October 18, 2015

Federal Judge Sets Panel of Technical Advisers

By ExchangeMonitor

A federal judge has named her panel of technical advisers for the Hanford Site consent decree case and announced that her meetings with them will be closed. She plans to discuss issues in the case with all three advisers present in person or by telephone, outside the presence of counsel, the public, or the parties in the case, U.S. Judge Rosanna Malouf Peterson said in an order filed in U.S. District Court for Eastern Washington. “The technical advisors will not be serving as expert witnesses,” she stated. “The court seeks an open dialogue among the technical advisors, and by excluding the parties, the public, and counsel from the discussions, the court intends to create an atmosphere in which the technical advisors openly engage in discussion with each other and the court.”

The judge agreed to the expert proposed by the state of Washington, over objections raised by DOE. The federal agency said Suzanne Dahl, the Washington state Department of Ecology section manager for tank waste treatment and the site-wide permit, lacked expertise to help the court unravel complex scientific, technical, and project management issues. Washington responded that her two decades of experience with Hanford and related regulatory issues make her uniquely qualified to serve as a technical adviser. “The court notes but overrules DOE’s objection,” the judge said.

Dahl’s extensive regulatory and project management experience make her qualified to serve, Malouf Peterson said. However, the judge is aware of the potential bias of both Dahl and the expert proposed by DOE, Jeffrey Trent, and she will evaluate their comments with that in mind, Malouf Peterson said. She accepted DOE’s proposal of Trent, an independent technical and project management consultant to the department, and accepted the expert jointly proposed by Washington state and DOE, Per Peterson, professor of nuclear engineering at the University of California, Berkeley.

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