Committee to Minimize Toxic Waste

The mission of the Committee to Minimize Toxic Waste is to eliminate toxic contaminants of the soil, groundwater, plants, and atmosphere through remediation and by drastically reducing and eventually eliminating the generation and storage of hazardous, radioactive and radioactive mixed wastes.


The Problem

The Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), initially called the UC Radiation Laboratory, was originally located on the University of California Berkeley (UCB) central campus in Alameda County during 1932. By 1940, it was relocated to its present site in the steep hills of Strawberry Canyon east of the Hayward Fault and the central UCB campus. The first major facility, the 184-inch synchrocyclotron was built with funds from both private and university sources, and was used in the Manhattan Project in the development of the world’s first nuclear bomb. Beginning in 1948 the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission and then its successor agency, the Department of Energy (DOE) funded the lab while it continued to expand its facilities in Strawberry Canyon.

For over 60 years radioactive and chemical releases and accidents have contaminated the once beautiful, pristine watershed of the Strawberry Canyon and nearby wild lands. In 1991 the DOE's Tiger Team assessment found 678 violations of DOE regulations covering management practices at LBNL finding Berkeley-Oakland air, soil, and water contaminated with tritium and other radioactive substances and toxic chemicals.

The reports on this website are the result of projects supported by a grant from the Citizens’ Monitoring and Technical Assessment Fund (MTA Fund) to the Committee to Minimize Toxic Waste (CMTW).


Contaminant Plumes of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and their Interrelation to Faults, Landslides, and Streams in Strawberry Canyon, Berkeley and Oakland, California.

General Introduction
March 2007 Report - 125MB PDF

Laurel Collins, Geomorphologist
Watershed Sciences
for
Pamela Sihvola, Project Manager
Committee to Minimize Toxic Waste


Environmental Monitoring of Present and Reconstruction of Past Tritium Emissions from the National Tritium Labeling Facility at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, California

General Introduction
March 2007 Report - 81MB PDF

Roger Byrne
Geography Department,
University of California, Berkeley

Pamela Sihvola
Committee to Minimize Toxic Waste


Home | Contaminant Plumes | Plume Maps | Tritium Release Reconstruction | Full Reports

Committee to Minimize Toxic Waste
P.O. Box 9646
Berkeley, California 94709