Oregon Public Broadcasting

Governor Chris Gregoire said Tuesday that cleanup isn’t going fast enough at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Eastern Washington.

After long negotiations with the U.S. Departments of Energy and Justice, the governor announced Tuesday she’s taking the feds to court. Correspondent Anna King has the story.

Governor Gregoire says the federal government has failed to live up to its end of the 1989 Tri-Party Agreement.

That’s the document between the state and the federal government that regulates cleanup at Hanford.

Now Gregoire says she’s going to file a lawsuit in federal court. She says her aim is to force the federal government to clean up 53 million gallons of radioactive goo stored in underground tanks at Hanford.

She also wants to stop plumes of radioactive groundwater headed for the Columbia River.

The feds had agreed to treat the tank waste by 2028. But Gregoire says under the last budget proposed by the Bush Administration it would take 140 years to empty the worst of the tanks.
 
Chris Gregoire: "That is not allowable, the people of Washington State can not stand with that, and will not stand for that."

Gregoire says the state tried to settle the matter out of court, but that the Federal Justice Department was asking the state to give up too much power in the new agreement.