DOE FY’15 Budget Request Would Cut RL Funding by Approx. $93 Million
Kenneth Fletcher
WC Monitor
5/2/2014
As many as seven cleanup milestones at Hanford are at risk of being missed in Fiscal Year 2015 due to funding issues, a DOE official said this week. DOE’s Richland Operations Office faced one of the largest cuts in the Office of Environmental Management’s FY 2015 budget request, and came in at $848 million, about $93 million below current funding levels. However, other factors have also delayed work, DOE Richland Manager Matt McCormick said. “There are impacts that we have had at the Hanford site in terms of milestones that have already occurred because of sequestration of the Budget Control Act that happened a year ago, and then the almost four-month continuing resolution and the impacts of that to our schedule. So those impacts are there and there are milestones that we anticipate will be delayed because of that,” he said at a House Cleanup Caucus briefing.
The milestones fall under the Tri-Party Agreement between DOE, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Washington state Department of Ecology. “The next step is to engage the regulators in terms of those milestones and priorities coming this year and then next year and then work with the Tri-Party Agreement process in terms of understanding what milestones will be anticipated to be delayed and how to best address those through the Tri-Party Agreement process adjusting milestones as needed based on available funds,” McCormick said. Those talks are set to take place this month.
Milestones May Include K Basin Transfers, WESF
Milestones at risk in FY’15 include having the Plutonium Finishing Plant ready for demolition, retrieving 1,250 cubic meters of remote handled waste stored in burial grounds at the Central Plateau and certifying 250 cubic meters of small container handled transuranic mixed waste on the Central Plateau. Three other milestones involve feasibility studies and plans for surface areas in the outer part of the Central Plateau and East Area and groundwater in the inner area of the Central Plateau. A final milestone involves a feasibility study and plan for the deep vadose zone in the inner area of the Central Plateau. McCormick said this week: “We have made a lot of progress along the River Corridor. The president’s budget, if we are going to continue to make progress we are going to focus the monies along the Columbia River. … There’s more work to come as to exactly how we are going to prioritize and focus those funds in Fiscal Year ‘15.”
Missed Milestones Concern Sen. Murray
Last month Murray told Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz at a Senate Energy and Water Appropriations Subcommittee hearing that she is “really concerned” about the proposed funding cut and that it could “hamper” the progress being made to cleanup Hanford. “It really is unacceptable for DOE to kick the can down the road on this, nor is it acceptable to me and the Tri-Cities community to put near-term Tri- Party Agreement milestones at risk. The Washington State Department of Ecology and others have told me that there are at least four, possibly more, Tri-Party Agreement milestones that will be placed at- risk due to the budget proposal,” Murray said.
