The Wednesday meeting of the Hanford Advisory Board in Richland, Wash., has been canceled due to bad weather. Heavy snowfall across Washington state and a forecast for freezing rain prompted the cancellation.
The meeting had already been reduced to a single day administrative session because the partial shutdown of the federal government in January prevented the 30-days’ notice from being published in the Federal Register. As a result, plans for a second day of meetings planned for Thursday were canceled and the board was prohibited from taking any action.
Items on the agenda for Wednesday will be moved to the next board meeting on April 10-11. The full board has not met since September after the session in December was canceled because the first of two days fell on the national day of mourning for former President George H.W. Bush. Because the board met in Seattle in September, its last meeting near the Hanford Site was in June. The board typically holds five full meetings a year, mostly near the Department of Energy facility.
Most work at Hanford was canceled from Saturday through Monday because of drifting snow and closed highways accessing the site, but operations are expected to resume Tuesday with a two-hour delay due to anticipated icy roads.
