Public meetings start at 7 PM
come early for a 6:30 pre-meeting workshop with Heart of America Northwest
Tuesday Nov 17 Seattle
UW Urban Horticulture Center
3501 NE 41st Street, Seattle, WA 98105
(south of University Village and golf
driving range)
Wednesday Nov 18
Portland
Marriot (Waterfront)
1401 SW Naito Parkway, Portland, OR
Thursday Nov 18
Hood River
Best Western 1108 E. Marina Way, Hood River, OR 97031
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We encourage you to send the following comments to the emails listed:
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- Do not change the 2024 deadline to cleanup soil sites on Hanford's
Central Plateau to some undefined, unenforceable date "To Be Determined."
- By 2020, investigate or start removing the radioactive waste stored in Hanford's unlined trenches so we don't have underground fires or explosions like those in Nevada.
- Set and keep a firm deadline for cleanup of the Central Plateau--"TBD" is irresponsible and unacceptable.
Comments can be copied and sent to:
Please renew your membership today!
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Dear
Don't let this happen at Hanford because of decade long delays proposed for cleanup:
Smoke billows as dirt and debris are launched into the air in a recently released video of an underground explosion of buried radioactive wastes at a commercial nuclear waste dump in Nevada last month.
The same company that operates this site, U.S. Ecology, also operates the unlined, leaking commercial radioactive waste dump in the center of Hanford. The cause of the explosion is likely chemical wastes buried in the trenches, but no one knows exactly what was emitted into the air, nor the likelihood of future related explosions or fires.
43 miles of similar trenches at Hanford
Agencies want to delay investigating them and cleaning them up by decades
We need you to say NO!!
There are 43 miles of unlined trenches on Hanford's Central Plateau filled with discarded radioactive waste that has not been characterized, or tested to identify the chemicals present. Unless the waste in these trenches is characterized and removed, Hanford could see similar incidents of underground fires or worse.
Unfortunately, the U.S. Dept. of Energy, the Washington State Dept. of Ecology, and the EPA are proposing changes to the Tri-Party Agreement (TPA) that will push back the deadline (called a milestone) for making decisions about cleanup of the Central Plateau another ten years, from 12/31/2016 to 6/30/2026.
What's worse, these changes will entirely get rid of any enforceable deadline for actual cleanup of the Plateau. The current deadline of 9/30/2024 will be changed to "To Be Determined"!
Without enforceable deadlines, USDOE has no obligation to ask for funding. Congress has shown it will not fund work that does not have an enforceable schedule and deadline.
Thus, no deadline equals no cleanup, equals uncharacterized waste remaining in unlined trenches, and the risk of this exposion occuring in one of Hanford''s trenches.
However, with your help we can hold the Tri-Parties accountable for their responsibility to create clear deadlines to clean up the Central Plateau.
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How waste was dumped in the 43 miles of unlined trenches at Hanford. The proposed TPA changes will delay investigating what is in unlined soil trenches for at least another decade, and replace the 2024 deadline for cleaning them up with
NO deadline.
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You Can STOP the Delays!
1. Attend the hearing near you next week
The principle of having enforceable schedule milestones for cleanup at Hanford is so important that Washington State went to court when the USDOE wanted to replace milestones with To Be Determined (TBD) dates for the High-Level Nuclear Waste
Treatment (Vitrification) plant.
So,
click here
to join us in asking Governor Inslee to apply the same principle for the dangerous soil trenches on Hanford's Central Plateau.
3.
Send your comments in to the agencies by
Please cc other agency leaders using emails in left column and be sure to cc us at: [email protected]
Here are sample comments
to use in your own words
at the meetings or in your emails:
It is not acceptable to delay Central Plateau soil site cleanup from 2024 to an unknown date which is going to be more than 20 years later.
The unlined soil trenches on Hanford's Central Plateau are dangerous. No one knows what is in them, and contamination will spread to groundwater.
WA State and Governor Inslee have repeatedly stated that having enforceable schedules is a firm state requirement. Therefore, the State should reject replacing the 2024 deadline with a date "to be determined." Indeed, WA State has gone to court for this principle
The rationale for delaying Central Plateau cleanup from 2024 is entirely based on budget and expecting that USDOE will not seek adequate funding. There is no technical challenge for retrieval of wastes from soil sites.
Replacing an enforceable schedule with an unenforceable date to be determined will take USDOE off the hook to ask for funding and removes Congress' obligation to fund the work after the investigations are done.
We need your comments and support--
As always, visit our website hanfordcleanup.org for more background info and thank you for caring!
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