DOE WANTS TO INCREASE ACCESS TO CLEANED LAND
WC Monitor
3/28/2014
The Department of Energy wants to provide additional access to Hanford land as it is cleaned up, said David Huizenga of DOE’s Office of Environmental Management at a House Cleanup Caucus briefing this week. “The overall thrust is to try to turn some of that land back over to the community for reuse,” he said. DOE has begun receiving input from the tribes, Hanford area organizations and others as environmental cleanup is expected to be largely completed on much of the river corridor in 2015. The Tri-City Development Council and the Tri-Cities Visitor and Convention Bureau have been working with a consultant and holding a series of community meetings to develop a unified community vision for future use of the land. Their plan proposes trails for hiking and biking, campgrounds and nonmotorized boat launches, consistent with conservation of the land called for in the Hanford Comprehensive Land Use Plan.
The two groups are adamant that the community be given a voice in land use and are concerned that land in the production portion of Hanford could be added to the Hanford Reach National Monument, much of which is managed by U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Fish and Wildlife is under a directive from a memo issued by President Bill Clinton when the monument was created in 2000 to discuss the possibility of adding more Hanford land to the Hanford Reach National Monument as cleanup progresses. Officials from Fish and Wildlife and DOE are meeting at both the regional and national level to discuss meeting their obligations to consider the future of Hanford land. But any expansion of the monument would require either an act of Congress or a presidential executive order, said Charlie Stenvall, project leader for the Mid-Columbia River National Wildlife Refuge Complex. It is too early in the process for Fish and Wildlife to know what natural resources are worth conserving at Hanford and how they should be preserved, he said. However, Fish and Wildlife would only be looking at habitat, not historic sites such as B Reactor, he said.TRIDEC and the Visitor and Convention Bureau have been concerned that adding Fish and Wildlife to plans could derail years-long efforts that they hope will conclude this year with congressional approval of a new Manhattan Project National Historical Park. B Reactor and other historic areas of Hanford could be included. Fish and Wildlife was an early proponent of National Park Service involvement to preserve historic structures at Hanford, and as sister agencies in the Department of Interior the two work well together, Stenvall said. TRIDEC has argued that the Park Service is focused on public access, while Fish and Wildlife is focused first on preserving habitat. But Fish and Wildlife is required by the National Wildlife Refuge Improvement Act of 1997 to look at “wildlife-dependent recreation,” on refuge land, which could include nature trails for hiking, Stenvall said.
TRIDEC has argued that too little of the monument – just 34 percent of land – is open to the public and is concerned that if more Hanford land is added to the monument, the public would be excluded. But Fish and Wildlife said much of the closures on the monument are beyond its control. That includes about 30,000 acres of the monument that continues to be managed by DOE, and more than 28,000 acres that continue to be used by DOE as a safety buffer for the K Basin. The Arid Lands Ecology Reserve, which includes Rattlesnake Mountain, remains closed to the public, in part to preserve its ecological and cultural resources. The mountain has been designated a traditional cultural property and has long been considered sacred by the tribes.
