The Department of Energy and its regulators at the Hanford Site will hold their annual meeting on budget priorities on April 23. Representatives from both DOE Hanford offices – the Richland Operations Office and the Office of River Protection — will provide an overview of cleanup work completed and work to be done. The meeting is held in advance of the budget formulation for the Washington state site for fiscal 2020.
The Washington state Department of Ecology and the Environmental Protection Agency also will provide their perspectives at the meeting, followed by a question and answer session.
The meeting is scheduled for 6:30 p.m. in the Richland Public Library, 955 Northgate Drive. A webinar will be provided, and remote participants may submit questions online. Registration for the webinar is available here, using the identification number 677-344-091.
A public comment period on the Hanford cleanup priorities to allow input into the fiscal 2020 budget will run from April 23 through May 25. Comments may be submitted to [email protected].
The Energy Department for fiscal 2019 has requested $1.4 billion for its Office of River Protection, which oversees tank waste operations at Hanford. The Richland Operations Office, which manages other environmental remediation programs, would get $747 million for the budget year starting Oct. 1.
The parties in the federal trial over Hanford vapors have requested an extension yet again, after failing to reach a settlement agreement before a deadline Monday for the plaintiffs to identify their expert witnesses.
A joint motion requesting that Judge Thomas Rice delay the trial for a 10th time was filed Friday in U.S. District Court for Eastern Washington. Plaintiffs and defendants are asking that Rice push the trial date to April 8, 2019, from Feb. 4, 2019, and extend all deadlines for filings in the case for about 60 days. The judge most recently granted an approximately two-month delay in the trial and deadline extensions on Feb. 7.
The case was originally scheduled to go to trial May 22, 2017.
“While the parties have continued to make significant progress towards settlement, the parties have not yet reached an agreement,” the parties said in their most recent motion. Requests for further extensions are a possibility if the parties believe continued settlement talks could be productive, the motion said.
Washington state, the watchdog group Hanford Challenge, and the Plumbers and Steamfitters Local Union 598 sued the Department of Energy and its Hanford tank farm contractor, Washington River Protection Solutions, in September 2015. They are demanding better protection from chemical vapors for the workers at the site’s waste storage tank farms.
Most of the trial delays in the case have been at the request of both plaintiffs and defendants after Rice ruled in November 2016 that current worker protections at the Hanford tank farms, such as supplied air respirators, and other improvements adequately protect workers until trial. But he also said “the court does not deny that vapor exposures have occurred or that employees have experienced serious vapor-related illnesses.”
