Washington Closure Hanford - News Room

D Area cleanup subcontract awarded to small business

RICHLAND, Wash.—In late July, Washington Closure Hanford awarded a subcontract worth $23.5 million to Safety and Ecology Corp. (SEC), a small business with headquarters in Knoxville, Tenn., and offices in Richland.

SEC will clean up contaminated burial grounds and remaining sites in D Area at the U.S. Department of Energy’s 586-square-mile Hanford Site located in southeastern Washington state.

Included in the subcontract is remediation of 15 solid waste burial grounds, 13 remaining waste sites, and more than four miles of potentially contaminated water treatment and sanitary sewer pipelines.

The new subcontract calls for SEC to dig up, sort, reduce, stockpile, package, load, weigh and transport about 900,000 tons of contaminated materials, reactor hardware and construction debris from the cleanup sites to a container transfer area. Another subcontractor will transport the material from the container transfer area to Hanford’s Environmental Restoration Disposal Facility for onsite burial.

SEC will mobilize and begin some preparatory work immediately. They will begin remediation of waste sites after completing readiness activities. The current goal is to finish the project in 2010.

“This was a competitive procurement and set aside specifically for small businesses. SEC was selected based on the cost and qualifications outlined in its proposal and we’re pleased to add SEC to our list of small business, remediation subcontractors,” said Jon Fancher, Washington Closure Field Remediation Manager for the D Area remediation project.

"SEC is very excited about the opportunity to support WCH on this critical project.  We have a strong local management team that will bring senior leadership to WCH while implementing a culture that will exceed the expectations for safety and performance on this project.  SEC is looking forward to becoming more integrated with the Tri-Cities community with the expansion of our Richland office and laboratory," said Christopher Leichtweis, SEC’s CEO.

D Area was home to D and DR reactors, which produced plutonium during World War II and the Cold War. The two reactors operated from 1944-1967. Both reactors have since been placed in interim safe storage – DR in 2002 and D in 2004.

In addition to plutonium, operations generated tons of radioactive and hazardous waste which was disposed in trenches and covered with soil.

As of July, Washington Closure had awarded 87 percent of its subcontracted dollars to small business, significantly exceeding its goal of 65 percent.

Washington Closure manages the $2.2 billion, eight-year River Corridor Closure Project for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Richland Operations Office.

# # #

Note to editors: An electronic version of this news release is available at www.washingtonclosure.com/news/releases.html.