The state of Washington plans to file a lawsuit today to force the Department of Energy to move faster to empty radioactive waste from underground tanks at the Hanford nuclear reservation and treat it.

"In Washington state, we have been patient and reasonable in working with the federal agencies at Hanford," Washington Gov. Chris Gregoire said Tuesday in Richland. "Today our patience has run out."

The state has been in talks with the Department of Energy for 18 months to renegotiate legal deadlines for cleanup after it became clear that DOE could not meet cleanup deadlines in the Tri-Party Agreement.

The lawsuit, which is to be filed in federal court in Eastern Washington, will ask a judge to set new deadlines for cleanup and enforce them because the state and federal government failed to reach an agreement out of court.

"The state has now concluded that Energy will only treat and retrieve tank waste in a timely manner if a court intervenes, establishes a schedule and maintains oversight of the work until it is completed," Gregoire and Attorney General Rob McKenna wrote in a letter to Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman, notifying him of the planned lawsuit.

The decision to sue was a last resort, Gregoire said. She and McKenna flew to Richland for the announcement.

DOE and the state reached agreement in principle on new cleanup deadlines, with the final version of the renegotiated agreement changing little from details made public more than a year ago.

However, when the Department of Justice started working on the legal language, talks took several steps backward, Gregoire said. They ended when the Department of Justice and the state could not agree on language that the state believed would make revised deadlines enforceable by the court, state officials said.

With DOE's history of missed cleanup deadlines, the state did not have confidence the new deadlines would be met, said McKenna.

"We didn't ask for any legal obligations they have not already agreed to for our state and others," Gregoire said. The Department of Justice declined to comment.

The lawsuit will be filed as Congress is preparing to consider Hanford's fiscal 2009 budget. The Tri-City Development Council has warned that a suit could provide an excuse for Congress to slow funding until the courts determine a path forward, particularly in the current difficult economic climate.

"We can't afford to put everything on hold and wait for the outcome of a lawsuit," said Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., and Rep. Doc Hastings, R-Wash., in a joint statement Tuesday.

They called on the state and federal government to try again to resolve the dispute out of court. Reaching an agreement would unquestionably make getting adequate money for Hanford easier, they said.

The Department of Energy said it was disappointed the negotiations are moving to litigation after the Tri-Party agencies -- DOE, the state and the Environmental Protection Agency -- had agreed on key technical issues and activities.

"We have long maintained that litigation is costly and distractive" and erodes the confidence of Congress and the public, DOE said in a statement.

Heart of America Northwest, a Hanford watchdog group, favored the litigation, saying it was the only way to get radioactive waste out of tanks before they leak.

The state has been reasonable with the Tri-Party Agreement, making more than 400 changes in the 19 years since the original agreement was signed, McKenna said. That has included repeatedly extending the deadline for having the vitrification plant operating to turn tank waste into a stable glass form for disposal.

The latest deadline for the start of operation of the $12.2 billion plant is 2011, but DOE does not expect it to be operating until 2019.

In addition, DOE has fallen behind schedule on emptying waste from Hanford's 149 leak-prone underground tanks. It already has missed deadlines to have all tanks in the C Tank Farm and one in the S Tank Farm emptied and cannot meet the Tri-Party Agreement deadline to have all tanks emptied by 2018.

Progress has been made at the tank farms, and seven of the tanks have been emptied, the state pointed out. But the proposed budget of the Bush administration would allow just one tank to be emptied this year, Gregoire said. At that rate, the work faces not just years or decades of delay but a century of delay, she said.

"That's unconscionable," she said. At least 67 of the tanks are believed to have leaked 1 million gallons of waste in the past and some of the contamination has reached the ground water, according to the state.

"On Energy's present course, it is inevitable that additional tanks will leak and release more mixed hazardous and highly radioactive waste to the soil, the ground water and eventually the Columbia River," Gregoire and McKenna wrote in the letter to Bodman.

Even tanks presumed to be sound today could leak when waste retrieval is undertaken, and the tanks may become so weak that retrieval is no longer possible, they said. A strong earthquake could make matters worse, they said.

In negotiations, the state and DOE had reached tentative agreement that the deadline for emptying all underground tanks would be extended from 2018 to 2040 and that all the waste would need to be treated for disposal by 2047. The current deadline for treating the waste is 2028.

"I would like it done a whole lot faster than that," Gregoire said. "But we were trying to be as reasonable at the (negotiating) table as possible."

In addition, the state is asking in talks with DOE that the federal government agree to new deadlines to ensure that ground water and soil are cleaned up to protect the Columbia River.

The lawsuit will be filed while the Bush administration is in office, but Gregoire said the new administration has indicated that once Obama is in office it wants to work with the state to find a solution to Hanford cleanup delays.

"We are hopeful that the new administration will take a look at the minor issues that remain and settle the dispute without legal action," Ed Revell, chairman of the Hanford Communities, said in a statement.

The lawsuit will ask that the courts address the schedule to empty all 177 Hanford tanks, which includes its newer double-shell tanks; the completion of the vitrification plant and the treatment of all tank waste at the vitrification plant or through supplemental treatment methods.

"We are asking the court to tell DOE to get the job done at Hanford," Gregoire said.