Audit Report: IG-0624

In 1996, the Department of Energy (Department) amended its Tri-Party
Agreement with the Environmental Protection Agency and the State of
Washington regarding cleanup of the Hanford Site. Included in the
amendment was an enforceable milestone that the Department would
remove about 10,000 containers of transuranic (TRU) waste from
Trench 4, located in Hanford's Low-Level Burial Grounds, by the end
of Fiscal Year (FY) 2004. The Richland Operations Office established
a related goal to process and ship all of the site's legacy TRU waste –
estimated at about 38,000 containers – to the Waste Isolation Pilot
Plant (WIPP) by 2027.
In 2002, the Office of Environmental Management began a program to
accelerate risk reduction and cleanup across the Department complex.
As part of this program, Environmental Management developed
performance management plans with each site to identify specific
initiatives and deadlines for accelerating risk reduction. In August
2002, the Richland Operations Office issued its Hanford Performance
Management Plan, and revised its performance goal for processing and
shipping TRU waste to WIPP from 2027 to 2015.