Washington Chapter—Issues
 

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"As the bumper sticker says,
'I love my country but the
government makes me nervous.'

Watchful wariness about
government activities is a sign
of a healthy democracy.
Government agencies are not
always right, and we shouldn't
expect them to be.
That's why the Founding Fathers
designed an ingenious system
of checks and balances
that keep fallible public servants
from losing sight of the big picture.

The National Environmental
Policy Act (NEPA),
which took effect in 1969,
is one such check and balance.
The law requires the government
to let us—the citizens who
pay the bills—know about likely
impacts of proposed public
projects. The law also requires
government to listen to citizens
who have an interest and opinion."

—from an op-ed that then-Chapter
President Dr. Lunell Haught published in
the Spokane Spokesman-Review
Click here to read the complete essay.

  

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Washington REP member Bill Ray published two letters recently in the Everett Herald. Here's the first and here's the second, published a week later.


Hanford

2010 Update: The Washington chapter is currently reviewing the draft Tank Closure and Waste Management Environmental Impact Statement for Hanford, which the U.S. Department of Energy released in October 2009. The document examines alternatives for retrieving, treating, storing, and/or disposing of radioactive and hazardous waste. The Washington chapter will draft comments and send them to the Department of Energy.

Background: Hanford, where plutonium was produced for America's nuclear arsenal, is the most polluted place in the Western Hemisphere. The radioactive and chemical byproducts of plutoniuim production created a huge legacy of wastes, including nearly 500 billion gallons of wastes dumped into unlined soil trenches; and 177 storage tanks holding 53 million gallons of mixed radioactive and chemical wastes, at least one-third of which have leaked.

In 1989, Washington State, the U.S. Department of Energy, and Environmental Protection Agency signed the Tri-Party Agreement, a binding agreement that calls for cleanup of wastes by negotiated milestones. But poor federal management has pushed cleanup of the tanks back repeatedly and driven up the costs. Estimated cost of the vitrification plant to dispose of the wastes has soared past $11 billion.

In 2009, the state, Department of Energy, and EPA revised their agreement to extend cleanup deadlines. The deadline for removing waste from single-shell tanks was extended from 2018 to 2040, and the completion deadline for treating tank waste was extended from 2028 to 2047.

Solution: In 2004, Washington voters approved Initiative 297 by a 70 percent majority. I-297 specifies that no new waste can be introduced to Hanford until existing waste is cleaned up. The initiative has been challenged by the federal government in court. The solution is for the Washington Legislature to enact I-297 into law in a way that is consistent with existing law on state jurisdiction over mixed wastes.

Click here for a PDF copy of the Washington Chapter's March 27, 2009, letter to the Department of Energy about transfers of wastes from leaking storage tanks.

Wilderness

Background: The National Wilderness Preservation System protects pristine public lands where, in the eloquent words of the Wilderness Act, "the earth and its community of life are untrammelled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain." As of September 2009, the system contains more than 109 million acres of forests, deserts, wetlands, and other natural areas, of which nearly 4.5 million acres are in Washington. The Evergreen State's newest wilderness area is the 106,000-acre Wild Sky Wilderness, designated through bipartisan legislation enacted in 2008.

On March 26, 2009, Congressman Dave Reichert, R-WA, introduced bipartisan legislation to expand the Alpine Lakes Wilderness by 22,000 acres, or 6 percent. The bill also would designate the Pratt River and the Middle Fork of the Snoqualmie River as wild and scenic. “What we do today will have a lasting impact on future generations. We must do our part to preserve land, not just in faraway places, but in our own backyard, here in Washington State," Congressman Reichert said.

The House parks and forests subcommittee held a hearing on the bill November 5, 2009. A companion bill in the Senate received a hearing before the Energy and Natural Resources Committee on December 16, 2009.

Solution: Congress should pass Congressman Reichert's legislation this year.

Washington Public Legislation Enacted into Law with REP Support!

An omnibus public lands bill strongly supported by REP passed Congress with strong bipartisan majorities and was signed into law in 2009. The legislation includes a significant conservation measure for Washington:

  • Statutory permanence for the National Landscape Conservation System. The NLCS includes 26 million acres of BLM lands with special scenic, ecological, and cultural value. NLCS units in Washington include the Juniper Dunes Wilderness Area northeast of the Tri Cities, and segments of the Pacific Crest, Lewis and Clark, and Oregon national trails. The Chopaka Mountain wilderness study area, in Okanogan County, also is included.
  • Designation of the Pacific Northwest National Scenic Trail, extending from Olympic National Park's coastal unit east tothe Continental Divide in Glacier National Park.
  • Designation of the Ice Age Floods National Geologic Trail, creating opportunities for the public to see and learn about the geologic impacts of cataclysmic floods that swept through the Northwest 12,000 to 17,000 years ago.
Kudos to Congressman Dave Reichert for voting for this very important legislation.

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