Washington Gov. Jay Inslee (D) posted a video online over the weekend to mark the 33rd anniversary of the Tri-Party Agreement between Washington, D.C. and Washington state that governs cleanup of the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site.
Inslee used the anniversary of the 1989 legal agreement between the Washington Department of Ecology, DOE and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to nudge Congressional appropriators to provide Hanford more than the $2.5 billion requested by the Joe Biden administration for cleanup in fiscal 2023.
The figure would be less than the $2.6 billion included in the final fiscal 2022 appropriation, and which according to Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) would kick key projects down the road.
“In 33 years, there has been lots of progress, thanks to the TPA,” Inslee said of the Tri-Party Agreement. “But the federal government has been under-funding the Hanford cleanup and is behind schedule on TPA milestones.”
“We are watching budget negotiations very carefully,” Inslee said, adding he appreciates the “all in efforts” by the state’s Congressional delegation to squeeze more cleanup dollars out of the feds for cleanup of the former plutonium production site.
“We understand the need to fund this cleanup now and not decades into the future,” Inslee said. “Let’s put our shoulders to the wheel and get this job done.”
Inslee’s presentation, shared via Twitter, made no mention of the long-running “holistic talks” taking place behind closed doors between the three agencies and a federal mediator.
