State and federal agency to settle Hanford lawsuit

YAKIMA — Washington state and the U.S. Department of Energy have agreed to settle a lawsuit challenging out-of-state shipments of radioactive and hazardous waste to the Hanford nuclear reservation, the two sides announced Monday.

The agreement appears to end a two-year court battle between the state and federal government over proposed waste shipments to the south-central Washington site.

As part of the agreement, the Energy Department will prepare a new environmental-impact statement on the potential effects of storing, treating and disposing of certain types of waste at Hanford. In exchange, the state agreed to drop its lawsuit challenging the current environmental-impact statement and will play a greater role in developing the new document.

The new impact statement is to be completed by 2008. The Energy Department will not ship waste to the site until the document is completed, with the exception of some waste the state had already agreed to accept at Hanford.

Washington sued the Energy Department in 2003 to bar shipments of offsite waste to the Hanford site on the banks of the Columbia River. The state expanded its lawsuit in 2004, challenging the adequacy of the current environmental-impact statement, released that year.

A judge issued a preliminary injunction barring waste shipments to the site.

The agreement is unrelated to another lawsuit the federal government has filed to challenge the constitutionality of Initiative 297, a voter-approved measure barring out-of-state waste shipments to Hanford.

That lawsuit remains in U.S. District Court in Eastern Washington.