National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2005 - Continued I

NATIONAL DEFENSE AUTHORIZATION ACT FOR FISCAL YEAR 2005-CONTINUED
Ms. CANTWELL. Mr. President, I rise to speak on the Graham amendment.
It is almost unbelievable that we are on the DOD authorization bill, a very important bill that we need to discuss and move forward, as it supports a lot of important things for our troops, and our military strategy. But somehow the other side of the aisle and the Department of Energy think they can sneak in language to this Defense authorization bill that would allow the reclassification of hazardous, high-level nuclear waste and basically call it incidental waste. Basically it would reclassify nuclear waste that is in existing tanks in my State, in South Carolina, in Idaho, and in New York, and basically say that waste can be covered over with cement, with sand, and could be grouted. Basically, it says we can take high-level nuclear waste and grout it-grout it.
For most Americans, grout is something they see in their bathroom, not something they do with nuclear waste. Yet this is what we have before us in the underlying Department of Defense authorization bill. It is a shame. It is a shame that this body would allow such a significant change, really a change to the Nuclear Waste Policy Act on how nuclear waste is classified in this country, without public debate, without a public vote, without a public hearing, even without legislation discussing that change. Yet the other side of the aisle thinks they can come at 1 o'clock in the afternoon and offer an amendment to change 30 years of policy, and that in the blink of an eye, they are going to get a vote on changing that policy without discussion.
The underlying bill is flawed. As far as I am concerned, it has made the whole DOD bill radioactive itself. Why do they play politics on an issue that is so important to our country? Why do they try to sneak through a change that ought to be debated in public in full daylight, with people weighing in on what is appropriate science?
Mr. President, if I sound as if I am a little upset about this underlying bill and the fact that it has this sneak attack language to reclassify high-level nuclear waste, you are right.
Fifty-three million gallons of nuclear waste reside at the Hanford nuclear reservation in the State of Washington.
This Senator wants to see that waste cleaned up. I do not believe that can happen by pouring cement on top of it and putting sand in those tanks and all of a sudden now say we have cleaned up waste. Nowhere has that policy been promulgated as sound science.
This is a picture of the Hanford Nuclear Reservation and one of its reactors in proximity to the Columbia River. My constituents in Washington State already know the 53 million-gallon tanks of nuclear waste are leaking, and there are toxic plumes that have already gained access to the Columbia River. So, yes, Washington State wants the tanks to be cleaned up. They want the material that has been part of the nuclear mission of this country removed from the tanks, the tanks cleaned up, the ground cleaned up, the plumes removed to the best possible extent, in order for us to go on with our mission and our life at the Hanford Reservation.
What we do not want is somebody to come in and say all of a sudden these underground storage tanks that exist below ground should be taken and cement poured on top of them and that means they are cleaned up.
It is amazing to me because when I think about the Hanford project and what I think it meant to our country, these were men and women in 1943 who started on a mission to produce a product that would help us win the war. In less than 2 years, they had the world's first reactor going and they produced plutonium that provided a very valuable tool for our country. Those men and women did their job.
Now we have been left with the aftermath of that and we should handle it in the same professional way those men and women did, by cleaning up the waste and recognizing that these tanks are leaking and they are causing hazard to the environment. The appropriate way to clean them up is by making sure the material is removed and that that material is placed in a more permanent storage. That is exactly what science has been saying. Yet my colleagues believe that in this underlying bill, the Defense authorization, it was somehow appropriate, in a closed-door session, with no public, no public testimony, no public witness to this language, no bill saying they were going to put this in the DOD bill, they can now sneak through this policy.
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Well, thank God some people in America are paying attention because they are starting to respond. I will share some of that with my colleagues. For example, the Idaho Falls Post Register basically said those on the other side are choosing the wrong side.
What happened in this case is the Department of Energy-maybe I should stop for a second and give some of my colleagues a little reminder of how we got to this point, because everybody thinks reclassification of waste is something that belongs to the States. It does not belong to the States. It belongs in the Nuclear Waste Policy Act that was passed in 1982. That was passed by Congress, after much debate. It went through the Energy and Natural Resources Committee and the EPW Committee. They had a discussion about what nuclear waste cleanup should be. They have the authority.
So when the Department of Energy recently said "let us accelerate the cleanup of waste, let us do it faster, we have an idea, instead of removing all of the material from these tanks we can just pour cement and sand on top of it and somehow we can get this done quicker and cheaper"-I am sure everybody in America agrees that pouring sand and cement on top of the waste that is there instead of cleaning it up is cheaper. But no one says it is safer and no one says it satisfies current law in the Nuclear Waste Policy Act.
