Hanford Site To Get New Cleanup Plan Wahluke Wildlife Area Was About To Be Taken Off List Of Contaminated Places

Federal and state agencies say they will have a plan this week for cleaning up a former herbicide waste burial site on a Hanford Nuclear Reservation wildlife refuge.

Soil sample tests show more ground is contaminated than originally thought on the Wahluke Wildlife Area north of the Columbia River, the Environmental Protection Agency said Monday.

The site was about to be taken off a national list of polluted sites needing cleanup.

The extent of the remaining 2,4-D contamination has not been determined. The U.S. Department of Energy and the state Department of Ecology are expected to release results from their tests this week and have a cleanup plan by Friday.

“There is a considerable strip of contamination,” EPA investigator Keven McDermott said. “You won’t really know what is there until you dig it all up.”

McDermott and Jed Januch of the EPA studied the herbicide site after a hunter reported seeing faded warning signs in early May.

The site was a 1966 dump believed to contain about 50 cubic yards of dirt laced with the herbicide 2,4-D, as well as discarded containers. The tanks and contaminated dirt were buried there after a spill in Eltopia in the mid-1960s.

In late May, the Energy Department, which owns the land, and the Ecology Department, a key cleanup agency, conducted soil tests in a 400-foot by 60-foot section. Michael Turner of the Department of Ecology’s Hanford Project, said he expects his agency’s data to confirm that 2,4-D remains above acceptable levels.

EPA chemist Bruce Woods said lack of exposure to water and sunlight are possible reasons 2,4-D has been preserved for 30 years in the Wahluke Slope soil. The spilled chemical’s concentration also could have played a role, he said.

The Ecology and Energy departments will coordinate the cleanup, Turner said. The Energy Department will likely pay for cleanup, Turner said, though the cost has not been determined.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers studied the site in July 1994 and could find no evidence of contaminated soil near where 10 dump-truck loads of contaminated soil were buried in the mid-1960s.

As a result, the corps recommended that no further action was necessary at the site, which was then scheduled to be removed from the EPA’s National Priority List of toxic sites.

The new EPA investigation was prompted by a complaint filed by Roger Connor, vice chairman of the state Fish and Wildlife Commission. While hunting in the area, Connor spotted signs cautioning that the pesticide 2,4-D had been buried there in June 1966.