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Tank waste meeting Oct. 26, 2000

To: "Hanford Watch mailing list" <hanfordwatch@telelists.com>
Date sent: Sun, 29 Oct 2000
Subject: [hanfordwatch] Tank Waste Meeting, October 26
From: paige s knight <paigeknt@juno.com>

The following is a combination of my notes and thoughts on the Washington Department of Ecology meeting that was held last Thursday for invited Stakeholders.

The big message from Ecology was that moving forward NOW is critical on the whole gamut of tank issues. The agency is struggling to get solid investment and contracts with the management on site.

Steve Wegman from the Office of River Protection was present and stated that although things with the tank programs had been shaky of late that there is a renewed commitment by Congress,and DOE Headquarters. They are finally looking at the whole waste treatment complex as an integrated facility, which is very different from what privatization was doing. DOE and Oregon Office of Energy feel that they have far better congressional support than they have ever had. Not everyone agreed with that. Budgets are looking "good " right now. The ORP wants to institutionalize contracts.

Mike Gearhard from EPA said they are committed to the schedule and success embodied in the TPA and they support the cleanup vision for the River that is part of Keith Klein's 2012 plan. Their role in tanks is oversight, obligated by Federal law. But the Consent Decree relegates the EPA to a different role — they are "brother" to the DOE in the Consent Decree and not one of the 3 parties. This is something we need more clarification on if we want to suggest putting cleanup into federal law. One of the things that Ecology explained in talking about the consent decrees is that besides EPA not being a 3rd party in them, a judge will make whatever ruling s/he makes and the outcome is a toss up. I don't know if that holds true for federal legislation on cleanup. It would be good to hear from some of the lawyers on this list about that — Mike Mullet, can you address this??

Tom Fitzsimmons of Ecology went over one of the major problems they are trying to solve right now with the "public's" help. Focus is being put on the glassificaiton of 10% of the waste in the tanks by 2011 or so, with incentives for whatever company is hired to do more than that, with the remaining 90% of the waste being dealt with by 2028. The question of whether the 2028 deadline was realistic as a driver was debated at length. Ecology is now negotiating with DOE to have milestones for 2009-2011 and 2018 in the consent decree. They have to achieve stabilization and work on the vadose zone issues: we need to deal with failing infrastructure. There will be a new contract for the level of output of glass with the beginning of operations. One of the other things that DOE and Ecology are debating is the definition of "compliance" with milestones.

Some of the discussion centered around the fact that the current timeline up to 2018 does not take advantage of lessons learned in past failures. Todd Martin spoke on this point of view. He has been a proponent of starting small and starting now on tank waste treatment. He brought up the following points:

While contractors and DOE are working on the 2018 deadline, what should we be thinking about the 2028 timeline — lessons learned??

One of the big issues is SAFETY: Interim storage of tank wastes is critical. Another question was how to use enddates in the TPA and waste treatment processes to drive technology development.

We called for much more intensive public involvement including at least quarterly updates on the milestone progress or failure around the state at times that were friendly to a working public — not the middle of the day before periodic Hanford Advisory Board meetings. We asked what about tank waste treatment this time is different from all the other times — why should the public get behind this plan?

If a new contract is not in place by January 16, we asked what will happen. Ecology will go immediately to the Attorney General before a judge and claim breach of contract. They can ask either for large penalties, another date, or wait. In the meantime there is in place a bridge contract with CH2M Hill to continue forth with design until a contractor is in place. We discussed also that Ecology does have control over mixed waste — can Governor Locke stop the flow of mixed waste, over which the State of Washington has sole authority, as a bargaining chip?

Washington and Oregon have filed a freedom of information act on all of the documents that might "justify" the flow of mixed waste onto the Hanford site..

We reviewed the principles and values of the Tank Waste Task Force Report of "93:

Other suggestions:

Please, any of you who also attended this meeting, including Ecology and Oregon Office of Energy, add to these comments — these are solely what I was able to capture at the time.

Paige Knight