The three agencies that oversee cleanup at the Hanford Site near Richland, Wash., shrugged off concerns from a local citizens’ board about converting one of several spring meetings about the former plutonium production site to a webinar from an in-person affair, a document published Tuesday shows.
The Tri-Party Agreement Agencies — the Energy Department, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and the Washington state Department of Ecology — held four State of the Site meetings last year in Washington state and Oregon. This year, one of those meetings will take place only in cyberspace.
“[W]e believe creating a virtual space for discussion will be a cost-effective way to allow TPA [Tri-Party Agreement] decision-makers to address the progress and challenges of the cleanup efforts, as well as answer questions and concerns, with a broader range of local, regional and even national audiences than would be possible with an in-person meeting,” senior Tri-Party officials wrote in a letter to Hanford Advisory Board Chairman Steve Hudson. The letter, dated Feb. 13 was published online Tuesday.
The Hanford Advisory Board has not seen it that way. In December, the DOE-chartered citizens group implored the three agencies to ditch the webinar-only approach.
“While webinars are excellent tools for sharing information, they do not best serve a two-way conversation or provide meaningful opportunities for the public to influence cleanup decisions,” Hudson wrote in a letter to the agencies on the board’s behalf.
Last year’s State of the Site meetings were billed as “the opportunity for interested members of the public to discuss Hanford cleanup progress, challenges, and priorities with decision-makers from the TPA agencies.” Those meetings, which officials from the tri-party agencies attended, took place in mid-April. Dates for this year’s meetings were not yet listed on DOE’s Hanford website at deadline for Weapons Complex Morning Briefing.
