On Wednesday in Pasco, U.S. Sen. Patty Murray shook hands all around before sitting down to a roundtable event at the UA Local 598 union hall in Pasco.
Murray, the vice chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, said she’s concerned about a proposed $1.5 trillion increase in defense spending, and how that could impact funding for cleanup at Hanford.
President Trump’s administration has also proposed around a $400 million cut to Hanford funding in the new federal budget.
“I have learned to understand that every Secretary of Energy comes in and they want to be able to say they created this amazing, new, nothing you’ve ever heard of project before, and they all have something in mind,” Murray said. “And they forget the legal obligations of projects like this [Hanford cleanup].”
Murray also listened to union concerns about how uncertain funding could cut into available labor, training and design work at Hanford.
David Reeploeg, the vice president of federal programs for the Tri-City Development Council, said he’s especially worried about how training at Hanford could be disrupted by a cut down budget.
“They do require many weeks, maybe even months, to do that training to work out at the [Hanford] site,” he said. “If people get laid off or choose to go to work somewhere else, it takes a lot of time and investment to replace that person. If there were to be layoffs at Hanford, that does end up costing the taxpayers even more money when you need to replace that workforce.”
Murray repeatedly said she was going to press for more investment in cleanup at the southeast Washington site.
Hanford is home to many radioactive waste cleanup projects. Most notably, it’s where 56 million gallons of radioactive waste are in aging underground tanks at the site. Some of that waste has been bound up into more stable glass logs by the new Waste Treatment Plant.
