The Public Deserves a Voice in What Happens at Hanford
We will be joining with other partners in the region to urge the Tri-Party Agreement (TPA) Agencies to extend their planned 60-day comment period and to hold public meetings throughout the region, including in times and places accessible to the people and communities impacted by Hanford’s pollution, including Tribal members, young people, and those who live downstream and downwind of Hanford.
Currently, agencies plan to begin accepting public comments on May 30 with public meetings in July.
Take Action: Please sign our petition below urging TPA agencies to extend the public comment period for changes to Hanford cleanup. They had several years to negotiate, and we need a few more months to think through what they decided.
To the U.S. Department of Energy, U.S. EPA, and Washington Department of Ecology:
We request an extension of the comment period regarding the proposed changes to the Tri-Party Agreement (TPA) stemming from the holistic agreement announced in late April. Communities throughout the Columbia Basin rely on clean water from Hanford, and the agreement negotiated behind closed doors and without input from Tribes or the public poses major new questions and concerns. The impacts of the agreement extend far beyond Hanford, and we urge agencies to solicit input from people throughout the areas that could be impacted by tank waste shipment, processing, storage, and disposal.
An extended public comment period, accompanied by public outreach and comment opportunities in the summer and fall, will benefit the TPA agencies by providing meaningful input that should guide revisions to the proposed changes.
Proposed changes to the TPA warrant an extension because, among other reasons:
- The changes are complicated and will have consequences for millennia.
- Environmental analyses have yet to be completed to evaluate all aspects of the proposed changes.
- The agreement and TPA changes could set a precedent for grouting waste at Hanford rather than vitrifying it, despite the state’s long-held stance that grout is not as effective in immobilizing waste as glass.
- The entire region deserves a voice in what happens next at Hanford.
- The agreement has implications for communities outside of Hanford where tank waste could be shipped, processed, stored or disposed of.
The effort to protect the Columbia River from the toxic and radioactive waste generated by decades of plutonium production for nuclear weapons matters to all of us, and we support a broad, inclusive public process to address the implications of the new agreement.
Sincerely,
Hanford is the most contaminated site in the Western Hemisphere. Cleanup matters.