That is why when the Department of Energy tried to use an order basically reclassifying waste, saying, "let us try this accelerated cleanup, let us try this notion of grouting and see if it, in fact, is the way we can do this." The courts have said the Department of Energy does not have that authority to reclassify the waste; the definition lies within the Nuclear Waste Policy Act, and DOE was not consistent with that act.
So what did the Department of Energy do when they lost that case? Yes, it is on appeal. They can go through the appeal process. But instead of coming to Congress and asking for public hearings on changing the Nuclear Waste Policy Act, saying, "listen, we think some waste that ought to be able to be reclassified," they have snuck language into the DOD authorizing bill.
Let me be clear again. Sneaking in language is having a closed-door session, without public debate, without public scrutiny, without a hearing on the change in this reclassification.
Now all of a sudden we are presented with this bill and people think we ought to move ahead without removing this radioactive language that is in the DOD bill, which I say has no business being here. If people want to debate this policy, let us debate it in the broad daylight of a hearing and discuss what hazardous waste is and the changes to the Nuclear Waste Policy Act that might be appropriate.
I guarantee, if somebody wants to change the Nuclear Waste Policy Act, that bill would not go to the Senate Armed Services Committee. It would be a policy that was debated by the Energy and Natural Resources Committee and by the EPW Committee. It is not the Armed Services Committee's jurisdiction to change the Nuclear Waste Policy Act. This underlying bill basically will put in place language contradictory to the Nuclear Waste Policy Act.
What are newspapers around America saying about this? Basically, the Idaho Falls Post Register says, "if the courts are uncooperative, try blackmail. That is what DOE is doing by holding $350 million in cleanup funds, including $95 million for Idaho's national engineering and environmental laboratory.
They go on to say, "if blackmail fails, start cutting deals in secret with Congress. DOE found an ally and behind closed doors in the Senate Armed Services Committee won a provision in the Defense authorization bill that would allow DOE to reclassify the high-level Savannah River waste."
I think they said it best when they said the view from Boise is more accurate, and that Kempthorne, the Governor, believes the measure "would wreck Idaho's position in the court by setting a precedent in short order, it would undermine the State's landmark decision."
It goes on to say: "Why would you reward DOE for its heavyhandedness against the State by passing something in the committee with the thinnest of claims to jurisdiction? If the Nuclear Waste Policy Act needs revision, do so in the open. Hold hearings. Conduct them in germane committees. What is going on here is not science, it is bare-knuckle politics." That is from the Idaho paper.
The Seattle Post-Intelligencer said a similar thing: "The Senate should halt the nuclear waste plan." Why? Because the bill gives the DOE the reclassification authority and withholds funds, and that this is a scheme to reclassify, hoping the States will cave in. It is not a good idea.
What did the Idaho Statesman say? Well, basically in a headline that said "State Cleanup Faces An All or All Proposition," it said: "We expect the Feds to clean up and move out all the highly radioactive liquid waste now stored in Idaho. No haggling, no shortcuts. Our political leaders need to hold firm even when politicians in other States are willing to cut deals."
What did the Spokesman Review in my State say? I thought the Spokesman Review had an interesting take. They said: "For example, let us say the next step would be to persuade the affected parties and the public there is scientific consensus on this matter. Without that, there will be no hope of political consensus. The U.S. Department of Energy believes leaving some waste behind is a good idea but is trying to slip this in as a seismic policy shift in the Defense authorization bill without comment or without congressional debate."
I think these newspapers have it right. In fact, another newspaper in my State, the Tacoma News Tribune, said: "It was bad enough that the U.S. Department of Energy was trying to carry out illegal, quick, and dirty disposal of the Nation's most dangerous radioactive waste. Now a Senate committee is helping the Department circumvent the law."
I think these newspapers are on to it. The Buffalo News, in their editorial, called it "A Dangerous Game."
The Federal Department of Energy is trying to use administrative sleight of hand to avoid its responsibilities in the cleanup of nuclear waste at West Valley and several other sites. DOD is trying to downgrade the threat of nuclear waste altered in this bill. The department argues that the waste should be classified as high level based only on how it originated, not on what they are. But what they are still is bad. It's still radioactive and it's still a Federal responsibility.
