The Washington state Department of Ecology will continue so-called “holistic” negotiations on Hanford Site cleanup milestones with the Department of Energy and the Environmental Protection Agency at least through the end of June, a state spokesman said this week.
“We do have authorization to continue talks through June. No timeline yet for documentation of an agreement,” Ecology spokesman Randy Bradbury said in a Wednesday email.
A DOE spokesperson declined comment Friday.
David Bowen, Ecology’s nuclear waste program manager, told Weapons Complex Monitor last month that Ecology’s director, Laura Watson, initially set the end of May as a time when the state might pull out if little progress was apparent.
While the parties have agreed not to share details about the talks taking place with assistance from a federal mediator, “I am optimistic we can come to an agreement,” Bowen told the Monitor.
Ecology first proposed the talks about two years ago, saying it would take legal action unless the government parties could get on the same page on big issues —such as the timelines for retrieval and treatment of radioactive waste from Hanford’s 177 underground tanks that was left over from decades of plutonium production.
