Reason #34525 why I Hate the EPA

It only took 13 years to rectify the problem...

State agency offices pollute creek in Vancouver
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

VANCOUVER, Wash. -- Thirteen years after Washington state's environmental agency found a creek severely polluted, the contamination has been traced back to the agency's regional office.

City workers discovered this week that a sewer line from the building housing the regional offices of the state Department of Ecology and Department of Fish and Game, and a small U.S. Army Corps of Engineers contingent, was mistakenly connected to a storm water runoff system, rather than a municipal sewer main.

As a result, sewage from the building has been entering Burnt Bridge Creek and eventually Vancouver Lake for an unknown number of years.

Workers in the leased offices were stunned when they got the word Wednesday, The Columbian newspaper reported.

"As a person who loves her area and the environment, it was like, 'Holy crap, let's get this taken care of,'" said Laura Sauermilch, a spill response specialist.

Jay J. Manning, Ecology director in Olympia, said the discovery was "embarrassing and upsetting."

Employees immediately closed the men's and women's restrooms, and portable toilets and hand-washing stations were brought to the site.

City officials have agreed to fix the problem at the building owner's expense by next week.

In 1996, the Ecology Department determined that Burnt Bridge Creek was severely polluted with fecal coliform bacteria.

For 2 1/2 years, city workers have been using a probe mounted with a small television camera to survey 300 miles of underground storm water pipes. Municipal public works director Brian Carlson said this is the first time an old sanitary sewer has been found mistakenly hooked into a storm water pipe.

"The irony is not lost on us," Carlson said.

State officials believe the problem dates from the opening of the building in the early 1970s as a garden center for a Fred Meyer outlet across the street. The garden center was closed in the mid-1990s and in 1997 the building was reopened with offices for 80 Fish and Wildlife employees, 14 from Ecology and three from the Army engineers.

Melinda Merrill, a Fred Meyer spokeswoman in neighboring Portland, Ore., said the retailer intends to cooperate in sharing information but no longer owns the property.

Local and state agencies have yet to sort out questions of legal liability and potential penalties, said Kim Schmanke, an Ecology spokeswoman in Lacey.

The current owner, Watumull Properties of Honolulu, just wants it fixed.

"I'm just horrified," said J.D. Watumull, company vice president. "We're just trying to get it rectified and back to the way it was."

One GIANT Step Backward

The world's first full-scale nuclear reactor, built in 13 months to produce plutonium for an atomic bomb during World War II, is now a National Historic Landmark, the federal government announced Monday.

"Building the B Reactor was a feat of engineering genius. So, too, was the construction a testament to the excellence of working Americans," said Lynn Scarlett, deputy secretary of the Department of Interior. "There was no wiggle room for error."

-SO THEN WHY DID IT LEAK AND CONTAMINATE TRILLIONS OF GALLONS OF GROUNDWATER?!!!!-

History buffs, former weapons workers and local officials have been seeking recognition for the plant for six years to help save it from being dismantled or permanently cocooned as part of the cleanup of the highly contaminated complex in south-central Washington state.

-GOES TO SHOW YOU HOW NAIVE THE GENERAL POPULATION IS. IT'S A SHAME BUILDING A TOURIST ATTRACTION IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN CLEANING UP NUCLEAR WASTE-

Hanford and B Reactor were the centerpiece of the Manhattan Project, a top-secret effort to build an atomic bomb in the 1940s. More than 50,000 workers moved to the Tri-Cities of Richland, Kennewick and Pasco for the massive project on the banks of the Columbia River.

-AND BECAUSE OF THIS SITE, THE COLUMBIA RIVER IS HIGHLY POLLUTED-

Construction began on June 7, 1943, six months after physicist Enrico Fermi turned the theory of nuclear power into the reality of the Atomic Age. Eight more reactors were built at Hanford to produce plutonium for nuclear weapons, leaving a legacy of pollution that has made Hanford the nation's most contaminated nuclear site, with cleanup costs expected to top $50 billion.

-CLEANUP HAS BEEN PUT OFF FOR DECADES AND THE SITE STILL CONTINUES TO CONTAMINATE THE AREA-

Five reactors have been dismantled and cocooned, a process in which buildings around the reactors are removed, all but the shield walls surrounding the reactor cores are leveled and the cores are sealed in concrete.

The B Reactor was shut down in 1968 and decommissioned. Under a cleanup schedule managed by the Department of Energy, dismantling could have begun as early as 2009. However, the department said it would maintain the reactor while the National Park Service decides whether it should be preserved and made available for public access.

Hank Kosmata, president of the B Reactor Museum Association in Richland, noted that achieving National Historic Landmark status for Reactor B took longer than building it.

