Gregoire blasts cuts to Hanford cleanup

YAKIMA – Gov. Christine Gregoire implored the federal government Monday to avoid further spending cuts for a waste treatment plant at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation, saying Washington state would consider legal action or other options if the budget is cut further.

The plant has long been considered the cornerstone of cleanup at the highly contaminated south-central Washington site, which was created in the 1940s as part of the top-secret Manhattan Project to build the atomic bomb. Today, Hanford is the most contaminated nuclear site in the nation, and the waste treatment plant is the government’s largest construction project.

However, the project has been mired in delays and cost overruns for years. The U.S. Department of Energy, which manages Hanford cleanup, halted construction on large portions of the plant earlier this year amid seismic concerns and skyrocketing costs.

The Bush administration cited those concerns in its $626 million budget request for the plant for 2006, down from $690 million in previous years. A House-Senate budget committee reduced that amount by another $100 million earlier this month – to $526 million. The Senate approved the spending bill Monday evening.

In addition, the Bush administration has proposed tapping the 2005 budget for $100 million, money that was not spent but was intended to be banked for construction costs in later years. The proposal is part of a $2.3 billion package of cuts across state agencies for hurricane relief.

The budget cuts for Hanford’s waste treatment plant clearly violate the federal government’s legal obligation to have the plant operating by 2011, Gregoire told a Seattle news conference.

“It is unconscionable, in my opinion, that we are going to delay this yet again. Washington state will not sit idly by while the federal government breaks its commitment to the Pacific Northwest,” Gregoire said.

Hanford cleanup is governed under the Tri-Party Agreement, a 1989 legal pact signed by the state, Environmental Protection Agency and the Energy Department. Under that agreement, the plant must be operating by 2011, although that deadline already has been pushed back three times from the original of 1999.