Accord reached over Hanford fine

YAKIMA — The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) reached an agreement with its regulators Tuesday to settle a $1.14 million fine for cleanup failures at the nation's most contaminated nuclear site.

The fine was the largest ever levied by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Northwest office over work at the Hanford nuclear reservation in south-central Washington. The penalty concerned operations at a landfill for contaminated soils and other hazardous and radioactive wastes from cleanup operations.

The federal government created Hanford in the 1940s as part of the top-secret Manhattan Project to build the atomic bomb. Today, workers labor to rid the 586-square-mile site of waste left from decades of plutonium production for the nation's nuclear-weapons arsenal.

The problems came to light in January, when a subcontractor at the site discovered that an employee had been recording data for compaction testing at the landfill, when no testing had been done since June 2005.

Landfill workers also failed to perform weekly inspections of the landfill's system to collect and remove liquids, in an effort to cut the risk of leaks, the EPA said.

"With this enforcement action, we sent DOE a message that they and their contractors have taken to heart," said Elin Miller, EPA's regional administrator in Seattle.

Under the agreement, the Energy Department and its contractor, Washington Closure Hanford, will still pay a $285,000 fine. They also will buy emergency-response boats for Benton County and build a greenhouse and nursery to aid habitat restoration.