Risk should be a major factor in setting cleanup priorities at the Energy Department’s Hanford Site in Washington state, the DOE Environmental Management Advisory Board agreed Tuesday.
The advisory board voted, in a public meeting held by conference call, to endorse a subcommittee’s recommendations to Assistant Energy Secretary for Environmental Management Anne Marie White. The five recommendations are meant to help White address findings in a 568-page Hanford risk review issued in August by a group of universities called the Consortium for Risk Evaluation with Stakeholder Participation (CRESP).
The Energy Department should use the rankings as a major tool, albeit not the only resource, for future environmental remediation planning at Hanford, board member Beverly Ramsey said in briefing the panel.
The advisory board recommendations also call for DOE to do a cross-analysis of issues outlined in the risk report to determine if there are any conflicts with existing cleanup contracts at Hanford, as well as the agency’s legal obligations under the Tri-Party Agreement.
The Energy Department should work with other government agencies and Hanford stakeholders to achieve significant risk reduction in environmental remediation in 2020 and beyond, the board subcommittee said; renegotiation of current contracts and legal agreements should be considered where appropriate.
The goal is to remediate the Hanford Site as safely, efficiently, and expeditiously as possible, Ramsey said during the call. White thanked the subcommittee for its work in taking a highly technical document on risk reduction and distilling it down into recommendations that are easy to digest.
The recommendations were passed unanimously except for one abstention – but only after advisory board member Bob Thompson successfully argued for an addendum to the recommendations stressing local and tribal concerns be addressed. Thompson, an attorney and mayor of Richland, Wash., near the Hanford Site, questioned if local concerns had been fully considered so far.
