Missed deadlines at Hanford lead to talks

RICHLAND – Hoping to find some middle ground, state officials will enter negotiations next month with the U.S. Department of Energy over missed deadlines for cleaning up the Hanford Nuclear Reservation.

“It doesn’t mean we’ve ruled out going to court, but before we do that, we will see if we can negotiate an agreement,” state Assistant Attorney General Andy Fitz told the Tri-City Herald in a story published Friday.

Top officials, including Attorney General Rob McKenna and Department of Ecology Director Jay Manning, will begin negotiations May 29 with James Rispoli, the Energy Department’s assistant secretary for environmental management.

The so-called Tri-Party Agreement signed by the Energy Department, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the state in 1989 set enforceable cleanup milestones for Hanford.

Among the state’s concerns: The delay in constructing a $12.2 billion vitrification plant to treat some of Hanford’s worst radioactive and chemical wastes. The plant may not open until 2019, eight years past a legal deadline.

McKenna said negotiating to resolve the missed deadlines balances the state’s concerns with the Energy Department’s budgetary and technical limits.

Neither the state nor the federal government is ready to discuss specific proposals for the negotiations.

The department spends about $2 billion a year on Hanford cleanup projects.

Other options range from “throwing up our hands and accepting the delay” to taking the Energy Department to court to get deadlines enforced, he said.

Gov. Chris Gregoire has warned in the past that she does not intend to extend legally binding Tri-Party Agreement deadlines without a good reason.

Instead, the state will “try to find an equitable path forward,” said Jane Hedges, the program manager for the Department of Ecology’s nuclear waste program.

In exchange for extended deadlines, the Energy Department may have to agree to new requirements, or to do additional work to offset cleanup delays, according to the state and EPA. Each would have to sign off on changes to the Tri-Party Agreement.

“We’ve really pushed the Energy Department hard to protect the groundwater from contamination in the soil and (clean up) the groundwater itself,” said Dennis Faulk, EPA environmental scientist.