Brian Bradley
WC Monitor
10/2/2015
Workers at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site treated a record 2.1 billion gallons of groundwater in the last year, exceeding the last record of 1.9 billion gallons in fiscal 2014 during ongoing cleanup at the former plutonium production facility, DOE said yesterday in a press release. “We’re treating more groundwater and removing more contamination than any year in the past two decades of cleanup,” said Michael Cline, director of the soil and groundwater division with the DOE Richland Operations Office, in the release. “Not only are we treating more groundwater each year, we’re also removing more contamination and expanding the area we’re pumping from to remove contamination.”
DOE had set a goal for Hanford central plateau cleanup contractor CH2M HILL Plateau Remediation to treat 2.1 billion gallons by the end of fiscal 2015, and the company met that goal in mid-August, removing more than 75 tons of contaminants from groundwater during this fiscal year, according to the release. Overall, Hanford contractors have treated over 13 billion gallons of groundwater and have removed more than 200 tons of contaminants, including nitrate, carbon tetrachloride, hexavalent chromium, uranium, and technetium-99.
Six “pump-and-treat” systems treat Hanford’s groundwater by pumping it up through wells and treating it to eliminate contaminants. Then, the water is reinjected into the ground. “As a whole, our systems are operating at about 113 percent of their designed capacity and, with several upgrades we’ll finish this year, that number will be even higher,” said Karen Wiemelt, CH2M vice president of soil and groundwater remediation, in the release. Since 2009, the contractor has more than quadrupled Hanford’s groundwater treatment capacity.
