While happy to see Washington state and federal agencies cut a new deal on cleanup of the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site, Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), who chairs the Senate Appropriations Committee, said Wednesday DOE’s fiscal 2024 budget request is “robbing Peter to pay Paul.”
Hanford’s Office of River Protection and Richland Operations Office would together be funded at about $3 billion, an increase over 2023. Richland’s request amounts to an $85.3 million haircut, Murray told Deputy Secretary of Energy David Turk during a hearing of the Senate Appropriations energy and water development subcommittee.
DOE said Tuesday that its fiscal 2024 budget request is consistent with the new deal, as it applies to tank waste.
“But let’s remind everybody, the federal government has a legal and moral obligation to clean up the Hanford site and protect Hanford workers,” Murray said.
Turk said the administration agrees and takes the moral obligation seriously. Anyone who visits Hanford “knows we’ve got a lot of work going forward for decades out there.”
The $3 billion request “is the largest request in recent history for Hanford,” Turk said.
The trades between the Hanford liquid waste budget and the site’s central plateau budget arise from discussions with the White House and its Office of Management and Budget.
DOE “made choices, we made thoughtful choices, but we’d be eager to have further conversations with you and your staff to make sure we’re all going forward in the way we should at Hanford,” Turk said.
