Groundwater is monitored in hundreds of wells at the Hanford Site to fulfill a variety of requirements. Separate monitoring plans are prepared for various purposes, but sampling is coordinated and data are shared among users. DOE manages these activities through the Hanford Groundwater Performance Assessment Project, which is the responsibility of Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. The groundwater project integrates monitoring for various objectives into a single sampling schedule to avoid redundancy of effort and to improve efficiency of sample collection.This report documents the purposes and objectives of groundwater monitoring at the DOE Hanford Site in southeastern Washington State.

During FY05 PNNL continued to improve and field test its Shortwave Infrared (SWIR) Cavity Ringdown Spectrometer (CRDS). Major accomplishments include a significant reduction in size and weight of the instrument ({approx} 50% reduction), and participation in two field campaigns. The first of these two field tests was conducted at DOE's Hanford site during the month of May which involved the release of ammonia. The second test was conducted at the Nevada Test Site during the Shrike Tests in July. During both of these tests the instrument performed as expected and was able to continuously sample the air and monitor the concentration of ammonia at a data rate of 1 absolute concentration point per second with a limit of detection (LOD) of approximately 500 ppbv. During the Shrike Tests the SWIR-CRDS instrument ran continuously in the desert environment for 4 days without the need for adjustment. In an attempt to increase the ultimate utility of Cavity Enhanced Sensing (CES) for monitoring more unique proliferation signatures, testing of a new broad-band CES approach was initiated. This was the final test of this instrument, no further development or fielding of this instrument has been funded.

Congressional Earmark Funding was used to create a Postdoctoral Environmental Fellowship Program, interdisciplinary Environmental Working Groups, and special initiatives to create a dialogue around the environment at the University of Massachusetts Amherst to mobilize faculty to work together to respond to emerging environmental needs and to build institutional capacity to launch programmatic environmental activities across campus over time. Developing these networks of expertise will enable the University to more effectively and swiftly respond to emerging environmental needs and assume a leadership role in varied environmental fields. Over the course of the project 20 proposals were submitted to a variety of funding agencies involving faculty teams from 19 academic departments; 4 projects were awarded totaling $950,000; special events were organized including the Environmental Lecture Series which attracted more than 1,000 attendees over the course of the project; 75 University faculty became involved in one or more Working Groups (original three Working Groups plus Phase 2 Working Groups); an expertise database was developed with approximately 275 faculty involved in environmental research and education as part of a campus-wide network of environmental expertise; 12 University centers and partners participated; and the three Environmental Fellows produced 3 publications as well as a number of …