Dead Animals and Other Doings at Hanford

Under an AP byline, the Tri-City Herald reports that

"Some compaction records for the low-level radioactive waste dump at the Hanford nuclear reservation have been found to be bogus, officials said, raising questions about the risk of future pollution. Patrick L. Pettiette, president of the Washington Closure Hanford LLC, said the contractor was told that falsified records were found Friday in a routine audit by S.M. Stoller Corp. of Broomfield, Colo., the subcontractor for operation of the Environmental Restoration Disposal Facility. "This has everyone's attention," Pettiette told the Tri-City Herald. "All the focus is on getting to the bottom of it."

Who is Washington Closure Hanford? Quoting its website:

"The U.S. Department of Energy selected Washington Closure Hanford (WCH) on March 23, 2005, to manage the River Corridor Closure Project at the 586-square-mile Hanford Site in southeastern Washington state. Washington Closure Hanford is a limited liability company owned by Washington Group International, Bechtel National and CH2M HILL. WCH has the single purpose of safely cleaning up and closing the Hanford river corridor."

Oh, the dead animals? In an article by the indefatigable Annette Cary of the Tri-City Herald, and published in the SeattlePI, we find out that

Hanford workers have removed 40,000 tons of carcasses, manure and other waste from burial trenches at the former experimental animal farms at Hanford. That included a railroad tanker car packed with animal carcasses, then buried, said Mark Buckmaster, Washington Closure Hanford remediation manager, during a presentation to a Hanford Advisory Board committee last week.

Read the whole article to find out about the alligators.