I attended a public meeting at the Seattle Center last night where representative from Hanford presented information about the current cleanup efforts. These meeting are supposed to be held once a year in Seattle, Portland and Richland but it has been two years since the last round of meetings. It was a small gathering and the number of people who were there because it was their job were about equal to the number of concerned citizens.
There were glossy handout sheets, big posters, video clips and slide shows detailing work being done to clean up different areas of Hanford. The presenters from the U.S. Department of Energy (DoE) and the Washington State Department of Ecology were uniformly upbeat. Their opinion was that work is progressing, there have been some problems and some challenges remain but the outlook is rosy and everything is under control. They repeatedly said that there was no danger to the public.
After the official presentation, there were a number of questions from concerned citizens as wells as representatives of public groups such as Hearts of American North West, Physicians for Social Responsibility and Hanford Challenge. As one woman said, she appreciated the fact that some of the presenters did mention problems as well as progress but she would have appreciated more focus on the problems and challenges.
Washington State Representative Gerry Pollet was at the meeting as part of the Heart of American Northwest contingent, an environmental group that has been playing watchdog for the Hanford Cleanup for years. Rep. Pollet was concerned about the fact that while the DoE was voicing commitment to pumping waste out of a few leaking tanks, they had not given any dates for the work on some of the tanks. There has been a dispute between Washington State and DoE over a double walled tank called AY-102 that has been leaking for two years. This is much longer that provided for in Washington State law for dealing with leaking tanks. The State has issued an order for DoE to start pumping out that tank in September. One of the facts that emerged from the discussion was that unless there was a solid deadline for action, it would be difficult to get Federal money for work on the rest of the tanks.
The issue of worker safety was raised with special emphasis on recent injury to Hanford workers when toxic vapors escaped some of the tanks of waste. Over a dozen people had to be treated for the effects of the fumes. I questioned why Hanford representatives had played down the injuries of some of the workers. Hanford said that everyone had recovered and was back at work but I saw television interviews where some workers said that they were suffering long term heath effects and that they had not returned to work. The Hanford reps at the meeting gave the usual party line about how important safety was and that they were doing everything possible to insure health of workers. (Continued in Part Two)
Undergound tanks at Hanford:
