Members of Washington state’s congressional delegation used two recent emergencies at the Hanford Site to make the case for strong funding for the Department of Energy facility in a letter to Energy Secretary Rick Perry.
“It is clear aging infrastructure and the waste contained within it continues to present a threat to the health and safety of the Tri-Cities community, the Columbia River, Washington state and our nation,” according to the letter signed by Sens. Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell (both D) and Rep. Dan Newhouse (R).
The letter is dated May 19 and was posted on Murray’s website Monday, one day before the Trump administration is expected to release its federal budget proposal for the next fiscal year.
The partially collapsed radioactive waste tunnel discovered May 9 at the PUREX plant in central Hanford is just one example of the many facilities waiting to be decontaminated and demolished, the lawmakers said. Central Hanford has 1,000 waste sites, 500 facilities, and contaminated soil and groundwater that pose a risk to workers and the public and need to be cleaned up, they wrote.
The letter was sent Friday just as word was spreading that contamination found on a robotic crawler suggested a second Hanford double-shell tank might be leaking radioactive waste into the space between its shells. On Monday, workers inserted a video camera down the first of several risers to check for any waste on the floor of the space between the shells.
When the letter to Perry was made public on Monday, it was accompanied by a statement saying that strong funding for the Hanford waste tanks program also is needed. Murray, Cantwell, and Newhouse also repeated their invitation for Perry to visit Hanford.
