Staff Reports
WC Monitor
2/5/2016
Local government leaders near the Hanford Site have some advice for Washington Gov. Jay Inslee as he picks a new state Nuclear Waste Program manager: choose carefully at this critical time in Hanford cleanup. Jane Hedges, who served in the position for a decade, announced in early November that she would retire at the end of February. She said at the Hanford Advisory Board meeting this week that a replacement has yet to be selected. An interim manager likely will be appointed to serve for a couple months until Hedges’ permanent successor is named, she said.
“We are in the process of doing that,” Hedges said. “There will be an interim person appointed. That individual hasn’t been appointed yet.”
She gave four months’ notice in hopes of allowing some time to work with her replacement. The state has been advertising the position with the relatively modest annual salary for Hanford leadership work of $75,452 to $110,000. Job responsibilities include managing an operating budget of about $21 million and a staff of 89 full-time equivalents.
The state of Washington serves as a Hanford regulator, along with the Environmental Protection Agency.
“We have a number of concerns about the progress and direction of the cleanup mission,” said a letter sent this week to the governor. It was signed by the mayors of the four communities closest to Hanford – Richland, Kennewick, Pasco, and West Richland — and the chairmen of the Benton and Franklin County Commissions. The entire Hanford cleanup has revolved around the Waste Treatment Plant for more than a decade, “yet it remains a project under construction with no certain completion or start-up date,” the letter said. The Washington State Department of Ecology, which includes the Nuclear Waste Program, needs to be at the front of efforts to get the plant operating in a manner that is technically sound and economically feasible, it said.
Hanford must continue to show remediation progress to justify its portion of the federal budget, the letter said. Every time another Department of Energy site is cleaned up, Hanford has fewer allies asking Congress to pay for cleanup of the nation’s weapons sites, it said. “We hear the crescendo of cynical chatter from other sites about how Hanford gets the lion’s share of the funding, but doesn’t seem to be making progress commensurate with that outsized funding,” the letter said. The concerns come as election results in November could leave the direction or priorities of the DOE Office of Environmental Management uncertain, it said. “Now is not a time for a lapse in state leadership when it comes to Hanford,” the letter said.
All parties – DOE, its contractors, the state and federal regulators, the tribes, local government, and citizens – need to work together, the letter said. “The state needs to measure its level of confrontation against realistic outcomes, fiscal uncertainties and political frustrations in order for us to keep the cleanup train on the tracks,” the letter said. Without a united front with the state and communities, critical funding could be lost. The Nuclear Waste Program manager is at the heart of the community team, and a mature leader with good management skills, integrity, and familiarity with Hanford is needed, the letter said.
