CH2M HILL Plateau Remediation Co. said Monday it hit its goal of removing nearly 200,000 pounds of contaminants from groundwater at the Energy Department’s Hanford Site in fiscal 2016.
CH2M treated 2.1 billion gallons of groundwater at the facility in Washington state that has been contaminated with radionuclides and toxic chemicals left over from plutonium production dating to World War II. The company removed more than 180,000 pounds of this contamination from the site’s groundwater for the 12-month period ended on Sept. 30, CH2M wrote in a Monday press release.
CH2M is DOE’s prime contractor for solid waste and groundwater cleanup at the site near Richland, Wash. The company’s 10-year Hanford Site Central Plateau Remediation contract, managed by DOE’s Richland Operations Office, expires on Sept. 30, 2018, and is worth nearly $6 billion.
“Most of our pump-and-treats are performing far better than originally anticipated,” Karen Wiemelt, vice president of groundwater cleanup at CH2M, said in the release.
There are six groundwater treatment sites at Hanford. The public can track their operations via a website maintained by DOE’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. Contaminants treated include: carbon tetrachloride; nitrate; technetium-99; trichloroethene; chromium; hexavalent chromium; and iodine-129.
