The governing board for Benton County, Wash., home to the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site, has urged New Mexico officials not to restrict interstate shipments of transuranic waste to DOE’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) near Carlsbad, N.M.
“The Benton County Board of Commissioners writes to express our concern that the draft permit modification for the WIPP recently issued by the New Mexico Environment Department (NMED) will by extension slow down and endanger cleanup progress at Hanford and other weapons complex communities across the country,” according to the text of the May 12 letter.
The commissioners sent the letter to New Mexico Environment Department Secretary James Kenney.
In April, NMED proposed to modify the WIPP permit for the second time in three years to prioritize shipments of legacy waste from the Los Alamos National Laboratory. NMED is taking comments on the proposed change until June 8.
Hanford, a former plutonium production site, is preparing to restart shipments of transuranic waste to WIPP within a couple of years.
“Hanford is a Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) partner in America’s national cleanup mission, and as such the condition and operation of WIPP is important to us even though our communities are 1,500 miles apart,” the Benton County board wrote.
“As the nation’s only deep geological repository for defense-related transuranic waste, WIPP is important to the Hanford Site, making it the linchpin for all cleanup efforts across the entire [DOE Office of Environmental Management] EM complex,” the Benton County board said in the letter. “WIPP’s continued operation and accessibility to sites across the nation are critical.”
Modifications restricting WIPP’s ability to accept shipments from across the EM complex “could weaken WIPP’s operations and threaten jobs at WIPP,” Benton County said the in the letter. “Reducing shipments to WIPP could have a negative impact on the facility, potentially disrupting WIPP’s operations, to the detriment of EM sites across the country and their neighboring communities.”
The letter from Benton County, Wash., to NMED was included in an agenda package for a May meeting of the Benton County Board of Commissioners.
WIPP is managed by DOE by a Bechtel-led prime, Salado Isolation Mining Contractors.