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A Procedural Evaluation Of An Analytic-Deliberative Process: The Columbia River Comprehensive Impact Assessment, Aimee Guglielmo Kinney, Thomas M. Leschine

US Army Corps of Engineers

The U.S. Department of Energy's Columbia River Comprehensive Impact Assessment (CRCIA) was an ambitious attempt to direct its cleanup of the Hanford Nuclear Reservation toward the most significant risks to the Columbia River resulting from past plutonium production. DOE's approach was uncommonly open, including tribal, regulatory agency, and other Hanford interest group representatives on the board that was to develop the assessment approach. The CRCIA process had attributes of the ``analytic-deliberative'' process for risk assessment recommended by the National Research Council. Nevertheless, differences between the DOE and other participants over what was meant by the term ``comprehensive'' in the group's …