(Published December 4‚ 2003)

ATLANTA (AP) - The U.S. Department of Energy has informed Georgia officials it will stop paying for a monitoring program designed to determine if the Savannah River Site near Aiken, S.C., is leaking harmful radiation.

"If this program ends, our ability to notify communities and industries downstream of an accidental release from SRS will be diminished," said Jim Setser of the Georgia Division of Environmental Protection.

"Those communities depend on us for that information," said Setser, director of the EPD's programs coordination branch.

DOE notified the EPD last month that it will stop the payments on Jan. 17.

The federal agency provided $1.9 million over the past three years to detect potential emissions into the air, water, soil or crops.

Georgia operates seven monitoring stations between Augusta and Savannah. It also oversees testing for radiation in milk, crops, soil and river sediment.

In the event of an accidental release, communities downstream would be advised to take precautions such as shutting off water intake valves.

DOE officials says the chances of radiation leaks from the 198,000-acre preserve across the Savannah River from Georgia have greatly diminished since the mothballing of its five reactors, which during the Cold War produced tons of plutonium and tritium for nuclear weapons.

State officials contend that high-level nuclear wastes and other radioactive material still at SRS justify continued monitoring.

"The Savannah River is the only place we see significant detection of radiation in Georgia," Setser said. He said levels do not present a health risk, but if they did, the word would go out quicker than from DOE monitoring at the site.

"If anything happens at SRS, we depend on EPD to tell us fast," said Jesse Sanders, emergency management director for Burke County, directly across the river from SRS.

Georgia was counting on $700,000 to operate the program for the next year. Federal officials say the money provided up until now was part of a three-year grant that expires in January.

SRS manager Jeffrey Allison said the DOE "must focus its limited environmental resources" on cleaning up pollution from more than 50 years of making nuclear bombs.

The cleanup provides "the greatest risk reduction for each taxpayer dollar," Allison said.