Senate seeks hike of Hanford budget; House wants it cut

By Annette Cary, Herald staff writer

The Senate version of the Hanford budget for 2010 would increase environmental cleanup spending, but the House version would cut it.

Despite that mixed message, the budgets are good but not great news, said Gary Petersen, vice president of Hanford programs for the Tri-City Development Council.

The House version originally would have cut the Obama administration's proposed budget by $180 million. However, work by Rep. Doc Hastings, R-Wash., with Rep. Norm Dicks, D-Wash., a member of the House Appropriations Committee, reduced the proposed cut to $51.8 million.

In the Senate, Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., increased the administration's proposed budget by $120 million.

Final versions of the two spending bills will be reconciled after they are passed by the full House and Senate.

The Washington congressional delegation has had to fight the perception that because the Hanford nuclear reservation has begun to receive $1.96 billion from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, it can stand some cuts in its annual budget.

"It appears as though stimulus funds are being used as a substitute for annual cleanup budgets, but that was never the deal," Hastings said in a statement. "And, it's an excuse that isn't being used when it comes to other sites or other programs outside of (DOE environmental management) that also received stimulus dollars."

The annual budget pays for the most critical and highest risk cleanup work at Hanford, while the stimulus funds were allocated to work that Hanford contractors have shown they can do well. The stimulus work will help shrink the size of the nuclear reservation and reduce long-term overhead costs of cleanup.

"I have been clear that every year we need to spend what it takes to meet our legal and moral obligations to cleanup," Murray said in a statement. She called the money for Hanford cleanup in the annual budget "critical funding."

"This is an important step to restoring funding for big cleanup priorities like ground water protection and waste treatment," she said. "This will also help us capitalize on the money included in the recovery act that has accelerated cleanup and put workers back on the job."

The administration's proposed budget would increase the fiscal 2010 budget by $24 million over the current budget.

However, Murray and Hastings said that was inadequate, given years of declining Hanford budgets. Although the administration's proposal increased money for work at the Hanford tank farms, where 53 million gallons of radioactive waste are stored underground, it cut funding for other cleanup work assigned to the DOE Hanford Richland Operations Office.

The proposed Senate budget of $2.1 billion would add $120 million for work under the Richland Operations Office. Although details have not been released, the money is targeted for ground water protection and cleanup, K Basins work and central Hanford work on solid waste that includes temporarily buried waste contaminated with plutonium, or transuranic waste.

The Senate version of the budget passed the Senate Energy and Water Appropriations Subcommittee on Wednesday and is to be considered by the full Appropriations Committee today. Murray is a senior member of the committee.

"Sen. Murray is carrying the heavy load in the Senate," Petersen said. "Doc did tremendous work in the House to move some of the needed changes forward in the manager's amendment."

The manager's amendment deleted all but $51.8 million of proposed cuts in the House version. The House Appropriations Committee passed the proposed budget with the amendment early Wednesday morning after working late into the night.

Without the amendment, the budget would have cut $90 million from the DOE Richland Operations Office and $90 million from the DOE Office of River Protection, which is responsible for the tank farms and vitrification plant.

The version that passed the committee includes full funding of $690 million for the vitrification plant and $408 million, up from $320 million this year, for work at the tank farms.

However, work to clean up Hanford along the river corridor would receive $31.6 million less than the administration budget but still $64 million more than the current year. The second reduction from the administration's budget was $20 million for cleanup work in central Hanford.

"I'm particularly concerned about the steep cut proposed for (work along the) river corridor, which is responsible for reducing the highest risks to the Columbia River and shrinking the size of the site," Hastings said. "If this cut becomes reality, cleanup would be delayed, long-term costs would increase and milestones would be missed."

With the amount of money Congress is spending on other programs, it's reasonable to expect the federal government to meet its legal commitments for cleanup, he said.

The House is not expected to allow amendments to the bill that includes the Hanford budget when the bill next goes to the House floor, possibly next week.

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Thursday, Jul. 09, 2009

Senate seeks hike of Hanford budget; House wants it cut

By Annette Cary, Herald staff writer