A federal judge has given former Hanford Site contractor Washington Closure Hanford and the Department of Justice a three-week extension to finalize a settlement agreement in a civil lawsuit over alleged subcontracting fraud. Judge Salvador Mendoza Jr. on Monday set a deadline for April 13. If the deadline is not met, a status conference will be held April 20 in U.S. District Court for Eastern Washington, he said.
Mendoza granted a 45-day stay of the court schedule on Jan. 9 after the parties said they had reached a settlement agreement in principle but needed to work out details. He then granted two 14-day extensions prior to the latest extension.
The Department of Justice said Washington Closure, the former River Corridor cleanup contractor at Hanford, needs to resolve unspecified issues related to closing out its contract with the Department of Energy in order to finalize an agreement and resolve the lawsuit. Washington Closure’s contract expired in September 2016 with most cleanup along the Columbia River at Hanford completed.
“The United States remains ready to execute the settlement agreement or move forward with litigation,” the Department of Justice said in court documents. Washington Closure requested the 21-day extension to the stay of court deadlines on Friday, and federal attorneys did not oppose it.
The Department of Justice accused Washington Closure of awarding small business subcontracts to front companies. Its DOE prime contract included small business subcontracting requirements. Washington Closure has said it did not knowingly claim false credit under its contract for awards to small, woman-owned businesses the Department of Justice alleged were actually fronts or pass-through organizations for Federal Engineers & Constructors (FE&C) of Richland, Wash.
Two other defendants in the lawsuit have settled since late summer. Both adamantly denied wrongdoing, but said they wanted out of the expensive and complicated litigation. Sage Tec, a small, woman-owned business, settled for $235,000. FE&C, which teamed with Sage Tec on two subcontracts, settled for $2 million.
The U.S. Energy Department on Tuesday issued the 2018 Project Excellence Award to the team in charge of building Saltstone Disposal Unit (SDU) 6, a 30-million-gallon salt waste disposal concrete unit constructed at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina.
Liquid waste contractor Savannah River Remediation (SRR) in July completed the disposal unit 18 months early and at a final cost of $118 million – about $25 million less than expected. The contractor led the effort with support from DOE personnel at the site.
The unit serves as a permanent disposal unit for saltstone, a low-radioactive salt waste found in the SRS storage tanks.
The Savannah River Site currently houses more than 30 million gallons of radioactive liquid waste that was generated during Cold War production of nuclear weapons. About 90 percent of that waste is salt waste and the rest is sludge. The salt waste is processed at Savannah River, and the resulting less-radioactive grouted solution so far has been stored in much smaller disposal units on-site.
Saltstone Disposal Unit 6 is 10 times larger than those prior units. Its presence allows the Energy Department to save roughly $500 million that would have spent on building several smaller disposal units.
By the end of the liquid waste mission, SRS is expected to house about 230 million gallons of treated salt waste. The Savannah River Site will need six more of the larger SDUs, among other facilities, to complete its liquid waste mission.
In November, the SDU 6 project also won the DOE Project of the Year Award for the DOE Office of Environmental Management (EM).