That is from the Buffalo News.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have all those editorials printed in the RECORD.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in the Record, as follows:
[From the Buffalo News, May 10, 2004]
DANGEROUS GAMES-FEDERAL EFFORT TO BURY NUCLEAR WASTES AT WEST VALLEY IS UNCONSCIONABLE
The federal Department of Energy is trying to use administrative sleight of hand to avoid its responsibility in the cleanup of nuclear waste sites at West Valley and several other states.
This contemptible effort involves downgrading the threat of nuclear waste, thereby allowing the government to bury that dangerous material at West Valley and other sites instead of shipping it to a permanent repository as called for in a 1982 law.
Fortunately, New York Sens. Charles E. Schumer and Hillary Rodham Clinton recognized this downgrading for what it was, a threat to West Valley and surrounding areas from the possibility of future leakage of this radioactive material. After they protested the legislation, Sen. Lindsey Graham, a Republican from south Carolina who introduced the bill that would have allowed the DOE to downgrade the threat of nuclear wastes, altered his bill. It now will apply only to the waste remediation project at Savannah River, S.C.
But that doesn't remove the danger. The House, essentially led by Republican Majority Leader Tom DeLay, still has to consider the DOE legislation. That cannot be a comforting thought to residents living near West Valley.
The department argues that the wastes should be classified as "high-level" based only on how they originated, not what they are. But what they are is still bad, still radioactive and still a federal responsibility.
Decades of expensive cleanup progress have improved safety at West Valley, but the work is far from over. The radioactive liquid wastes from a nuclear fuels reprocessing effort have been solidified into safe glass logs, which were supposed to be stored elsewhere. But the anticipated long-term storage facility at Yucca Flats is years from completion. Tanks and residual wastes still remain at West Valley, and an underground plume of water is contaminated with radioactive strontium. Covering wastes with concrete won't help that.
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The 600,000 gallons of West Valley wastes have their counterpart in nuclear weapons production wastes at other sites-53 million gallons at Hanford on the Washington-Oregon border, 34 million gallons at Savannah River near Aiken, S.C., and 900,000 gallons at the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory.
West Valley is the only site where the state shares the cost of cleanup.
Those costs may run into the tens of billions of dollars over decades, but the mess remains a federal issue. At West Valley, the risk includes not only the site's land but water drainage that flows into Buttermilk Creek, Cattaraugus Creek and Lake Erie. Trace amounts of that radioactivity have been tracked as far as Buffalo.
The DOE also is threatening to withhold $350 million in cleanup money from military-related cleanup efforts unless it gets a change in the definition of what constitutes high-level waste. That bit of weaseling does the department no credit. These sites were created by the federal government, and the federal government should not be allowed to walk away from them.
Acceptable cleanup at West Valley involves removal of all wastes and dismantling and removal of the contaminated structures that were used to process and store them. The government cannot be allowed to escape that responsibility through administrative trickery.
If the federal government truly could end a problem by renaming it, we'd already be at "mission accomplished" in Iraq.
[From the Idaho Falls Post Register, May 19, 2004]
CHOOSING THE WRONG SIDE
Why would Idaho's two U.S. senators support the Department of Energy against their own state?
You'll have to ask them.
A big vote is coming up-possibly today or tomorrow-in the Senate.
Idaho has a lot at stake.
The outcome is expected to be close.
Idaho Gov. Dirk Kempthorne is on the right side.
Sens. Larry Craig and Mike Crapo intend to be on the wrong side.
At issue is nearly 1 million gallons of high-level radioactive wastes stored in Idaho. The Hanford nuclear site in Washington has 53 million gallons. Savannah River in South Carolina had 37 million gallons.
Federal law says that waste may be collected and stored in a national repository. DOE wants to reclassify it, leave some material behind and save a few bucks.
But it can't get a judge to go along. Last year, U.S. District Judge Lynn Winmill ruled DOE couldn't do that on its own. DOE appealed.
If the courts are uncooperative, try blackmail. DOE is withholding $350 million in cleanup funds-including about $95 million for the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory.
And if blackmail fails, start cutting deals-in secret-with Congress. DOE found an ally in freshman Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C. Behind closed doors in the Senate Armed Services Committee last week, Graham won a provision in the Defense authorization Bill that would allow DOE to reclassify high-level wastes at Savannah River. Another provision allows DOE to continue holding cleanup funds hostage in Washington and Idaho until the accede to DOE's demands.
Fortunately, the House version contains none of this mischief. So even if the Senate goes along, there's still hope a conference committee will reject it.
Craig and Crapo say they're willing to defer to Graham on something they believe affects only his state-as long as the cleanup funds are kicked loose. They also believe Graham will be appreciative down the road when Idaho needs his help.
