The Department of Energy, the Washington state Department of Ecology and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency are expected to resume later this month what have been dubbed the “holistic” talks about future cleanup deadlines at the Hanford Site.
“Vacation schedules have complicated meeting during July, but mediation sessions may potentially resume in August,” according to an update filed July 30 with the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Washington. The status report was filed with the court by Andrew Fitz, a senior attorney with the state attorney general’s office.
In addition, spokespersons for both the DOE Office of Environmental Management and Washington Ecology confirmed by email late Monday they expect the agencies to resume talks before September. “We expect to meet again this month,” state Ecology spokesman Ryan Miller said via email.
“Parties have continued to participate in mediation sessions, meeting weekly throughout the month of May and the majority of June,” according to the status report filed with the court. Subcommittee or small group mediation sessions also continued during this time, according to the two-page update.
Almost two years ago the parties agreed to sit down with the goal of negotiating mutually agreeable modifications to the 1989 Tri-Party Agreement on cleanup at the federal reservation.
Not long after the talks commenced, the COVID-19 pandemic started to spread in the United States and Washington, forcing meetings into a virtual format. There is a confidentiality agreement in place so officials have stayed tight-lipped, saying little other than that talks are ongoing, with the assistance of the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service.
The regular updates are filed with the court because they are linked to prior consent decrees reached in litigation brought against DOE by the states of Oregon and Washington. The most recent modified consent decree was issued in 2016. The consent decrees grew out of state contentions that DOE either missed or was going to miss certain deadlines under the Tri-Party Agreement, also known as the Hanford Federal Facility Agreement and Consent Order.
State fears that DOE was again on track to miss remediation milestones was cited by Washington Ecology when it again threatened legal action against the federal agency prior to the 2019 agreement to start the current talks.
