Governor Ferguson to Energy: Do your job at Hanford

KENNEWICK - At a press event Friday, Governor Bob Ferguson joined elected officials, tribal leaders and labor representatives to send a clear message: Washington state will take legal action to hold the Trump Administration accountable to its obligation to Hanford's multi-billion-dollar Waste Treatment Plant.

The facility is weeks away from beginning operations to turn millions of gallons of highly radioactive and chemically hazardous waste into glass through a process called vitrification - a milestone in the cleanup process that has taken years to get to. Once vitrified, Hanford's waste would remain stable in the glass for thousands of years, and could be safely disposed of, no longer at risk of leaking from degrading tanks, seeping through the soil into the groundwater, and eventually reaching the Columbia River.

Ferguson spoke to reporters Friday alongside the Washington State Department of Ecology Director Casey Sixkiller and community representatives.

The federal government's decision to halt operations at the Waste Treatment Plant would be "a stunning waste of resources, a violation of multiple legal agreements and a slap in the face to the workers who have brought us to this point," Governor Ferguson said.

"We're all here today to send a clear message to the Trump Administration. We will hold the federal government accountable to its obligation here at Hanford - to live up to its responsibilities and clean up what they left behind," Ferguson said.

Hanford's waste

In 1943, the U.S. military picked what is now the Hanford Site in southeast Washington to make plutonium. From World War II through the cold war, more than 60 percent of the nation's plutonium was made at Hanford, including what was used in the Fat Man bomb dropped over Nagasaki.

When production ended in 1989, state and federal regulators and the surrounding community uncovered the magnitude of the contamination left behind: 56 million gallons of highly radioactive and chemically hazardous waste. The waste is stored in 177 huge underground tanks at the Hanford Site, and all of them are past their 25-year design life. Cleaning up and disposing of this waste is some of the most dangerous and complicated cleanup work left at Hanford.

Watch the press conference on TVW.