The Senate Appropriations Committee wants the Department of Energy to help New Mexico pay for improving roads to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, and also keep eye on contamination under a decaying building at the Hanford Site in Washington state.
These are a couple of recommendations the Senate panel made in its report about the fiscal year 2025 Energy and Water Development bill it passed last week.
The Senate panel voted 28-0 Thursday to fund DOE’s Office of Environmental Management with about $8.4-billion for the fiscal year starting Oct. 1. The funding would be less than the $8.5 billion enacted by Congress in fiscal 2024 but more than the $8.3-billion in the House Appropriations Committee bill and the $8.2-billion requested by the White House for fiscal 2025.
In its nearly 200-page report accompanying the bill, Senate Appropriations said DOE should kick in $40 million to help New Mexico improve roads leading to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) near Carlsbad, N.M.
A 2023 report from DOE said 80% of the roads leading to WIPP are no better than “fair,” the Senate committee wrote. Trucks carrying defense-related transuranic waste travel these roads to WIPP.
“Given the deteriorated conditions of roadways, the committee recommends the department make a voluntary payment of $40,000,000 in fiscal year 2025 to the State of New Mexico for WIPP route related road infrastructure projects,” the committee said.
Over a 14-year period ending in 2012, DOE paid New Mexico $20 million annually, indexed for inflation, for WIPP-related roadwork, according to the report.
Meanwhile, the Hanford Site, which made plutonium for decades, continues to account for more than a third of the DOE cleanup budget. “The committee remains concerned about risks stemming from contamination beneath Building 324 and directs the department to consider conducting additional groundwater monitoring in this area,” according to the committee report.
The building within Area 300 at Hanford supported research on highly-radioactive materials between the 1960s and 1990s. DOE suspended demolition of Building 324 in 2010, after a lot of highly-contaminated soil was discovered underneath.
Things got more complicated in 2023 after DOE and contractor Central Plateau Cleanup found the contamination was deeper and wider than thought earlier. Some work continues, as DOE and the Environmental Protection Agency consider next steps.
