Rep. Dan Newhouse (R-Wash.) has wasted no time in inviting President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for energy secretary to visit the Hanford Site. Newhouse issued an invitation to former Texas governor Rick Perry in a letter Thursday. Perry, also a former two-time presidential candidate, famously forgot the Department of Energy during a 2011 debate as one of three executive agencies he wanted to eliminate if elected president.
A tour of Hanford would provide Perry with an understanding of the challenges facing the massive cleanup of the former plutonium production site, and of the importance of ensuring sufficient resources to finish the job, Newhouse said in the letter to Perry. “Cleanup of our nation’s defense nuclear waste is not optional – the federal government has a legal and moral obligation to ensure the cleanup mission at Hanford is completed,” said the lawmaker, whose congressional district covers the site. “To do so requires strong support from the administration, DOE and Congress.”
The department’s Office of Environmental Management each year receives about $6 billion of DOE’s annual budget of roughly $30 billion. Hanford get roughly $2.5 billion, with some $1.5 billion going to liquid-waste cleanup managed by the site’s Office of River Protection, and just under $1 million going to the Richland Operations Office for mostly solid-waste cleanup and demolition on the Hanford central plateau.
Newhouse also might be positioned to help Hanford and the other 15 active DOE defense nuclear cleanup sites obtain adequate budgets after being nominated this week by the House Republican Steering Committee to serve on the House Appropriations Committee. His subcommittee assignments have not been announced. “Joining the powerful House Appropriations Committee will help me protect our tax dollars from being spent wastefully and will help ensure important central Washington priorities such as Hanford cleanup,” Newhouse said.
