Lance Moore
WC Monitor
6/26/2015
Washington State Attorney General Bob Ferguson (D) denounced the Department of Energy for its recent attempt to delay cleanup of tank waste at the Hanford site by an additional year to 2022. Washington filed a motion late last week to strike further proposed delays by the DOE in the consent decree, which establishes the cleanup milestones at the site. DOE has proposed to push back removal of the last nine remaining waste single and double shell tanks from Hanford until 2022 due to problems with worker safety surrounding the tank waste. “I will hold the Department of Energy accountable to its commitments to protect worker safety and meet agreed-upon timelines for the Hanford cleanup,” Ferguson said in a statement. “The danger these tanks represent is well documented. Energy should not use its responsibility to protect workers — a duty it has always had — as a reason to let critical deadlines to clean up Hanford slip further into the distant future.”
According to the motion filed by Ferguson on behalf of the US District of Eastern Washington, the proposal by the DOE to delay cleanup was not discussed beforehand with the states of Washington and Oregon. “Energy’s Revised Proposed Order bypasses Consent Decree’s modification process in a way that diminishes the obligations of Energy and the rights of the state of Washington under the Decree; is not proposed properly before the Court, and prejudices the State by incorporating changes to the Consent Decree that are outside of Energy’s modification motion and have not been briefed, or even previously discussed, by any of the parties.”
In a previous hearing between Washington and the DOE in 2010, Eastern Washington District Court Judge Rosanna Malouf Peterson ruled that the DOE would be able to proposed amendments would be accepted on a limited basis if the “out of service single/double shell tanks experienced interior leaks, which would make the consent decree unworkable and detrimental to the public interest.” The DOE has described such a need to delay waste cleanup as costs have reached unrealistic funding levels. Within the scope of feasibility based on mature project data, the DOE submitted these amendments to keep up with budgetary realities and worker associated hazards of removing highly toxic radioactive waste from the Hanford site. The DOE has previously said that it must plan and manage the Hanford site cleanup while staying consistent to federal budgetary constraints while it is also obligated to cleaning up 16 other nuclear sites in 11 states.
The DOE also cites technical and management issues related to worker safety as a reason for the delays, with developed safety and budgetary issues underlying the core influence to the proposed delays. This was verified by an earlier report delivered from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to the Senate Armed Services Committee on May 7, 2015. In cooperation with the DOE, the GAO said, “We filtered more the 8,000 technical and management issues.”
Historically, the Washington Office of the Attorney General has been the enforcer of the requirements stipulated by the Hanford Tri-Party Agreement specifically regarding the DOE’s agreement to clean up waste at the Hanford site. The Hanford Tri-Party Agreement between the States of Washington, Oregon and DOE requires that the DOE is responsible for retrieving and treating Hanford tank waste and safely closing Hanford’s unfit-for-use single and double shell tanks in a timely manner. Regulation of this agreement is empowered by the federal consent decree among all parties. With the introduction of these proposed delays, Washington state perceives the DOE to be, “Procedurally defiant and prejudicial to the State,” according to the motion filed.
The consent decree has been the subject of back and forth between the state and DOE for some time. Currently, there is pending litigation between the two, as well as with the state of Oregon, over missed cleanup milestones at the site. In an effort to modify the consent decree, an Eastern Washington District U.S. Court judge has agreed to intervene in the litigation, and will consider proposals by all three litigants in the case to modify a better agreement. Washington estimates that DOE will miss at least 14 of the 16 consent decree deadlines, which are still pending. The continuous cycles of modification by the DOE may make it susceptible to sanctions, according to the state. DOE declined to comment on the state’s latest motion.
