Trump’s new energy secretary’s squishy responses on Hanford cause for concern | Editorial
The U.S. Senate on Monday confirmed fossil fuel executive Chris Wright to serve as U.S. energy secretary in the Trump administration. His new portfolio will include overseeing the cleanup of the Hanford nuclear reservation, and Tri-Citians should be worried. When asked about the cleanup during confirmation hearings, Wright’s answers left much to be desired.
Washington’s Sen. Maria Cantwell, long a proponent of Hanford cleanup, pushed to get Wright on the record as a supporter of the Tri-Party Agreement. The legally binding agreement sets clear environmental cleanup standards and deadlines that the Department of Energy must meet. Wright demurred.
The 580-square-mile site adjacent to Richland holds the toxic legacy of America’s efforts to win World War II and the Cold War. The site produced nearly two-thirds of the plutonium used in the nation’s nuclear arsenal during that period. Today, millions of gallons of radioactive and other hazardous waste are on the Tri-Cities’ doorstep.
The federal government for decades mostly ignored the problem, burying the waste beneath the sands and in obsolete buildings. That finally started to change in 1989 when the Energy Department, Environmental Protection Agency and Washington State Department of Ecology signed a cleanup plan – the Tri-Party Agreement. But it has taken a couple of decades more for the federal government to make serious progress on its obligations under the agreement.
Cleaning up Hanford site is a national moral obligation. This region sacrificed beautiful open space to the national war effort. Now it deserves restoration, not an endless nuclear waste dump that leaches into groundwater, soil and the Columbia River. River contamination poses health and environmental risk to everyone downstream – Richland, Kennewick, Pasco and most of the Washington-Oregon border.
Cleanup also is intertwined with the region’s economy. The cleanup, which costs billions of dollars each year, and the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory started at Hanford, provide jobs with profound ripple effects across local businesses and the world.
PNNL conducts vital research into the nation’s energy systems and technologies and has spun off local companies. Restoring Hanford also provides powerful proof to other high-tech energy companies that the Mid-Columbia is a place worth investing in.
Wright comes out of the fossil fuel industry, so perhaps it should not be surprising that he is not up to speed on what is happening at Hanford. During his confirmation hearings, he mouthed some of the correct answers but acknowledged he needed to do more homework. We wish he had.
“If confirmed, I will familiarize myself with the Hanford settlement agreement and would be happy to discuss the agreement and the critical importance of cleaning up the Hanford site,” he wrote in a follow-up to Cantwell after the confirmation hearing. It would be unfair to expect him to have studied every issue in the DOE portfolio before confirmation, but it is absolutely fair to expect him to get up to speed on his department’s obligations.
If he fails to honor the Tri-Party Agreement, he courts lawsuits that could prove needlessly distracting and expensive as the Trump administration seeks to reform the nation’s energy policy.
Wright acknowledged later that “legal agreements should be honored,” but his initial hesitation when prompted by Cantwell during his confirmation hearing leaves lingering doubts. The Tri-Party Agreement is not merely a bureaucratic formality the letter of which Wright and the DOE must follow. It is a legal safeguard designed to prevent any dilution of cleanup standards such as redefining what constitutes waste and what is safe storage.
Those shortcomings prompted Cantwell to vote against confirming Wright, saying, “His commitment to the Tri-Party Agreement and upholding it was unsatisfactory.” Washington Sen. Patty Murray and most other Democrats also opposed his confirmation.
Wright’s ties to the fossil fuel industry could divert his attention elsewhere or leave him unsympathetic to environmental concerns. Local leaders and the state’s congressional delegation must work to prevent that.
Remind the new energy secretary that he has an opportunity to send a powerful message that America’s energy future includes an unwavering commitment to cleaning up its past.