Fair Trade Holiday Shopping Event!

The event will take place at Ten Thousand Villages Seattle - 6417 Roosevelt Way NE #101, Seattle, WA 98115. 

This is a great opportunity to get some holiday shopping done while supporting fair trade and Hanford cleanup. 15% of the net sales will be donated to Heart of America NW.  We hope to see you tomorrw evening!

Hanford Summit in the works

A week before Thanksgiving, a Seattle-based group, Hanford Challenge, organized a meeting with a number of interested parties and stakeholder groups to discuss how to move forward in the dialogue on Hanford cleanup and plan a broadly based summit.  The morning of the meeting, the Tri-City Herald ran an article framing this preliminary meeting as Western Washington vs. Eastern Washington, a significant setback to expanding and building trust between the participants.  The issue with the article is that the Herald used Hanford Challenge's own words, taken directly from their website:

    Western Washington and Portland are "concerned about Hanford's environmental impact past, present and future," the advocacy group says on its website.

    Tri-City residents "are less concerned with environmental impacts," it said, and characterized Tri-City groups as focused on jobs and economic development. 

    "This polarization has interfered with the ability to hold a dialogue about the important issues facing the region when it comes to Hanford," the group said, describing Hanford environmental cleanup as "broken."

This language is most likely aimed at a first-time visitor to the website, an audience unfamiliar with the dialogue which already occurs with surprising consensus at the Hanford Advisory Board on the values that should drive Hanford cleanup and which the US Department of Energy is loathe to adopt and apply.  As Heart of America Northwest's Executive Director, Gerry Pollet, works in the Board and serves in the Board's leadership, we have seen the entire range of stakeholders on the Board forcefully join for a common vision.

This vision is what Heart of America has been the leading voice for: "Clean-Up First," the most basic environmental principle.  No more waste should be added to Hanford until existing wastes are brought into compliance and cleaned up.  In addition, everyone on the Board agrees that USDOE should investigate and remove the massive quantities of Plutonium and other wastes in soil and over 40 miles of unlined ditches at Hanford, and that groundwater needs to be cleaned up and restored for future use.

Ideally, the Hanford Summit will create a space for meaningful dialoge and will reinvigorate openness at Hanford.  Much discussion is needed on an investment in sustainable, clean energy at Hanford tied to the cleanup mission and vision, for the benefit of the local and regional economy.  The planning meeting had good participation from USDOE managment, the Washington Department of Ecology, the Environmental Protection Agency and a range of stakeholders.

And today, Tom Carpenter, the Executive Director of Hanford Challenge, has a guest editorial in the Tri-City Herald, arguing that everyone's interest in cleanup and protecting future generations is the basis for common ground.  

Raging Grannies Sing at Seattle Hanford Hearing

At the Seattle hearing on the proposed Settlement between WA and USDOE on November 12, 2009, the Raging Grannies were the first to give a formal comment, recorded here!

You can still submit comments to the agencies on the settlement until December 11th. Email your thoughts directly to TPACH@rl.gov and check out Heart of America Northwest's Citizens' Guide for more information!

Hanford Stimulus Funds Update

"If you want to win the stimulus sweepstakes, it helps to have one of the planet's nastiest toxic waste sites in your backyard" [Mike Stuckey, MSNBC]

Why has Hanford received stimulus funds while some cities have been overlooked?

In this article on stimulus funding for Hanford cleanup, Mike Stucky argues that the Benton County area, which is home to the Hanford Nuclear Reservation, deserves stimulus dollars because government-employed or contracted workers are working, doing everything from "sealing up old reactors" to experimenting with vitrifying radioactive waste. Stuckey explains that Obama's American Recovery and Reinvestment Act allows the Department of Energy, which oversees Hanford (and other nuclear waste sites') cleanup, to use stimulus funds to accelerate clean-up efforts. This year, Hanford received an extra $1.96 billion to aid cleanup, in addition to the $2 billion that the project receives annually.

The stimulus package has certainly boosted the Tri-Cities economy. In fact, Hanford employment is projected to peak in 2010 at 10,800 workers. A decline (towards 2,100 employees) is not expected to take place until 2050, when most of the environmental cleanup work is expected to be completed. The stimulus money has created or saved the equivalent of 2,500 jobs. The creation of jobs has spurred retail sales in the Tri-City area, keeping the economy well-lubricated. This economic upswing during a national depression suggests that the Tri-Cities is "one of those communities where it [the stimulus package] has worked exactly like it was supposed to," as expressed by Carl Adrian, president of TRIDEC.

Unfortunately, other cities across the US have not fared as well. Elkhart County in Northern Indiana received only $49 million in stimulus funding, compared to Benton County, WA's $1.99 billion. This is despite the fact that the counties are economically and demographically similar - both counties are dependent on single-sector economies and agriculture, the cost of living in comparable, etc. So why the discrepancy in the amount of stimulus funds awarded to each county? Stuckey asserts that government money is better spent on clean-up activities because Hanford is an environmental threat & a hazard to those around it; in addition, the project cleanup project is ongoing, so the extra funds provided a burst of momentum, and jobs did not have to be created from scratch.

Heart of America Northwest is interested too in the compensations the top officers of the contractors at Hanford receive - this data was required to be released as part of the stimulus package and is available on recovery.gov. Tom Zarges, the top officer of the Washington River Protection Solutions LLC, is compensated $1,955,909 annually. Another interesting aspect of the distribution of stimulus funding is that of the 10 largest contracts awarded, 9 are related to nuclear waste cleanup. Stuckey is absolutely right - the biggest asset for getting stimulus funds turns out to be the nation's nastiest wastes.

Communicating danger of nuclear waste to future civilizations

People familiar with Hanford and its clean-up struggle already know how dangerous and critical the radioactive contamination is, but what about everyone else? How are we to keep informing people of this nuclear mess in order for future generations to understand the necessary precautions of radioactivity? During a 2004 cleanup operation at the Hanford nuclear site in Washington state, personnel digging through a trench uncovered a safe containing a glass bottle. And inside the bottle was white sludge later determined as plutonium. The potential danger of this accessible bottle of plutonium, which could have been discovered by nearly anyone, is a startling idea.

Juliet Lapidos published an article on Slate illustrating these points and how there is a need for getting the information out there efficiently to individuals, centuries from now. Language and culture are constantly evolving and differ all across the world. The English language has continually changed throughout the centuries, and "universal symbols" aren't so universal. A skull-and-crossbones is one example that is too ambiguous: Even today, it connotes danger only to some. Latin Americans may associate it with the Catholic Day of the Dead holiday. Mere markings and symbols to warn people that hazardous materials are nearby is inefficient for their understanding. People also need to know what the extent of such hazardous dangers are; stumbling upon a radioactive waste site cannot be weighed the same as spilling some toilet cleaner. Sticking a "KEEP OUT" sign on fences of nuclear sites has a minimal chance of deterring trespassers.

So far the committees in charge of accessing this information haven't done the most satisfactory job. Thousands of Washingtonians still have no idea what or where Hanford is. It's important to keep a long-term outlook when making plans for radioactive waste; plans that will include a wide variety of people from all over the world. Anthropological, political, economical, biological, and linguistic ideas all offer points of view that can lead to a encompassing solution.

Seattle Crowd Opposes Hanford Cleanup Delays

Yesterday, the SeattlePI.com published a great article on the Hanford hearing held last Thursday. Reporter John Stang nailed the essence of the hearing with a few selected quotes from the members of the public who gave formal comments at the hearing:

"It seems we're getting the short end of the stick," said UW Masters of Public Health student Erin Hurley;

"We're here tonight because the Department of Energy has broken its word (on the original 2028 completion deadline)," said Gerald Pollet, director of the Hanford watchdog organization Heart of America Northwest.

And another ringer: "Also, an unresolved question exists on how the 1 million gallons of highly radioactive leaked tank wastes should be tackled." Heart of America Northwest is beginning to review the recently released draft Tank Closure and Waste Management Environmental Impact Statement, in which the US Department of Energy proposes to never cleanup the majority of contamination that has leaked from Hanford's High-Level Nuclear Waste Tanks, plutonium and other wastes which USDOE deliberately discharged from the tanks and Plutonium processing facilities into the ground! Check back for updates!

Don't forget that it's not too late to comment on the proposed Settlement, the subject of the hearing last week. Submit comments via email to TPACH@rl.gov; Heart of America Northwest encourages you to copy your comments to Governor Gregoire (WA), Governor Kulongoski (OR) and Attorney General McKenna (WA).

Seattle Public Hearing 11-12-09

The Seattle hearing on the proposed Hanford clean-up delays was held last night.  We were excited to see that it was a packed house, with around 100 in attendance!  Thanks to the classes at the University of Washington for showing up and giving great comments! 

The first public comment was given by the Seattle Raging Grannies.  They prepared a statement that strongly denounced the proposed settlement for its 22 year delay in emptying the High-Level Nuclear Waste from Hanford's leaky Single Shell Tanks & because it does not include an enforceable ban preventing the importation of off-site waste to Hanford.  Then, they sang a brilliant song (I hope to get the lyrics to post here soon).  That much said, they stole the show.

Over 20 unique individuals gave a formal comment, all of them concerned about the clean up delays.  The majority of the comments also included statements about how disappointed the public is that the State of WA didn't secure an enforceable ban on off-site waste as a part of this settlement. 

Last night marked the end of the series of five public hearings held during this comment period.  But don't despair!  You can still submit your own thoughts directly to the agencies by emailing them to TPACH@rl.gov.  See our Citizens' Guide for more information and Heart of America Northwest's comments and concerns.