Kenneth Fletcher
WC Monitor
6/20/2014
South Carolina is continuing to push against the Department of Energy’s latest plan for the closure of high-level waste tanks at the Savannah River Site, warning this week of hundreds of millions of dollars in penalties if the Department does not request enough funding for Savannah River cleanup. DOE recently released a liquid waste system plan that pushes tank closure schedules 10 years beyond regulatory milestones. This week, South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control Director Catherine Templeton sent a letter to DOE outlining the potential consequences of such delays. “As I have said before, this is the single biggest environmental threat to the state of South Carolina and her citizens,” Templeton said in a statement. “The Department of Energy acknowledged that when they agreed to stipulated penalties for failure to achieve these milestones back in 2011. Now, we have a different administration that is refusing to meet its legal responsibilities and failing to prioritize South Carolina as agreed. They have the money, but they are sending it elsewhere without so much as a conversation about next steps or alternative plans to protect this state from the legacy waste South Carolina is handling for the nation.”
DOE’s plan attributes the tank closure delays to a combination of reduced funding and delays in completion of the site’s Salt Waste Processing Facility, which is planned to greatly increase tank waste processing rates but has had its startup date pushed back from 2014 to around 2018. Enacted funding for the Savannah River liquid waste program stood at $838.5 million in Fiscal Year 2013, which dropped down to a current level of $690.5 million. DOE’s FY’15 budget requests $722.8 million for the liquid waste program. In the latest plan 17 tanks are expected to miss regulatory commitments to South Carolina, which has led to push back from the state.The DOE’s latest liquid waste system plan “would result in a total cumulative delay of over 200 years for waste removal, tank closure, treatment startup and waste treatment completion milestones. These delays will not be tolerated by the State of South Carolina,” states the June 16 letter from Templeton to DOE Secretary Ernest Moniz.
‘DHEC Will Not Agree to Milestone Extensions Sought Because of Inadequate Funding’
South Carolina’s penalties could add up to $193 million by the end of Fiscal Year 2016, with ongoing daily penalties of $105,000 for failure to start up SWPF by 2015 and $10,000 for failure to close tanks. Templeton warned: “DHEC will not agree to milestone extensions sought because of inadequate funding for SRS. DHEC calls upon DOE to take appropriate action to fund existing and additional processing capacities needed to meet its commitments. DHEC will fully exercise its authority for hazardous waste oversight, along with other environmental authorities, if satisfactory commitment to the high level waste schedule is not reached.”
The current tank closure date of 2032 is 15 years after the October 2017 accelerated target Savannah River Remediation, LLC, announced when it took over the liquid waste contract. In 2012, budget cuts forced SRR to do away with its accelerated closure goals and push back old-style tank closure to 2022 in what the contractor called a “just in time” approach to meeting regulatory milestones. Then the SWPF faced a two-year delay in delivery of key components, pushing back completion of the facility and its eventual operation. As a result, last year’s system plan delayed tank closure to 2028, but the projected impacts of significant funding cuts led to the further delay of four years in the most recent revision of the plan.
DOE ‘Will Continue to Work With the Regulators’
When asked for comment this week on the issue, a DOE spokesperson said in a statement: “The Department continues to seek maximum use of tank waste treatment facilities to achieve tank closures, such as the accelerated closure of Tanks 5 and 6. The Department will continue to work with the regulators regarding achieving compliance milestones.” Before SDHEC sent the letter, DOE Savannah River Site Manager Dave Moody last week discussed potential issues for the state. “Now we are looking at what can we do in light of the funding to continue to do the major tenants of risk reduction, but it may not meet all of our compliances,” Moody told WC Monitor on the sidelines of an Energy Facilities Contractors Group meeting. “So we are clearly open to discussing that with the state and we understand their disappointment. Nothing would make us any happier than to be able to clean and close those tanks on schedule.”
