The Washington state Department of Ecology is threatening to fine the U.S. Energy Department for withholding important data about operations at the Hanford Site.
For its part, DOE’s Office of Environmental Management claims the state misunderstands the level of access allowed under the 1989 Tri-Party Agreement that governs cleanup at the former plutonium production complex.
Ecology Nuclear Waste Program Manager Alexandra Smith said in a Aug. 19 letter that DOE is in violation of a Tri-Party Agreement milestone for “data access enhancements,” and that the state could begin enforcement actions including assessing civil penalties. The Tri-City Herald newspaper reported Monday the fines could top $1 million.
In her letter to William Hamel, DOE Richland Operations Office assistant manager for river and plateau, Smith said the federal agency has failed to make TPA-required data enhancements dating to March. The state agency believes it is being denied access to documents on treatment, storage, and disposal-related inspections and reports on visual and ultrasonic testing of double-shell tanks holding Hanford waste, among other things.
In a Sept. 19 reply letter, Hamel said the Tri-Party Agreement explicitly defines the list of Hanford databases that both Ecology and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) should have access to, and “Ecology should not be allowed to unilaterally change that list.”
The Tri-Party Agreement “must be read as a whole” and cannot be interpreted in a manner that contradicts federal law, Hamel wrote. The Energy Department must comply with both the Privacy Act and the Freedom of Information Act, and sometimes it must redact confidential business information from documents before they are released to outside agencies, he added.
“In this case, there has been no previous interpretation or demand for access that justifies the Ecology’s current position for unfettered access to all information,” Hamel wrote.
He added that there is a difference between “having access to data that supports the cleanup mission and having direct read, retrieve, and transfer access to that data.”
