Hanford initiative called intrusion

YAKIMA – A voter-approved initiative that bars the U.S. Department of Energy from shipping waste to the Hanford Nuclear Reservation violates the federal government’s authority over radioactive waste and should be overturned, attorneys for the federal government argued Tuesday.

Initiative 297, now known as the Cleanup Priority Act, bars the federal government from shipping waste to the south-central Washington site until all existing waste there is cleaned up. Washington state voters overwhelmingly approved the measure in November 2004, but the federal government immediately filed suit seeking to overturn it.

The measure is an “unprecedented intrusion” into areas of federal oversight, violating the federal government’s authority over nuclear waste and interstate commerce, said Ken Amaditz, an attorney for the U.S. Department of Justice, which is representing the Energy Department.

For that reason, the initiative should be overturned in its entirety, Amaditz told U.S. District Judge Alan McDonald in Yakima.

The federal government can’t just whisper the word “conflict” and strike down an entire law without waiting to see how it is applied, countered Assistant Attorney General Andy Fitz, representing the state. The state is defending the initiative.

Washington state already has authority to regulate hazardous waste. State officials believe that authority extends to mixed waste that includes radioactive materials, Fitz said.

“Simply having radionuclides in the mix doesn’t give the federal government a get-out-of-jail free card,” Fitz said.

Assistant Attorney General Laura Watson also said Washington state is not seeking to gain economically or to reserve landfill space for its own waste. Instead, the state wants to temporarily ban both out-of-state and in-state waste from Hanford until the existing trash is cleaned up.

“The fact that everyone here agrees it will be a very long time before waste is allowed in under the Cleanup Priority Act only speaks to the severity of the problem at Hanford,” she said.

Hanford was created in the 1940s as part of the top-secret Manhattan Project to build the atomic bomb, then continued to produce plutonium for the nation’s nuclear weapons arsenal for 40 years. Today, it is the nation’s most contaminated nuclear site. Cleanup costs are expected to total up to $60 billion, with the work to be finished by 2035.

At issue are the federal government’s plans for disposing of waste from nuclear weapons production nationwide. The Energy Department chose Hanford to dispose of some mildly radioactive waste and mixed low-level waste, which is both radioactive and hazardous.

Hanford also would serve as a packaging center for some transuranic waste before it is shipped elsewhere for permanent disposal. Transuranic waste is highly radioactive and can take thousands of years to decay to safe levels.