-AND WAITING FOR THE U.S. GOVERNMENT TO CLEAN UP ITS "LANDMARK" CONTINUES TO TAKE EVEN LONGER!!-

About 2,000 people have visited the complex this year. Next year, Energy Department officials plan to expand the number of tours of the building without impeding cleanup, said Jeffrey Kupfer, acting deputy secretary.

-YES, THE BEST PLACE TO VISIT IS ALWAYS A CONTAMINATED NUCLEAR REACTOR. HURRY, BOOK YOUR TOUR NOW!!-

story from the AP.
comments from me.

I do not want to make this a political post... but if you're planning on voting for McCain this November, you better be prepared to lobby against his "alternative energy" plan which consists of embracing NUCLEAR POWER, the most unsafe energy. Research how many nuclear power plants or reactors have leaked. The amount of contamination produced by nuclear power is astonding. The most recent case was discovered and publicized earlier this month when The United States has admitted that a nuclear-powered submarine steadily leaked radiation at three Japanese ports, as well as the Pacific island of Guam and Pearl Harbor in Hawaii FOR OVER TWO YEARS. If you are wondering why cancer rates are rising, look no further.

Abandoned nuclear reactors generate new surge of tourism

By Hugo Martin Tribune Newspapers
11:25 PM CDT, August 23, 2008


HANFORD, Wash. — A platoon of double-crested cormorants took flight from the eastern shore of the Columbia River, skimming the sun-sparkled surface as two slender white egrets stood in the nearby shallows, hunting small fish hiding in the reeds.

Twenty kayakers, mostly tourists from the Pacific Northwest, paddled along, letting the steady current do most of the work. They coasted past mule deer grazing on the shore, coyotes stalking the sandy beaches and cliff swallows buzzing the nearby white bluffs.

But the main attraction was on the western shore: several bland, industrial-gray structures and towering smokestacks, a collection of buildings that gave birth to America's Atomic Age.

Welcome to the Hanford Reach, where one of the last free-flowing stretches of the Columbia River encounters America's most contaminated nuclear site.

Along this flat, mostly treeless scrubland, the U.S. government built nine reactors from 1943 to 1963, including the historic B Reactor that produced the world's first weapons-grade plutonium for the nuclear bomb dropped on Nagasaki, Japan, in World War II.

The reactors have leaked so much radioactivity into the air, land and water that the contamination caused by the Three Mile Island nuclear accident seems trivial by comparison.

Yet merchants and tourism directors here in southern Washington state see the river and the shuttered reactors as a growing tourist draw.

Imagine a theme park next to Chernobyl's nuclear power plant. As odd as it may sound, the idea seems to be working at Hanford.

The popular kayak tours are one example. Pat Welle, owner of Columbia Kayak Adventures, who leads two or three groups each month past the nuclear sites, said her business has more than doubled since she started it in 2004. A jet boat tour operator plans to add a second boat, and the river plays host to several bass fishing tournaments each year.

"I think the attraction is the unique combination of scenery — the white bluffs and the wildlife — and that odd collection of nuclear sites," Welle said.

The reactors have long been shut down, but the surrounding land rumbles with bulldozers, dump trucks and crews in radiation suits working on a $2 billion-a-year cleanup project — the most expensive such project in the world, according to the U.S. Department of Energy.

The irony is that although the reactors contaminated hundreds of acres, government restrictions on access left the surrounding lands largely undisturbed for more than 40 years, allowing wildlife to flourish.

The effort to make the Hanford Reach a tourist hot spot got a boost in 2000 when then- President Bill Clinton proclaimed 195,000 acres along the river and around the nuclear site a national monument. About 60,000 people now visit annually, including anglers, hikers, birders and history buffs.

That number is likely to grow under a plan by the National Park Service to upgrade boat launches and picnic sites and to open the B Reactor for regular public tours. Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne is also expected to approve a recommendation this month to declare the B Reactor a national historic landmark.

The story began in 1942 when the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers began searching for a plutonium production site for the then-secret Manhattan Project. With large tracts of land and access to large volumes of water to cool the reactor, the Hanford area along the Columbia River seemed perfect.

America's first large-scale nuclear reactor was built in about a year. Most workers at the B Reactor were clueless about what they were developing until the atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki. Later, a headline in the local paper announced: "Peace! Our Bomb Clinched It!"

During the next 20 years, the federal government built eight more reactors along the Columbia River in a 586-square-mile area known as the Hanford site.

In 1948 a dike at a reactor waste pond broke, dumping 28 pounds of uranium into the Columbia River.

Today, scientists and biologists extensively test almost every creature along the river, whether a tadpole or a deer.