The Laboratory Retiree Group is a dues paying member of CUCRA, Council of University of California Retiree Association. They also send a representative to the annual meeting in California. This group watches out for the interests of the retirees from the University of California system. They are especially concerned about past attempts by the State of California to raid the UC pension plans.

On Saturday, May 15, the Laboratory Retiree Group held their annual meeting in Los Alamos. A socializing time complete with hamburgers, hot dogs and drinks was followed by the business meeting at 6 PM.

Your LRG President, Chuck Mansfield, reported on the recent CUCRA meeting that he attended in California. The main concern of the group is the viability of the UCRP pension fund. According to the agreement that was reached when LANSE took over management of the Laboratory, DOE would keep the fund at 105% of anticipated liabilities. This has been a special concern with the sharp down-turn of the economy. Chuck reported that DOE was living up to their obligations, having contributed 7% of the fund during the past year. This is good news for all Laboratory retirees who retired under UCRP. It is important to realize that those persons who have or will retire under the LANSE management have a very different retirement plan than UCRP.

There was some discussion about the Main Gate publication. Chuck reported that the last publication was sponsored by Los Alamos National Bank. They chose to have a company in Santa Fe do the publishing and it cost them about $5000.00. LRG is still looking for a firm with a high volume color copier that will let LRG use it to publish the Main Gate if LRG supplies the paper and toner. Discussion of the option to publish the Main Gate in PDF formate on the LRG web page was postponed.

Molly Bierly was accepted as a new member of the Board of Directors

On October 18, 2004, President Bush approved the Manhatten Project National Historical Park Study Act. This act tasked the Secretary of the Interior, in consultation with the DOE, to prepare a feasibility study for a National Historical Park to honor the Manhattan Project. The responsibility for compiling the study ultimately fell on the National Park Service and the work was assigned to the Denver Service Center. Los Alamos was, of course, to occupy a prominent position in such a park. One of the challenges of establishing such a Park is that the major players, Los Alamos, Oak Ridge, Hanford and Dayton, Ohio, were so far apart.

The Denver Service Center has studied five alternatives. Alternative A is No Action, Continuation of Current Programs and Policies. Alternative B is a Nationwide Nonprofit Consortium. Alternative C is a National Heritage Area. Alternative D is an Area Affiliated with the National Park System. Alternative E is a Manhatten Project National Historical Park. The NPS policies, when considering a new area to be included in the NPS system, use Significance, Suitability and Feasibility as major evaluation criteria.

In their studies, the NPS found that the proposed Park met the requirements of Significance and Suitability but that Feasibility was a problem. This is not unexpected considering how scattered the sites are, the potentially excessive costs associated with administering such a wide spread Park and the problems associated with access because many of the sites at Los Alamos, Hanford and Oak Ridge are "behind the fence" for security and safety reasons.

Of course, those in attendance at the meeting in Los Alamos were all for Alternative E, establish a National Historical Park centered in Los Alamos. One concern of some of the attendees was continued community access to Fuller Lodge. The center for such a Park would be Fuller Lodge and the Oppenheimer Home on bathtub row. Obviously, we cannot cover all the details of this proposal in this venue. Public comments will be considered until March 1, 2010. If you would like more information or would like to comment you can access the NPS web site by going to http://parkplanning.nps.gov. Once at the site you should click on Advanced Search. Once there select Special Resource Study/New Area Study. Once there click on the Search button and then click on Manhatten Project Sites Special Resources Study.