Just below ground at the Hanford site are 177 enormous steel tanks. They contain 53 million gallons of heavy metals, acids, solvents and highly radioactive elements, including plutonium, cesium, strontium and uranium. Sixty-seven tanks are confirmed leakers, and nearly all are well beyond their design lifespan.

According to the US Government Accountability Office, the federal government and its contractors also buried thousands of tonnes of radioactive and hazardous waste in unlined landfills and injected 450 billion gallons of liquid waste into ponds, ditches and drainfields at the site. That is about the amount of water that flows through the Potomac River in a month. As you read this, a huge plume of groundwater contaminated with radiation and heavy metals is moving from Hanford toward the Columbia River.

Adequate cleanup funding is imperative. And it doesn’t require a budget increase; President Bush only has to get his nuclear priorities right. Each passing day increases the risk of leakage and catastrophic tank failure at Hanford. Each delay increases the risk to workers, the environment and more than a million people who live and work near the Columbia River downstream from Hanford.

If Bush’s proposed budget budget stands, only one tank at Hanford will be emptied in 2009. At that rate, it will take 140 years to empty the remaining 142 single-shell tanks and process the waste. The people of America don’t have 140 years. The river doesn’t have 140 years.

(Chris Gregoire, a Democrat, is governor of Washington. Maria Cantwell, also a Democrat, represents the state in the Senate, where she serves on the Energy and Natural Resources Committee.)

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