Paige and I participated in the September HAB meeting, and want to give everyone a summary of what happened there. My summary below is, unavoidably, the product of how I heard and understood the presentations and discussions. I'll try to report these as I heard them, without offering a lot of my own commentary.

Bill: The quarterly Public Involvement Committee meeting took place Wednesday afternoon. The main event was part of DOE-Richland's unveiling of their "Done in a Decade" 10-year plan for the Hanford site. They've been presenting the plan to each of the HAB committees, and have mailed out draft publicity materials to a list of "highly involved stakeholders." They're taking public comments through Sept 30.

Paige: Actually there is not a time limit that strict on it — the thrust is that the DOE wanted to get comments out to us in the early stages of their thinking (now) and get feedback, both negative and positive so that they can make changes — attempting to get some kind of broad consensus so that DOE can begin building its budget request in the next several months for the 2002 budget. Keith Klein's reasoning on these changes partly lies in having plans to present to Congress that show closure of some kind, which is the kind of planning that seems to be drawing the necessary funds to the smaller sites.

Bill: Discussion of this plan continued throughout Thursday and Friday. At the committee meeting and in the full meeting, HAB members expressed plenty of skepticism about the plan's title. Of course, DOE doesn't plan to be done in a decade in the normal sense of "done." Apparently, what the title is supposed to mean is that a certain amount of work will be done in a decade. Their key concept is to "shrink the site" by attacking some (presumably) manageable problems aggressively while deferring others.

The attack will be along the "River Corridor," which includes the "100" area where the reactors are as well as the "300" area near Richland. The deferral will be in the "200" area, the central plateau, where the tanks, Plutonium Finishing Plant, and reprocessing plants are. Those are the most difficult of Hanford's problems. Tentatively, public meetings on this topic will be held in conjunction with the November and December HAB meetings (in Pasco and Portland/Clackamas, respectively).

Also at the Public Involvement Committee meeting, Dennis Faulk of EPA discussed the Tri-Party Agreement's Community Relations Plan. He's looking for input from interested parties by December, as they consider updating this plan. A public "user's guide" for community relations was published in February 1997, and is available by calling the "Hanford Cleanup toll-free line" at 1-800-321-2008.

Thursday evening, an informal discussion took place regarding the tank wastes and the vitrification project, under the auspices of the ad hoc tank waste committee. The Office of River Protection, which has responsibility for the tanks and the tank waste vitrification project, is working to recover from the dual shocks of the failure of the BNFL project and the firing of Dick French. They've issued a "Request for Proposals" (RFP) from new bidders on the vit project and want to have a contractor in place by January. Apparently, the RFP strongly favors contractors who will preserve the basic BNFL design rather than striking out in new technical directions. Some of those at the discussion saw that as good (preserving the work that's been done so far), others as bad (excluding new technical approaches that might be better).

A key issue is that if a vit plant doesn't happen in time, Hanford is running out of tank space. The present situation is that stuff is pumped from risky (prone to leaking) tanks into presumably safer ones. But soon, there will no place left to pump stuff. Two million gallons of space remain, which will be used up by 2006. Two responses, or a combination of the two, are possible: get a vit plant working and/or build more storage tanks. Both tasks cost money and take time, so decisions, budget planning, and technical planning have to happen soon. The current projection for starting vit plant operations is 2007, but this would only begin the testing stage. Commissioning would take place in 2011.

Paige: There was good attendance at this informal discussion and a high level of concern about delays in tank waste treatment. It was the beginning of some hard discussions to come. On Friday, Todd Martin challenged the DOE, the regulators and the Board to look at the possibility of gearing the plan down — he feels that we just need to start now, slowly rather than on a huge ramped-up scale which has been the way people have been planning. We are asking for so much money for a project that is starting out way too big that we will never get the dollars from Congress, so let's start small and get some success in producing glass. This is not as clear and eloquent as Todd stated it — I presume he will add his two cents to this after reading my simplistic synopsis. This idea is akin to what I have been hearing from some of the contractors who've been on the job for the last two years of planning.

Bill: Most of the full Board meeting on Thursday was spent laying background for Friday morning, and centered primarily on the issues raised above. The main event of the full Board meeting took place Friday morning, when the two top DOE Hanford managers, Keith Klein (DOE-Richland) and Harry Boston (Office of River Protection) spent the morning with the Board. Keith Klein had an opportunity to explain his Done in a Decade plan more fully, and Harry Boston had a chance to talk about how they plan to proceed with the tank waste vitrification project. High-level people from the Environmental Protection Agency, the Washington Department of Ecology, and the Washington Department of Public Health participated in the discussion as well. The Board doesn't often meet directly with these people, so this was a special event.

Keith Klein's explanation of his plan was along these lines. He wants to make visible progress ("changing the skyline") by taking down buildings, removing contaminated soil, and reopening the River Corridor to public use (one big question is "what kind of use" — "commercial," "industrial," "recreational," and "residential" standards would imply different levels of cleanup). By "shrinking the site" from 560 square miles to 50-70 square miles, he hopes to get workers off all that territory and thereby significantly reduce operating costs. In his strategy, that would be like paying off a mortgage early to free up monthly payments for other uses, or like getting some more manageable tasks out of the way in order to focus on the really big ones. That's his reasoning again, HAB members voiced plenty of skepticism, and the discussion is just beginning. We all need more specifics to think this concept through, and public feedback to Keith Klein's office will be an important part of the discussion.

Harry Boston's explanation of his plan was along these lines. He believes a new contractor can be found and a vit plan can be built, falling only 13 months behind the original schedule for the BNFL project. The Request for Proposals is only for someone to build the plant and take it through a checkout period to see that it works properly. At that point an operating contractor would take over. The company that built the plant would be likely to want this job, but it might also be a new contractor. HAB members expressed concerns about a number of issues: will the contractor see the construction through to completion, will the plant work, can a new company really come in and operate a plant built by someone else, does the RFP effectively exclude new and better technical approaches, can the project be done within the tight budget specifications laid out in the RFP?

Connected to both the "Done in a Decade" plan and the ORP plan are issues of modifying the Ti-Party agreement among DOE, EPA, and the Washington Department of Ecology. What changes will these plans entail, how will they be negotiated, and what will be the effects of these changes?

On Friday afternoon, the HAB committees on Environmental Restoration and on Health, Safety and Waste Management decided to meet jointly next week to consider all these issues.

Paige: The regulators are interested in setting milestones [cleanup deadlines in the TPA] and getting commitments, but they want realistic ones. Some of the milestones are being set in essence by the current consent decree with the State of Washington and after this consent decree is signed, another one will be put into place. It seems that Keith Klein and Harry Boston are much more in sinc than Dick French and Keith Klein were. Hopefully they can work together effectively and move us further toward more cleanup, but there is fear about more changes in personnel and policy or plans with the coming change of administrations.

Bill: A couple of other things that came up at the meeting are:

Merilyn Reeves, who everyone agrees has been an extraordinarily effective Board chairperson, is retiring from that position. A process is underway to select her replacement. Merilyn has served as a volunteer, but the job is enormous and requires very special skills. It seems likely that the next chair will need to be paid appropriately, and it's not clear where that money will come from.

The Board developed a piece of formal guidance for the DOE regarding how contractor bonus fees are awarded. The intent of the advice is to insure more openness on the part of the contractors and to make sure that their efforts are spent on the most important tasks.

Please feel free to respond to this message, or to contact Paige or me separately, if you have comments or want more information.

Bill Kinsella