect groundwater

The INEEL has taken steps to ensure protection to the Snake River Plain Aquifer by opening two new percolation ponds 16 months ahead of schedule. The new percolation ponds started receiving service wastewater Monday from facilities at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory.

The two old percolation ponds at the Idaho Nuclear Technology and Engineering Center were determined to be a source of water that helped transport contaminants toward the aquifer from the soils surrounding the INTEC Tank Farm. In the Comprehensive Environmental Response and Liability Act record of decision for INTEC (Waste Area Group 3), the DOE, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the state of Idaho agreed to shut down the existing percolation ponds by December 2003 to protect the aquifer. They were shut down this month.

During normal operations, INTEC processes generate between 1.5 million and 2.5 million gallons of service nonhazardous, nonradioactive wastewater each day.
Service wastewater includes steam condensate, cooling water, ion exchange water from softener regeneration, boiler water, and other waste process water.

The new infiltration ponds that will receive this water were constructed just over two miles southwest of the INTEC perimeter fence. The CERLCA remedial investigation for INTEC found that the perched water beneath INTEC was being continually recharged from the old percolation ponds, and from the Big Lost River during wet years. Perched water refers to a body of water in a porous underground layer of rock or soil that is trapped in place by an impermeable layer of rock or sediment above the aquifer.
INTEC perched water has been contaminated, primarily by the radionuclides tritium and strontium-90, from the overlying Tank Farm surface soils, and from use of injection wells in the past. The new ponds were built well away from the Tank Farm soils to eliminate the single biggest source of transport water.

The new ponds, which have a Waste Water Land Application Permit from the Idaho Department of Environmental Quality, are crucial to INTEC operations. Without them, DOE could not complete its mission or meet the milestones set forth in several agreements.

More information on the Idaho Nuclear Technology and Engineering Center is available at: http://www.inel.gov/publicdocuments/factsheet/06-01intecfsheet.pdf.

The INEEL is a science-based, applied engineering national laboratory dedicated to supporting the U.S. Department of Energy's missions in environment, energy, science and national security. The INEEL is operated for the DOE by Bechtel BWXT Idaho, LLC.
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