A 45-day comment period began Monday on proposed changes to the Tri-Party Agreement (TPA) that governs cleanup at the Hanford Site in Washington state.
The parties to the agreement – the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and Washington state Department of Ecology – will accept comments through Nov. 29.
The state and EPA provide regulatory oversight of the Energy Department’s environmental remediation of the 580-square mile Hanford Site, which started produced plutonium for the nation’s nuclear deterrence program in the 1940s during the Manhattan Project. The Tri-Party Agreement is a detailed cleanup and compliance agreement for Hanford that was signed on May 15, 1989. The agreement, which is part legal document and part action plan, ranks and defines remediation commitments at the site, and establishes enforceable milestones.
Proposed modifications are designed to update the agreement to reduce redundancy and improve coordination between two regulatory processes for remediation — the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA) and the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA). Among other things, the update will reflect the completion of certain cleanup milestones, according to the agencies.
The agencies note CERCLA is designed to address contamination from past practices or abandoned facilities, while RCRA is geared toward management of hazardous and non-hazardous solid waste. Comments can be emailed to [email protected].
Questions can be sent to Jennifer Colborn, communications specialists with DOE contractor Mission Support Alliance, at [email protected], or Daina McFadden, permit communications specialist for the state Department of Ecology, at [email protected].
A fact sheet on the process is here.
