EARTH DAY: HANFORD ACTION Your comments are needed this week on Washington Department of Ecology's proposed permit for USDOE - Hanford's "Test Bed Initiative" Comment period closes Thursday 4/25/2024.
Comment today * Remove leakable liquids from High Level Waste tanks * Stop the US Department of Energy from trucking liquid radioactive chemical wastes through downtown Spokane.
One action for Earth Day:
Todays Earth Day! Please take a few minutes to act as well as reflect on the threat of climate change, and what you can do to lower the risks from nuclear weapons production at Hanford.
Your comments toady on Washington Department of Ecology's proposed permit for the US Department of Energy - Hanford's "Test Bed Initiative" can make a difference in REMOVING waste threatening the Columbia from Hanford for the first time! BUT we have to ensure that the waste is not trucked as a liquid through Spokane.
Hanford’s leaking High Level Nuclear Waste tanks cannot continue to be ignored.
The Test Bed Initiative (TBI) offers the opportunity to remove leakable liquids from tanks that are leaking today or are likely to start leaking soon.
Hanford’s groundwater and the Columbia River will be contaminated for thousands of years if all the waste that is currently planned to be removed from Hanford’s tanks is disposed in landfills onsite.
The “Test Bed Initiative” (TBI) offers the first hope for speeding up removal of leakable liquids from High Level Nuclear waste tanks decades ahead of current plans for vitrification (glassification) and for reducing how much waste is disposed in landfills along our Columbia River at Hanford.
TBI will test if 2,000 gallons can be removed from a High Level Waste Tank, solidified and treated to be disposed at sites where there is no drinkable groundwater that can ever be contaminated (the sites are in West Texas or Utah).
The US Department of Energy (USDOE) can solidify and treat the waste at a licensed facility next to Hanford so that there is no risk from spilling liquid waste in a truck accident on I-90.
Instead, USDOE wants to ship the waste as a liquid through Spokane for either 900 or 1,900 miles to be treated in Utah or Texas.
The Umatilla Indian Tribe (CTUIR) objects strongly to shipping the liquid wastes through their Reservation or through Spokane:
“The current plan to transport waste in liquid form poses for us an unacceptable risk of spills and harm to the environment, First Foods, and our citizens. The current proposal is especially disappointing given that shipping waste in a grouted, immobile, solid form is a viable and much safer option.
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“To be clear, the CTUIR requests the following:
1. Do NOT ship liquid Hanford tank waste across the Columbia Basin. Only ship this waste in GROUTED/SOLID form.
2. Move forward with large-scale grouting and out-of-state disposal as soon as reasonably allowable to decrease the risk of leaking Hanford tanks on the CTUIR's treaty-protected resources.”
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We agree with the Umatilla Tribe (CTUIR). The Tribe and we need your comments to help make this happen.
Heart of America Northwest has spent decades fighting USDOE’s plans to truck more waste to be dumped at Hanford, including successfully stopping shipments through Spokane. The TBI is our first hope to remove waste from Hanford, instead of adding more risk to the Columbia River.
But it has to be done safely by only trucking solid, treated waste with very low radioactivity – not trucking untreated liquids through Spokane and other vulnerable communities and Indian Reservations.
Use our sample comments from the section below to Washington’s Department of Ecology, but please add in your words why this is important to you. Perhaps you live near I-90 in Spokane. Or, you have hoped for years that we could remove waste from Hanford.
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Ecology comment form:
https://nw.ecology.commentinput.com/?id=tNePGUiA5
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Use these sample comments - adding a few words on why removing waste from Hanford or not shipping liquid waste through Spokane are important to you.
(Comment period closes Thursday 4/25/2024.)
To Washington Ecology and Governor Inslee:
Ecology should not permit the US Department of Energy (USDOE) to truck untreated liquid wastes from Hanford’s High Level Nuclear Waste tanks through Spokane or across Oregon and the Umatilla Indian Reservation.
I strongly support moving forward with the test to remove and treat 2,000 gallons from Hanford’s tanks for disposal offsite in licensed facilities where the waste does not create any risk to groundwater, Ecology has a duty to consider and take "mitigation" action to prevent the risk from a truck accident in Spokane or anywhere on the 900-1,900 mile truck routes. This is an environmental justice issue as well as a risk to the Spokane River.
I agree with the Umatilla Tribe whose Chair wrote to USDOE:
“The current plan to transport waste in liquid form poses for us an unacceptable risk of spills and harm to the environment, First Foods, and our citizens. The current proposal is especially disappointing given that shipping waste in a grouted, immobile, solid form is a viable and much safer option.
“To be clear, the CTUIR requests the following:
1. Do NOT ship liquid Hanford tank waste across the Columbia Basin. Only ship this waste in GROUTED/SOLID form.
2. Move forward with large-scale grouting and out-of-state disposal as soon as reasonably allowable to decrease the risk of leaking Hanford tanks on the CTUIR's treaty-protected resources.”
USDOE agreed not to truck the waste through Oregon and the Umatilla Reservation. Unselfishly, the Umatilla Tribe has continued to advocate that liquid wastes should not be trucked at all when there is a licensed facility that can solidify and treat the waste next door to Hanford and avoid trucking wastes through Spokane on I-90 for 900 miles to Utah or 1,900 miles to Texas for disposal.
