Antinuclear

A nuclear site is on tribes’ ancestral lands. Their voices are being left out on key cleanup talks

KNKX Public Radio | By The Associated Press, June 23, 2023 

Three federally recognized tribes have devoted decades to restoring the condition of their ancestral lands in southeastern Washington state to what they were before those lands became the most radioactively contaminated site in the nation’s nuclear weapons complex, the Hanford Nuclear Reservation.

But the Yakama Nation, Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation and Nez Perce Tribe have been left out of negotiations on a major decision affecting the future cleanup of millions of gallons of radioactive waste stored in underground tanks on the Hanford site near Richland.

In May, federal and state agencies reached an agreement that hasn’t been released publicly but will likely involve milestone and deadline changes in the cleanup, according to a spokesperson for the Washington State Department of Ecology, a regulator for the site. As they privately draft their proposed changes, the tribes are bracing for a decision that could threaten their fundamental vision for the site.

“As original stewards of that area, we’ve always been taught to leave it better than you found it,” said Laurene Contreras, program administrator for the Yakama Nation’s Environmental Restoration/Waste Management program, which is responsible for the tribe’s Hanford work. “And so that’s what we’re asking for.”

From World War II through the Cold War, Hanford produced more than two-thirds of the United States’ plutonium for nuclear weapons, including the atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki, Japan, in 1945. Production ceased in 1989, and the site’s mission shifted to cleaning up the chemical and radioactive waste left behind.

For these tribes, which have served as vital watchdogs in the cleanup process, the area’s history dates back long before Hanford, to pre-colonization. It was a place where some fished, hunted, gathered and lived. It’s home to culturally significant sites. And in 1855 treaties with the U.S. government in which the tribes ceded millions of acres of land, they were assured continued access.

The U.S. Department of Energy, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Washington State Department of Ecology have held confidential negotiations since 2020 on revising plans for the approximately 56 million gallons of radioactive waste stored in 177 underground tanks at Hanford. The discerning eyes of the tribal experts have been kept out, though EPA and Ecology have said there will eventually be opportunities for the tribes to meet with them about this.

The revisions are expected to affect an agreement among the three agencies that outlines the Hanford cleanup. Mason Murphy, program manager for the Confederated Tribes’ Energy and Environmental Sciences program, points out that the tribes also weren’t consulted in that original 1989 agreement.

“It’s an old scabbed-over wound,” Murphy said…………………………………………………….. https://www.knkx.org/government/2023-06-23/a-nuclear-site-is-on-tribes-ancestral-lands-their-voices-are-being-left-out-on-key-cleanup-talks
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June 24, 2023 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized