Inslee tours Hanford
By Terry Murry on Thursday, June 2nd, 2022 in Columbia Basin News More Top Stories
RICHLAND, Washington – Gov. Jay Inslee will tour the Hanford site today (Thursday). He will also visit the Washington State Department of Ecology’s Richland office and attend the grand opening of the LIGO Exploration Center. LIGO is the world’s largest gravitational wave observatory.
Washington State Department of Ecology Director Laura Watson and Ecology Nuclear Waste Program Manager David Bowen will join Inslee on the Hanford tour. Inslee’s visit will begin at 10:15 a.m. with a private meeting with tribal representatives, Hanford stakeholders and community leaders.
The state of Washington, along with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, oversee the U.S. Department of Energy’s cleanup of the Hanford Site. Inslee and Ecology are urging the federal government to fully fund cleanup of Hanford. He said that every year that the site’s budget is underfunded results in cleanup delays, increased risk, ballooning costs, and extending the overall time needed to get the job done.
“As the earliest possible date for cleanup continues to extend farther into the future, the harms to the surrounding communities and the danger of catastrophic impacts to the Pacific Northwest are occurring right now,” Inslee wrote in a letter to Office of Management and Budget Director Shalanda Young on May 23.
