538 



STATEMENT OF DR. LEE GORSUCH, DIRECTOR, INSTITUTE 

 FOR ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL RESEARCH, UNIVERSITY OF 

 ALASKA ANCHORAGE 



Dr. GORSUCH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Like my colleague Vera 

 during the University's retrenchment in the spirit of economy, I 

 serve as both the Dean of the School of Public Affairs of the Uni- 

 versity of Alaska Anchorage as well as the Director of the Institute 

 of Social and Economic Research. And in that capacity, I also over- 

 see the Environment and Natural Resources Institute of the Uni- 

 versity. And I've been directing the institute for the past 17 years. 



I'm going to focus my views really in adjunct to those of my col- 

 leagues who are investigating the locations and extent of potential 

 radioactive contamination in the Russian Arctic. They've already 

 spoken to the immediate tasks at hand, which really are a priority, 

 and that is preparing this inventory and assessing radioactive ma- 

 terials and projecting how these materials may or may not have 

 been transported far beyond their initial sources of dispersal. My 

 task is really to try to wrap up some of the concerns that were ex- 

 pressed in the earlier panels, and these really address the human 

 concerns. And I've listed essentially four of them. I think each of 

 these can, in fact, be incorporated within a reasonable scope of 

 study, consistent with the priorities that have been suggested. 



The first is this issue of the health of Arctic people and how they 

 may be harmed by the exposure to or consumption of contaminated 

 materials, be it in food, water or air. Secondly, it's easy to incor- 

 porate within the design the sociocultural and economic well-being 

 that may be affected. As you well know. Senator, there are over 

 150 nationalities in the Soviet north, some of which are quite small 

 and precarious, and just as we're concerned about biological diver- 

 sity, we're also very much concerned about the cultural diversity. 

 Documenting their proximities to any potential sources of contami- 

 nation is a very straightforward but an important task. Similarly, 

 the economic tolls that might be associated with contamination are 

 enormous. Simply looking at the news accounts recently on the pro- 

 jected costs for the Hanford cleanup estimated in excess of $60 bil- 

 lion, simply begins to suggest the enormous amount of diversion of 

 the funds from sources of support for education, food, clothing, em- 

 plojment illustrates this in our own country. 



And third, following the assessments of risk and the identifica- 

 tion of alternative mitigations, which I think is our principal focus 

 and our ultimate objectives, we really need to assess the relative 

 costs and benefits of each of these alternative mitigations to ensure 

 that we're doing the most that we can with the resources that are 

 available. 



And finally, as the earlier panel just emphasized, I think quite 

 personally, the study should in the process of identifying its poten- 

 tial risk and mitigation strategies communicate these to the resi- 

 dents of the Arctic and ensure that the process of the study itself 

 addresses not only the findings but the concerns of the citizens of 

 the Arctic as well. While radiochemists and marine scientists are 

 investigating, tracing and projecting how radioactive materials may 

 be transported and enter the food web, biomedical researchers, epi- 

 demiologists, economics and social scientists should be conducting 

 complimentary investigations, locating human populations living in 



