Feds shouldn't underfund Hanford cleanup
Thursday, February 2, 2006 8:17 AM PST
Printable version
E-mail this articleState officials and members of Washington's congressional delegation have mounted an eleventh-hour campaign to make sure Bush administration budget writers don't overlook the government's cleanup obligations at the Hanford nuclear reservation.
In letters to Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman and the president, Rep. Doc Hastings, R-Wash., and Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., are urging full funding for the cleanup effort in the administration's 2007 budget, due to be released next week. Their specific concern is that the administration will be tempted to cut back on funding for the construction of the vitrification plant needed to handle some 53 million gallons of radioactive waste stored at the south-central Washington site.
There's good reason for concern. The administration and Congress treated funding for this construction project as if it were a cash cow in fiscal 2006.
The administration first called for a reduction in funding from the $690 million appropriated in previous years to $626 million. Then Congress reduced that proposed appropriation by another $100 million. Shortly afterward, the administration proposed taking another $100 million that was being held in reserve to cover future construction costs.
At that point, Washington Gov. Chris Gregoire said enough, and threatened to sue the Department of Energy. The threat apparently had its desired effect; Congress never took the $100 million from the reserve fund.
The administration and Congress certainly can use another reminder of the importance of this project to the state of Washington and their obligation get the job done at Hanford. While budget writers will be hard-pressed to cut back on spending this year, the long-promised cleanup of Hanford, the most contaminated nuclear site in the nation, is no place to look for savings.
The construction of this vitrification plant is absolutely essential to the cleanup effort. Problems in design and planning already have caused federal officials to push back the deadline for the plant's completion three times. At best, it will several years before we can expect the plant to be operating. In the meantime, radioactive waste it would handle is leaking from a few aging, single-shell tanks. Some of it has contaminated ground water and is slowly making its way toward the nearby Columbia River.
Gregoire repeated her threat to sue Monday, telling Associated Press writer Shannon Dininny that the cleanup has reached a "critical point." The governor is right. The administration and Congress have to be made to understand consequences short-changing this cleanup could have for people in this region. As Gregoire said, "We're either going to get the place cleaned up over there or we're going to have a plume of contamination that's going to reach the Columbia River and none of our children will see it cleaned up."
Past Month's Most Commented Stories