Our View: Feds’ commitment to Hanford cleanup inconsistent

Two billion dollars is no trifling sum, so this probably isn’t a seemly time to chide U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu for the tone of his announcement about the stimulus money that’s coming to the Hanford Nuclear Reservation.

“It reflects our commitment to future generations as well as to help local economies get moving again,” he said. His words underscore the fact that Hanford, the nation’s most contaminated radioactive site, will get almost a third of the stimulus funds targeted for cleaning up numerous sites that were tainted by defense activities associated with World War II and the Cold War.

What’s debatable in Chu’s comment, however, is that word “commitment.”

It will be 20 years next month since the state Department of Ecology, the federal Department of Energy and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency signed a deal known as the Tri-Party Agreement, which spelled out when and how the federal government would clean up the mess that began building during development of the atomic bombs that ended the war with Japan.

While the Richland area still enjoys a highly educated, scientifically oriented heritage from its role in the top-secret Manhattan Project, the region also endures less enviable mementos. Some 53 million gallons of radioactive sludge in 144 remaining buried tanks, some of them leaking to the endangerment of the Columbia River.

The 20 years that have passed under the Tri-Party Agreement have been two decades of slipped deadlines, cheap excuses and broken promises. Last year was said to be one of commendable progress on the work, but the Department of Energy has identified 23 deadlines that will be missed this year.

State officials, if anything, have been too accommodating with their approval of new benchmarks, but when the state wanted those revisions to be enforceable in court, the feds balked. Five months ago, Gov. Chris Gregoire and Attorney General Rob McKenna finally converted their exasperation into a lawsuit over that issue.

In short, the federal government has not demonstrated much commitment to future or past generations with respect to Hanford’s cleanup. Without the stimulus money, for instance, the Energy Department would have laid off 250 workers.

A new administration is in charge, of course, and Chu is not responsible for the actions of his predecessors. But while the $2 billion in stimulus money matches what the Department of Energy spends on Hanford work in a year, the overall cost is a staggering $50 billion – by today’s estimates – making the added $2 billion the percentage equivalent of a cheap tip.

If Chu and his department truly want to show their commitment, the best way to do it is to adhere month in and month out to both the spirit and the letter of the Tri-Party Agreement. One example could be to heed Gregoire’s recommendation for rebidding cleanup contracts less frequently than every five years to minimize the time that such transitions waste.

Clearly, the state will benefit from the thousands of jobs the stimulus funding will fund, but the Hanford mess will outlast the recession. What the state will need long term is more diligence from the feds than they’ve shown over the past 20 years.