The parties in the federal trial over vapors at the Hanford Site have requested another extension to the case, after failing to reach a settlement agreement before a deadline Monday for the plaintiffs to identify their expert witnesses.
A joint motion requesting that Judge Thomas Rice delay the trial for a 10th time was filed Friday in U.S. District Court for Eastern Washington. Plaintiffs and defendants are asking Rice to push the trial date from Feb. 4, 2019, to April 8, 2019, and extend all deadlines for filings in the case by about 60 days. The judge most recently granted an approximately two-month delay in the trial and deadline extensions on Feb. 7. The case was originally scheduled to go to trial on May 22, 2017.
“While the parties have continued to make significant progress towards settlement, the parties have not yet reached an agreement,” the parties said in their most recent motion. Requests for further extensions are possible if the parties believe continued settlement talks could be productive, the motion said.
Washington state, the watchdog group Hanford Challenge, and the Plumbers and Steamfitters Local Union 598 sued the Department of Energy and its Hanford tank farm contractor, Washington River Protection Solutions, in September 2015. They are demanding better protection from chemical vapors for the workers at the site’s waste storage tank farms.
Most of the trial delays in the case have been at the request of both plaintiffs and defendants after Rice ruled in November 2016 that current worker protections at the Hanford tank farms, such as supplied air respirators, and other improvements adequately protect workers until trial. But he also said “the court does not deny that vapor exposures have occurred or that employees have experienced serious vapor-related illnesses.”