The view from Boise is the more accurate one, however. Kempthorne believes the Graham measure could wreck Idaho's position in the courts by setting a precedent. In short order, it would undermine the state's landmark 1995 settlement with DOE, which requires the agency to clean up the INEEL and ship wastes out of the state.
That's not to say Idaho isn't willing to negotiate. But no governor can surrender unilaterally to DOE demands without unraveling the 8-year-old truce that ended the statewide battle over the INEEL, its future and the waste issue that has raged for more than a decade.
Politically, two states are weaker than three. If South Carolina cuts a private deal on waste, Washington and Idaho are left to fight on their own.
And why would you reward DOE for its heavy-handedness against the states by passing something in a committee with the thinnest of claims to jurisdiction? If the Nuclear Waste Policy Act needs revision, do so in the open. Hold hearings and conduct them in the germane committees-Energy or Environment and Public Works.
What's going on there isn't science. It's bare-knuckle politics.
So as early as today, Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., will offer a motion to strip Graham's language from the defense bill. She has the support of Graham's colleague, Sen. Ernest Hollings, D-S.C. But it's going to be close, and the Idaho delegation could make the difference.
Does Graham may have more to offer Craig and Crapo than Idaho voters?
Maybe. Craig is in the second year of a six-year term. Crapo just got re-elected to a second term. Although the election isn't until November, Idaho Democrats have forfeited the race.
Just the same, both Idaho senators ought to reconsider.
[From the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, May 18, 2004]
SENATE SHOULD HALT NUCLEAR WASTE PLAN
Senators should halt the Bush administration's Department of Energy's attempts to boss everyone around on nuclear waste policy and end run the federal courts. The administration's bullying tactics should be met with a firm refusal to submit.
The DOE has a responsibility to clean up the heavily contaminated radioactive waste in tanks at Hanford and several other sites around the country. A federal judge already has overruled the department's attempts to reclassify the waste in order to save money and leave it at the sites.
Legitimately, Energy has filed an appeal. But is has shown horrid judgment with attempts to dictate changes in federal law to evade its responsibility, blackmail states into accepting the waste and free itself of state controls.
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., has put language into a defense authorization bill to give the department much of what it wants. The bill would authorize reclassification of the waste in his state and let DOE withhold $350 million in cleanup money for Hanford and other sites until their states cave in to reclassification schemes.
Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., is leading a fight against the plan. Tank waste at Hanford threatens to pollute the Columbia River. Environmental groups rightly complain about rewriting the waste law in a defense bill without public hearings.
The Senate should strip Graham's amendment from the bill. The Energy Department needs to clean up nuclear waste fully, not evade public accountability.
[From the Idaho Statesman, May 11, 2004]
STATE CLEANUP FACES ALL-OR-ALL PROPOSITION
Idaho's political leaders need to hold the Department of Energy to a simple standard.
We expect the feds to clean up and move out all the highly radioactive liquid waste now stored in Idaho. No haggling and no shortcuts. Our political leaders need to hold firm even when politicians in other states are willing to cut deals.
About 900,000 gallons of high-level radioactive waste sit in underground tanks in the Eastern Idaho desert, above an aquifer that provides water for many Idaho farms and communities.
After decades of nuclear defense work in states like Idaho, it's time for the Energy Department to fully clean up the sites that helped produce the implements of the Cold War.
Unfortunately, the Energy Department has been more interested in cutting corners than in cleaning up. The agency wants to clean up most of the waste but leave a fraction of it in the tanks, sealed with grout.
The Energy Department has been trying to foist off less-than-clean cleanup as adequate and cost-effective. B. Lynn Winmill, an Idaho federal judge, ruled last year that the DOE plan violated federal law. Since then, the Energy Department has pushed the idea in Congress, and it may have a taker. With the help of Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., the Energy Department now has language in a defense bill limiting its cleanup obligations in South Carolina, where 34 million gallons of waste are stored at its Savannah River Plant.
The language covers only South Carolina, not Idaho. Still, it could set an alarming precedent, and could put pressure on Idaho's political leaders to cave to the federal government.
In Idaho, cleanup should be non-negotiable. Idaho has the law and Winmill on its side and has in hand a binding agreement with the feds mandating the tank cleanup. Then-Gov. Phil Batt reached a comprehensive waste cleanup deal in 1995, and Idaho voters ratified it a year later.
The deal gives Idaho leverage-but only if state officials and the Idaho delegation hold the feds to every word of it. Especially the word "all."