I want the test for 2,000 gallons of waste to proceed. But if it succeeds there will be thousands of shipments. Ecology has a duty under SEPA and the HEAL Act to consider and mitigate the risks from truck shipments through low income “overburdened” communities in Spokane or on Indian Reservations by requiring that the waste is solidified and treated at the licensed facility adjacent to Hanford instead of trucking untreated liquid waste.
Any spill of liquids from Hanford will be an international news incident as well as putting residents and the environment at risk.
USDOE did not even consider risks from the chemicals in the liquid wastes and acknowledges that there is a risk of one “accidental crash” for a truck with these wastes every 884 shipments from Hanford to Texas. That is too high a risk to go without Washington requiring that the waste be solidified before being trucked through Spokane or Oregon and the Umatilla Reservation.
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Ecology comment form:
https://nw.ecology.commentinput.com/?id=tNePGUiA5
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Thank you,
Gerry Pollet
Heart of America Northwest
10212 Fifth Ave NE Suite 255
Seattle, WA 98125 US
Wow, Peter - what timing - talk about synchronicity!!
DONATE ON EARTH DAY!!
Make a donation to Heart of America Northwest
https://www.wagives.org/donate/heartofamericanorthwest
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MISSION
Heart of America Northwest is "The Public's Voice for Hanford and toxic site cleanup in the Northwest."
http://www.hanfordcleanup.org
Leading newspapers call us "the premier Hanford cleanup watchdog group," for our research, educating and organizing across the Northwest to protect the Columbia River and health of future generations from Hanford's contamination. Our mission includes fighting for environmental justice, climate change and training tomorrow's organizers, legal, public health professionals. We offer the workshops and Comment Guides that are the leading tools to help the public - you - be effective advocates.
We led the successful ballot initiatives and years-long organizing struggles:
* that stopped Hanford from being the nation's High-Level Nuclear Waste dump and
* brought and end to using massive unlined ditches to dump the nation's nuclear weapons and reactor wastes; t
* shut-down the FFTF nuclear reactor;
* required USDOE to have a program to cleanup the contaminated groundwater that flows into the Columbia River...
NOW, we are leading to protect our Columbia River and the health of generations to come from the leaking High Level Nuclear Waste tanks that the US Department of Energy refuses to empty. Federal and state laws require removal of leakable liquids from leaking hazardous waste tanks. In 2023, we filed a legal challenge to the secretly negotiated deal between USDOE and Washington Ecology to let tanks keep leaking. We secured a settlement requiring significant steps towards complying with the law. During 2024, the analyses required under our legal settlement should be part of public hearings on responding to tank leaks.
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DESCRIPTION
Hanford, in our backyard, is the most contaminated area and most dangerous industrial facility in the Western Hemisphere. As you read this, radioactive and chemical contamination flows into the Columbia River and numerous facilities could release vast amounts of radiation in a mild earthquake.
When High-Level Nuclear Waste tanks leak, we're the legal and organizing defense to protect the Columbia River, Treaty rights and health for thousands of years.
As you read this, another High-Level Nuclear Waste tank is leaking. And the US Department of Energy refuses to obey the law that requires leaking tanks to be emptied. Click here to learn more and quickly send an email to insist Washington State enforces the law to stop the tank from leaking.
https://actionnetwork.org/letters/ask-dir-of-ecology-watson-and-gov-inslee-to-support-the-safe-alternative
Your contributions enabled us to document that the leak was known for two years without even being reported - a major legal violation.
But, Washington State signed an agreement with USDOE to just let the tank keep leaking for decades!
We filed the legal challenge to that backroom deal. We need your support for the research and in-house legal work to require that environmental laws are followed and High-Level Nuclear Waste tanks aren't allowed to just leak and contaminate groundwater flowing into the Columbia River.
Our research and advocacy protected the Columbia River from untreated liquid wastes dumped along the River, stopped illegal storage of explosive wastes, ended dumping in unlined ditches, protected hundreds of cleanup workers from deadly exposures. We are the only group or entity holding public workshops around the region and issuing Citizens' Guides, enabling the public to comment on cleanup plans (or delays). National and regional news media rely on us for expert, independent viewpoints.
We continue to present our members and the public with widely praised workshops on major Hanford decisions and comment periods along with our award winning "Citizens' Guides." Contributing at any level will add you to our list for Guides and invites!
As part of our environmental justice mission, we work closely with the Tribes whose health and Treaty rights to fish and live along the 50 miles of Columbia River running through Hanford are being violated. Your support also enables us to offer the only Tribal and Environmental Law student internship program in the region to inspire and train a new generation to protect Treaty rights and our environment.
Your support this year will help us fight the federal Energy Departments' schemes to rename and abandon High Level Nuclear Waste in leaking tanks, abandon waste sites along the River, and to leave huge quantities of deadly Plutonium just a few feet below the ground.
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RECOGNITION
A generous donor will match donations if we exceed 50 donors for Give Big, up to $3,000. Monthly or quarterly contribution pledges count! Help us get there! Please give generously.
https://www.wagives.org/donate/heartofamericanorthwest
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Thank you,
Gerry Pollet
gerry@hoanw.ccsend.com
http://www.hanfordcleanup.org
Heart of America Northwest
10212 Fifth Ave NE Suite 255
Seattle, WA 98125 US