Hanford: "The River Runs Through it"

by Lynn Porter

At the October 3-4 regional conference on Hanford and the Columbia River ("The River Runs Through It"), Dr. Helen Caldicott referred tothe Cold War as a "psychotic era" and Hanford as "satanic." From 1943 to the late 1980s, Hanford produced plutonium for the 77,000 nuclear weapons cranked out by the U.S. Department of Energy.

Caldicott pointed out that plutonium will be dangerous for 245,000 years. "You can't clean it up," she said. Well no, but we can immobilize it, and the rest of Hanford's nuclear and chemical trash, to keep it out of the environment, out of the river.

A central issue at the conference was, how do we make the Hanford cleanup happen? There is a lot of frustration in the Northwest with DOE's slow, stumbling attempts to clean up Hanford. There has been a frequent change of DOE Secretaries in the last several years, and a general leadership vacuum at the agency.

Dr. Ernest Moniz, a DOE Undersecretary, and John Wagoner, Hanford DOE manager, briefly attended the conference, where they gave public relations speeches, long rambling non-answers to a few tough questions, and then quickly left.

Hanford whistleblower Casey Rudd told us that $15 billion has been spent on Hanford since 1989 and not much has been cleaned up. He said we should "remove DOE from running this site." "Nobody," he said,"could screw it up any worse." He said DOE has no leadership, no vision, and that we need to "create a movement" to get Hanford cleaned up.

Another Hanford whistleblower, John Brodeur, also spoke of DOE's lackof vision. The Department of Energy is a huge bureaucracy, he said,which discourages "out of the box thinking." The illusion of cleanup is more important than actual cleanup. The purpose is simply to keep the "economic engine" going so people can make money. People are afraid to take responsibility and there is "overwhelming opposition to change."

Tom Woods, technical advisor to the Yakima Nation, said that "self-serving agendas" at Hanford "are killing us." All DOE shoots for is "minimum compliance with regulations." Hanford "has lost heart. There is no passion there." The people running Hanford "need nightmares" to remind them of what is at stake. "Hanford's coming down the river to our grandkids."

Woods said the Hanford cleanup is very complex, probably on a par with the Apollo project that put men on the moon. There are some very bright people at Hanford, but their focus is very narrow, and there is no leadership to show them the big picture.

Glen Spain, northwest regional director of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fisherman's Associations, said the Columbia is the most salmon productive river in the world. Fishing on the river is a multi-billion dollar industry which provides hundreds of thousands of jobs. Hanford's effect on the river is a clean water issue and a public health issue. Spain said that the situation could get much, much worse if critical steps are not taken in the next five years. He said he hopes to use the Endangered Species Act to force Hanford cleanup.

Gerry Pollet, executive director of Heart of Amerca Northwest, called for replacing the top management at Hanford. Control of the Hanford cleanup should be taken away from DOE, he said, and given to a new board appointed by Washington and Oregon governors.

Mike Grainey, of the Oregon Office of Energy, told the conference that Oregon needs to be admitted to full partnership in the Tri-PartyAgreement -- the legal contract between DOE, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and Washington state that controls cleanup. Now Oregon has only an advisory role, even though we have the largest population downstream from Hanford. When Tri-Party Agreement negotiations are conducted, Oregon is not even allowed to be in the room. "Since Oregon shares in the risks from Hanford it is only right that we share in the decisions as well."

Oregon Senator Ron Wyden said he is hopeful that Bill Richardson, the recently appointed Secretary of Energy, will get Hanford cleanup on track. If not, Wyden said he would support taking Hanford away from the Department of Energy.

Summing up the need for action, Hanford Watch president Paige Knight told the conference that "one person doing one thing makes an incredible difference." A handwritten letter "is the most powerful thing a legislator can get." Eventually, she predicted, we will probably have to march on Hanford to get action.

Paige closed by quoting from a poem by Sherman Alexi, "The Powwow at the End of the World": "I am told that I must forgive and so I shall after the salmon swims upstream, through the mouth of the Columbia and past the flooded cities, broken dams and abandoned reactors of Hanford.. I must forgive and so I shall when I am dancing with my tribe during the powwow at the end of the world."