Frustration builds as DOE drags feet on local Hanford board

The Department of Energy in Washington, D.C., has failed to take usually routine action for three months, leaving the Hanford Advisory Board in limbo.

The diverse board weighs in on Hanford nuclear reservation issues, giving DOE and its regulators a gauge of public opinion.

Seats on the board are allocated to represent a range of interests, including environmental groups, organized labor, business, tribes, Tri-City area government, Hanford workers, higher education and health.

They come to an agreement on advice to DOE and its regulators, rather than offering divided opinions.

“The HAB provides invaluable guidance, resulting in much better decision-making at Hanford,” said one of the regulators, the Washington State Department of Ecology Nuclear Waste Program, in a statement Monday.

By the end of June of each year, DOE headquarters officials must approve appointing or reappointing half the board members and alternates for the board seats. DOE has yet to do that this year.

The matter came to a head in September when one of the board’s five meetings set for fiscal 2017 had to be canceled for lack of a quorum. The fiscal year ended in September.

Then the board was told that there also could be no more board activities until appointments were approved, according to board members. That meant no telephone committee meetings for planning in September and no in-person board committee meetings to talk about issues early this month.

“It’s incredibly frustrating,” said Susan Leckband, the chairwoman of the Hanford Advisory Board.

DOE has given no reason for not approving the appointment and reappointment of board members and alternates.

The board has 32 seats, each with a primary representative plus one alternate and in a few cases, two alternates. Each year DOE is routinely sent packets of information about each member, including members named by the organizations that have seats on the board.

However, DOE said in a statement Monday that it was close to finalizing the membership packages for the board and would schedule the next meeting of the group “in the near future.”

It also said that a meeting of the leaders of the DOE advisory boards for cleanup sites across the nation would be held as scheduled in the Tri-City area on Oct. 17.

One of the Hanford Advisory Board members waiting to be reappointed to the board is Leckband, its chairwoman.

Ecology’s Nuclear Waste Program said it hopes the department will act soon to reconvene the advisory board. But if it does not, the state program has the legal option to convene a community advisory board.

“We don’t expect to have to exercise that option, but are ready to do so if it becomes necessary,” said Randy Bradbury, spokesman for Ecology’s Nuclear Waste Program.

Hanford always faces difficult, complex issues, and that is certainly true now, said the statement from Ecology’s nuclear waste program.

DOE must make decisions on how it plans to stabilize one of the PUREX waste storage tunnels, wrap up of the demolition of the Plutonium Finishing Plant and a path forward on treatment of radioactive waste held in underground tanks, the state agency said.

“In addition, the department is working on its overall cleanup review that’s intended to determine what it should make its immediate priorities, what cleanup actions can wait a few years and which things can be put on hold to be revisited farther down the road,” Ecology’s Nuclear Waste Program said.

“The board wants DOE to succeed in cleanup. We are not adversarial,” Leckband said. “We want the safest, best, most cost effective cleanup that can happen.”

This story was originally published October 2, 2017 at 7:49 PM with the headline "Frustration builds as DOE drags feet on local Hanford board."