Jay Inslee: Washington's 1st Congressional District

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Broken Commitments Regarding Storage of Radioactive Waste

5 March 2004

Today U.S. Rep. Jay Inslee sent a letter to the Department of Energy (DOE) expressing dismay about the Department's apparent intent to break its commitment to use lined trenches to store low-level radioactive waste at Hanford this year. Instead, the Department’s current plan (found in this month’s Environmental Impact Statement) is to continue storing radioactive waste in unlined trenches at Hanford until the end of 2007.

Inslee wrote, "The timeline chosen to require that use of lined trenches for the storage of low-level waste is completely contrary to the verbal commitment that you gave me.... Given the lined facilities already in existence and the potential for significant increases in the volume of waste being brought to Hanford for storage, there is no reason we should continue to dump radioactive wastes in unlined fills, particularly at Hanford where there is a track record of groundwater contamination ending up in the Columbia River."

The text of Inslee’s letter is below:

March 4, 2003

The Honorable Jessie Hill Roberson
Assistant Secretary for Environmental Management
U.S. Department of Energy
1000 Independence Avenue, SW
Washington, DC 20585-0113

Dear Ms. Roberson:

I am writing to express my concern with the DOE findings and preferred alternative for the Final Environmental Impact Statement for the Hanford Site Solid Waste Program (HSW EIS). As the DOE prepares the record of decision for the Hanford Solid Waste Program, I strongly urge you to more adequately address the timing of storage and burial of off-site generated low-level waste and mixed low-level waste in unlined trenches.

As you know, this issue of disposing off-site generated wastes at Hanford has drawn considerable concern from across the state. I joined my constituents and people from throughout western Washington in expressing our concerns at the public hearing for the HSW EIS that your agency held in Seattle in June of 2003. I am dismayed that the timeline chosen to require the use of lined trenches for the storage of low-level waste is completely contrary to the verbal commitment that you gave both me and Chairman Hobson in September 2003. Per my recollection of our meeting, you stated that DOE would begin to utilize lined trenches to store all low-level waste as soon as the appropriate paperwork was filed following the completion of the final HSW EIS.

It is therefore of great concern to me that the final HSW EIS does not address the immediate shift in storage and burial practices for low-level waste to one of sole use of lined trenches. Instead, the final EIS indicates that the practice of disposing of low-level waste in unlined trenches will continue until a large, lined storage facility is completed by September 2007. That this practice will continue for over three years from the completion of the final EIS is unacceptable, especially since:

DOE may be significantly increasing the volume of low-level waste it is importing into Hanford in the near future. In fact, the final EIS recommends that Hanford continue to receive large amounts of low-level and mixed-low-level waste from other DOE sites during the interim, which presumably will be disposed of in the existing unlined facilities;

DOE has the capacity to properly dispose of out-of-state low-level waste in lined trenches immediately, in RCRA compliant facilities such as the commercial facility in the state of Utah;

Studies completed at the Low-Level Burial Grounds indicate that some of the unlined trench sites are leaking radioactive waste;

Some of the low-level waste generated and imported to Hanford is as ‘hot’ and as large a threat to human health as the high-level waste and transuranic waste that is more rigorously stored at Hanford.

While I am pleased that we are in agreement that lined storage facilities are necessary to protect the communities of the Pacific Northwest, I am dismayed that the DOE would wait so long to implement such a necessary step. Given the lined facilities already in existence and the potential for significant increases in the volume of low-level waste being stored at Hanford, there is no reason we should continue to dump radioactive wastes in unlined fills, particularly at Hanford where there is a track record of groundwater contamination ending up in the Columbia River.

As you issue your Record of Decision for the Handford Solid Waste Program, I urge you to reconsider the timing by which all low-level waste at Hanford will be disposed in lined facilities, and ask that your Record of Decision address the immediate cessation of the practice of low-level waste disposal in unlined trenches.

I thank you for your prompt attention to this matter, and look forward to your response.

Sincerely,

Jay Inslee
Member of Congress

cc: Representative David Hobson