Washington state and the federal government reached a “conceptual agreement” for future management of about 56 million gallons of radioactive waste at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site, the parties announced Tuesday.
DOE, Washington state Department of Ecology and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) said in a press release negotiators have reached “conceptual agreement in Holistic Negotiations” that will result in changes to both a federal consent decree and the Tri-Party Agreement.
But don’t expect to see details anytime soon.
The agencies are not going to have much more to say until the attorneys go through and produce a formal legal document for public review and comment. The process will likely take “months,” a federal representative said.
A spokesperson for the Washington state Department of Ecology concurred in an email.
“On the drafting process, we are not talking about a matter of days or weeks — it will be a longer process,” the state spokesperson said.
The outlines of the deal resulted from “nearly three years of discussions and more than 60 mediation sessions,” according to the joint press release. The agencies are now drafting potential amendments to the Washington versus Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm Consent Decree and the Tri-Party Agreement, according to the release.
“While this drafting process is underway, the agencies are restricted from discussing further details by the confidentiality terms of a mediation agreement between the agencies and the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service,” according to the release.
The end product will be subject to review and approval by state and federal officials, according to the release.
“It is tough to weigh in on this holistic deal-in-concept announcement, especially when the public has been shut out of these closed-door negotiations,” Hanford Challenge Executive Director Nikolas Peterson said in an email. The agreement could radically change the future of cleanup at the site and the public deserves a “real opportunity” for comment, he said.
“But, given that the agencies have already spent three years in negotiations, it is hard to imagine the public comment period will be anything more than ‘announce and defend,’” Peterson said. “We hope they prove us wrong.”
“Hanford is one of the most complex and technically challenging cleanup efforts in the world,” said David Reeploeg, executive director, of Hanford Communities via email. A deal is needed to speed cleanup, cut costs and increase cooperation between state and federal agencies, he said.
“This conceptual agreement appears to be a significant step forward in achieving that alignment, and we look forward to providing the Tri-City community’s input on the proposed changes once they become available for public review,” Reeploeg said.
President Joe Biden’s fiscal 2024 budget request for DOE “aligns with the conceptual agreement,” according to the press release.
Back in May 2019, then Washington Ecology director Maia Bellon was blasting DOE over dragging its feet on Hanford cleanup agreements and threatening to drag the feds into court absent a frank discussion of long-term cleanup of the former plutonium production complex.
In September 2019, DOE’s Hanford Site Manager Brian Vance formally agreed to talks: “a holistic and realistic path forward” on the schedule for disposal of radioactive tank waste stored underground at the site, Vance said at the time.
