Hanford Challenge

 

Tom Robinson

Board Chair 

Tom Robinson helps clients analyze processes, manage change, and assess organizational strengths. For more than 25 years Tom has facilitated executive teams, taught competitive strategies, and led rapid improvement workshops. He has worked as chief administrative officer of an investment bank, human resources manager for a pharmaceuticals company, and course director for Outward Bound. Tom holds a Ph.D. in Education from Stanford University, and recently served for four years on the Organization Systems Renewal faculty of Seattle University. He now consults full-time through his firm Chinook Associates.

 

  

 

Marco Kaltofen

Marco Kaltofen is a Registered Professional Engineer (Civil, Massachusetts) and an environmental scientist with more than 25 years experience in environmental, workplace and product safety investigations in North America and Eastern Europe.  He performs environmental sampling for a living, and has testified in numerous high-stakes litigation as an expert witness on behalf of injured peoples downstream and downwind from chemical facilities. 

Mr. Kaltofen is President of Boston Chemical Data Corporation, Boston, MA, which provides technical support for environmentally-related organizations and for litigation. He was the founder and Laboratory Director, for the Citizens' Environmental Laboratory, Boston, Massachusetts.  This laboratory was a nonprofit scientific organization which performed engineering and chemical quality evaluations of contaminated sites for grassroots community groups and for labor organization-based clients. 

Marco has worked with other nonprofit organizations in his career.  He  was a Project Coordinator, for Greenpeace International, in London, UK, responsible for environmental program research and field sampling, media and community relations, and field programs. He supervised US and International projects related to hazardous chemicals.

He has experience as manager for Cambridge Analytical Associates' Trace Inorganics Laboratory, in Boston, Massachusetts, where he was responsible for atomic absorption, environmental, infrared spectroscopy, and polymer analyses, and for US Environmental Protection Agency performance evaluations.

In 1981, he was a chemist at the New England Aquarium, Boston, Massachusetts, where he worked on a US Department of Energy-funded project tracing environmental fate of petroleum drilling wastes and the fate of pollutants in oceans.

Among his other pursuits Marco has conducted sampling planning and study design for radiological and mixed waste contaminants in the Columbia River at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation, particularly developing sampling strategies for foodchain contaminants including Strontium 90, Tritium, Americium, Plutonium, and Uranium isotopes. He supervised resulting field work and performance of sampling teams during execution of the sampling and safety plans.

He also performed the study design for radiologic and mixed waste contaminants along the Techa River downstream of the Mayak Chemical Nuclear facility in the Ural Mountains in Russian Central Asia, particularly developing sampling strategies for foodchain contaminants including Strontium 90 and Cesium 137. He performed field work and reviewed sampling teams onsite, as well as reviewed procedures with local and regional environmental authorities. Marco presented at a radiological monitoring and testing seminar at St. Petersburg, Russia conference on nuclear policies and technologies.

Marco is responsible for the study design and sampling plan development for determining facilitated airborne transport of plutonium and uranium isotopes related to fallout, uranium mining, and the Hanford Engineering Works, including sites in Spokane and Richland, WA, and Yakama Tribal lands, in cooperation with the Worcester Polytechnic Institute Dept. of Civil and Environmental Engineering.

He performed an onsite review of radiological monitoring and laboratory procedures for the regional and municipal environmental authorities in Chelyabinsk and Chelyabinsk Oblast, Russia. He performed analysis of beta emitters in food products including local products from Krasnyarsk-26, Siberia, site of former Soviet plutonium manufacturing facilities.

He determined total alpha and beta emitters in river sediments from Nanda Devi Glacier near Lata, India, related to naturally-occurring uranium and anthropogenic plutonium 238 and 239 contamination.

Mr. Kaltofen completed study designs, field sampling, and onsite monitoring for an offsite radiologic contaminant migration study at Los Alamos National Laboratory in Los Alamos, New Mexico, including a review of NPDES effluent quality data and soil and sediment chemical quality data. Study materials included dusts, biota and sediments collected in Los Alamos, Santa Fe, and the San Ildefenso Pueblo. Additional investigations were initiated for radiological exposures to Native American Indian craftspeople through the use of traditional pottery-making materials. He also assisted in the design of the followup study with State of New Mexico and Los Alamos National Laboratory personnel.