[From the Tacoma News Tribune, May 10, 2004]
FIX ENERGY DEPARTMENT, NOT THE LAW IT'S BREAKING
It was bad enough that the U.S. Department of Energy was trying to carry out an illegal quick-and-dirty "disposal" of some of the nation's most dangerous radioactive waste. Now a U.S. Senate committee is helping the department circumvent the law.
The law in question is the Nuclear Waste Policy Act, which Congress passed in 1982. Among other things, this act requires the federal government to safely dispose of high-level nuclear waste in a deep underground repository. The law quite explicitly specifies that the radioactive byproducts of plutonium creation-a category of waste all-too-abundant at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation-must be buried in such a repository.
Despite what the law says, the Energy Department has other plans. Hanford's high-level wastes are presently being stored on site in steel-walled tanks, many of which have leaked dangerous radioisotopes into the surrounding soils. The department does intent to encase most of the wastes in these tanks in glass cylinders, which will be buried. But it also wants to leave significant quantities on site. Naturally, the idea is to save money.
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The Nuclear Waste Policy Act, however, doesn't say, "Bury what's convenient, and don't spend too much trying to get the rest." It says, "Bury it, bury it all, and bury it deep." A federal judge in Boise last year called the Energy Department on its scheme, ruling that the leave-it-in-place plan would violate the law.
Laws, however, can be altered. That is what Sen. Linsey Graham (R-S.C.) is now trying to do, so far with success. At this behest, the Senate Armed Services Committee last week amended a defense bill with a measure that partially exempts the Energy Department from the requirement that all high-level waste be sent to a repository.
The amendment applies only to South Carolina wastes, but it's a scary precedent for this state. The Energy Department has already made clear its desire for an incomplete cleanup at Hanford, the nuclear contamination capital of America.
If Congress attempts to relax the disposal standards in Washington as well, the state had better be given consultation rights and veto power over whatever plan the Energy Department comes up with. The department simply cannot be trusted to act in the interest of Washington and its environment.
As for Graham, his constituents in South Carolina ought to be giving him an earful about the prospect of living in perpetuity with the world's most lethal garbage.
[From the Spokesman-Review.com, May 9, 2004]
DEBATE NEEDED ON NUCLEAR WASTE
For the sake of argument, let's say leaving some lethal waste buried at nuclear weapons sites is a good idea, because the cost benefits outweigh the risks.
The next step would be to persuade affected parties and the public there is a scientific consensus on the matter. Without that, there would be no hope of a political consensus. The U.S. Department of Energy believes that leaving some waste behind is a good idea, but it is trying to slip this seismic policy shift into a defense authorization bill, without public comment or congressional debate.
Last year, DOE tried to get House-Senate conferees on an already passed energy bill to accept this change. But that bill has bogged down. Now it has found an opening in a bill that otherwise has nothing to do with energy matters. U.S. Sen. Lindsay Graham, R-S.C., is pushing the change, but according to a Seattle Post-Intelligencer article, a deputy assistant energy secretary is listed as "author" in supporting documents.
In effects, Graham's measure would exempt DOE from the 1982 Nuclear Waste Policy Act, allowing the agency to solely determine when a site has been "cleaned." This is just the latest DOE maneuver to shut states out of the decision-making process, which is in direct conflict with the 1989 Tri-Party Agreement.
DOE has been trying to reclassify some "high-level" waste as "low level" for two years, but the states, Congress and the courts have said no. A federal judge's ruling sent DOE back to Congress to get the law changed. Such a change would have enormous implications for sites such as the Hanford Nuclear Reservation and the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory, both of which are near major rivers. DOE previously announced a plan that would redefine as "low level" 53 million gallons of waste at Hanford and 900,000 gallons at INEEL.
Idaho and Washington are against reclassifying the waste. Said Sen. Maria Cantwell of Washington: "Trying to rename high-level nuclear waste doesn't change the fact that it is still dangerous, toxic, radioactive sludge that needs to be cleaned up."
Critics say another danger in allowing such waste to be reclassified and permanently buried where it sits is that it paves the way for the importation of any other waste DOE deems to be "low level." Hanford could be a dumping ground for another state's waste. The National Academy of Sciences has concluded that the best approach is to bury nuclear waste deep underground. Since that conclusion, Yucca Mountain in Nevada has been chosen as the national repository.
Without a scientific or political consensus, it is unconscionable for DOE to seek such a major change on such an important matter, especially in the absence of an open debate. The agency needs to stop the repeated end-runs and make a good-faith effort to involve all affected parties if it sees the need for change.