The Energy Department was chided for not providing much hard data during a virtual public meeting Wednesday on fiscal 2022 budget priorities for ongoing cleanup at the Hanford Site in Washington state.
The meeting was organized by the three signatories to the 1989 Tri-Party Agreement that governs environmental remediation at the former plutonium production complex: the state, DOE, and the Environmental Protection Agency.
Craig Cameron, an EPA environmental scientist, John Price, a section manager with the Washington Department of Ecology, and various members of the public said during the meeting they were disappointed not to be provided with more specifics from DOE on the projected 2022 budget.
“Normally these meetings are a very beneficial things,” according to Cameron. He said, though, the value of this year’s session was “diminished” by factors including the COVID-19 pandemic, which suspended most on-site work at Hanford for two months, and the lack of detail provided to stakeholders about the projected 2022 budget, Cameron said. In past years the agency has provided stakeholder meetings with more detail which yielded more “meaningful dialogue” on the future spending plan, Cameron added.
Several members of the public asked DOE officials at the meeting for current estimates on certain budget line items for 2022, such as retrieving radioactive waste from Hanford’s single-shell storage tanks. But such specifics were not forthcoming Wednesday.
“Ecology is disappointed” with lack of detail provided by DOE for the stakeholders meeting, Price said. “I believe we did see a lot more detailed information in the past,” he said.
Bill Hamel, assistant manager for river and plateau with DOE’s Richland Operations Office at Hanford, said he understood the frustration at not having more data. But much of the desired financial information is either not known yet or not yet publicly available because it is “embargoed” for later release, Hamel said.
The actual 2022 figures that Hanford managers request from DOE headquarters will be affected by variables such as carryover funds from prior budgets and the amount of work completed during fiscal 2021. For example, demolition of the Plutonium Finishing Plant (PFP) is expected to be complete before fiscal 2022, Hamel said.
The federal government is in fiscal 2020 through Sept. 30. Fiscal 2022 begins on Oct. 1 of next year.
The two Hanford Site offices are expected to submit their 2022 budget requests to Energy Department headquarters in August. The agency will then work with the White House to finalize the spending proposal, which nominally would be sent to Congress next February.
“If you ask how much I am going to request right now, I don’t have that number right now,” Hamel said. Hanford managers are currently seeking insight on the cleanup priorities from local stakeholders, he added. For example, the federal agency is putting much emphasis on shoring up old facilities because it does not want a repeat of the partial collapse of an underground tunnel at the Plutonium Uranium Extraction (PUREX) Facility that was discovered in May 2017.
The COVID-19 pandemic forced the Energy Department to pause most remediation operations at Hanford this spring, and even as work resumes it will continue to affect the available supply chain for everything from personal protective items to equipment components, Hamel said. The availability of such supplies in part determines how much work is accomplished headed into the fiscal 2022 budget cycle, he added.
The Energy Department’s Hanford Office of River Protection and Richland Operations Office together are funded at more than $2.5 billion for fiscal 2020.
The Richland office, which oversees contractors, infrastructure needs, and environmental cleanup at the complex, received $912 million from Congress.
The Office of River Protection, which is responsible for treatment, storage, and eventual disposal of 56 million gallons of chemical and radioactive tank waste at Hanford, is funded at about $1.6 billion.
The Donald Trump administration proposed roughly $1.8 billion combined for the two offices in fiscal 2021: $556 million for the Richland Operations Office and over $1.25 billion for the Office of River Protection. In line with past years, that amount is likely to be increased as Congress prepares its appropriations bills for the next year.
Under a best-case scenario, final cleanup of Hanford is expected to cost upward of $323 billion and won’t be complete until 2079, according to a DOE life-cycle estimate issued last year.
The Tri-Party Agreement provides a framework for complying with the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA) and the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) regulations by laying out environmental priorities and remediation milestones for Hanford.
The parties are conducting a 30-day comment period on the upcoming budget, from June 15 until July 15. Comments can be submitted by email to [email protected], or by mail to U.S. Department of Energy, Attn: Yvonne Levardi, P.O. Box 450, H6-60, Richland, WA 99352. Questions about the process can be emailed to [email protected].
