A House Armed Services subcommittee is seeking briefings every six months from the Energy Department Office of Environmental Management (EM) regarding ongoing problems with toxic vapors at the Hanford Site in Washington state.
“Over the past several years, many workers have reported suspicious odors and subsequent health effects,” the HASC strategic forces subcommittee said in its mark of the fiscal 2019 National Defense Authorization Act. “The committee notes that additional protective measures and guidance have been implemented at the site, but that reported events continue.”
The panel released its NDAA mark on Wednesday, a day ahead of its markup session. The full committee is scheduled to take up the complete mark for the NDAA on May 9.
Assuming the DOE EM briefing language survives the markup process, the first briefing to the House Armed Services Committee would be provided by Aug. 31 by Assistant Secretary of Energy for Environmental Management Anne Marie White.
The semiannual updates should continue through the 2019 fiscal year, which ends on Sept. 30 of that year, the subcommittee said. The House panel expects reports on recent vapor inhalations, technical data on the vapors, health problems from the vapor inhalation, and controls put in place to protect workers.
There have been a series of reports in recent years of worker exposure to vapors from radioactive and chemical waste stored in 177 underground tanks at Hanford, the byproduct of decades of plutonium production for the U.S. nuclear deterrent.
Washington state, the Hanford Challenge watchdog group, and the Plumbers and Steamfitters Local Union 598 sued DOE and its Hanford tank farm contractor, Washington River Protection Solutions, in 2015. The litigation seeks better protection for workers from chemical vapors. The parties are now in settlement talks.
