House Spending Bill Provides Less for New WTP Interim Pretreatment System

House appropriators are looking to provide less than what the Department of Energy is seeking for next year to begin work on a new interim pretreatment capability for the Hanford Waste Treatment Plant. In its FY 2015 request, DOE asked for $23 million to begin work on the Low Activity Waste Pretreatment System, which is part of the Department’s plan to start up the Hanford vit plant’s Low Activity Waste Facility, Facility, along with its Analytical Laboratory and other support facilities (collectively known as ‘LBL’), ahead of the other portions of the WTP that still have technical issues that need to be fully resolved. The House version of the FY 2015 Energy and Water Appropriations bill, however, would only provide $12 million to begin “detailed design activities,” according to the report accompanying the bill that was released yesterday. “The Committee does not support further acceleration of construction for the new framework agreement until DOE can resolve the cost and schedule uncertainties of its proposal,” the report says.

The House bill would match DOE’s request of $690 million for the WTP, though the report expresses concern over the Department’s cost accounting practices for the project. “The Department needs to provide considerably greater detail on the use of its funding, including its anticipated cost and schedule requirements for resolving the outstanding technical issues of the WTP,” the report says, adding, “The Committee is also concerned that DOE has been shifting the allocation of funding for WTP-related work between Tank Farms and WTP subprojects by adjusting accounting codes for ‘Shared Services’ in an effort to artificially show that a nominal $690,000,000 per year is being spent on the project. It is essential that the Department establish formal methods of accounting for its project costs so that overall progress can be tracked, contractor performance can be monitored and taxpayer dollars are not wasted.”