Editor's note: This column is in response to our editorial, "Environmentalists' aim off the mark on wastes." Read our view online at tinyurl.com/May9Editorial.

"Burying more off-site waste at Hanford will greatly increase contamination of ground water and increase health risks for future generations using the ground water and Columbia River.

That's according to the U.S. Department of Energy's own public health and environmental review. DOE's draft Tank Closure and Waste Management Environmental Impact Statement (TC&WMEIS) confirms what the state of Oregon and our organizations have said for years: burying more wastes at Hanford leads to ground water contamination far above health standards.

Recently, the Environmental Protection Agency released its review of DOE's draft TC&WM EIS, finding that the landfill proposed to be used for off-site waste will contaminate ground water many times above standards.

With water growing scarcer in our region, the ground water under Hanford flowing into the Columbia is a vital resource for drinking, irrigation, salmon, our economy and Native American culture.

Oregon recently sent a strong letter asking DOE to withdraw its decisions to use Hanford for disposal of off-site waste based on striking data from DOE's own TC&WMEIS.

For example, DOE's analysis projects that plutonium 239 levels in the ground water flowing into the Columbia River will reach 300 times the Drinking Water Standard.

We need to aggressively clean up ground water and the contamination spreading to it, not add more waste as DOE plans. The Herald itself, in September 2007, echoed our call against DOE shipping highly radioactive wastes, called Greater Than Class C waste, to be buried in Hanford's landfills ("But even opponents of I-297, which includes the Herald's editorial board, aren't for turning Hanford into a dumping ground for out-of-state wastes.") The risks from adding these highly radioactive wastes, mixed with chemicals, were not even included in DOE's draft environmental impact statement.

The Herald, in its editorial of May 9, trusts DOE's promise not to start shipping off-site waste until the vitrification plant operates (currently estimated for 2022). Yet DOE refuses to make an enforceable commitment not to ship wastes before then. DOE wants to keep its decision in place to bury 3 million cubic feet of off-site waste despite clear evidence of the harm in the draft impact statement.

We don't have any historical reason to trust DOE, whose current plan ("preferred alternative") is never to clean up leaks from tanks-instead proposing to cap the waste, never to clean up the contamination spreading through the soil from billions of gallons of tank system discharges and not to even characterize, much less retrieve and treat, the radioactive and chemical wastes dumped in more than 40 miles of unlined ditches.

The DOE designated Hanford as a national radioactive waste dump in 2000 when it still was saying that dumping radioactive wastes in unlined soil ditches was OK. In 2004, DOE decided to bury 3 million cubic feet of off-site waste at Hanford.

These are the decisions which 21 Northwest environmental and public health groups call on Energy Secretary Steven Chu to withdraw in our recent letter, citing DOE's own assessment of the impacts.

As the state of Oregon wrote in March, DOE's own draft impact statement shows that adding more waste is not acceptable:

"The analysis ... shows that, no matter where at Hanford DOE proposes to dispose of off-site waste, the impacts exceed standards and are unacceptable. Moreover, the impacts from Hanford-origin wastes in these same areas already exceed standards under the most aggressive cleanup considered, leaving no room for any additional impact from off-site wastes."

Our agenda is to protect our ground water, our Columbia, and the health of generations that will use those waters. This isn't about nuclear power as the Herald portrayed it.

As the Hanford Advisory Board unanimously advised DOE following an in-depth review of the current draft TC&WMEIS:

"The Board opposes further consideration or implementation of the importation and disposal of off-site Low-Level Waste (LLW) or Mixed Waste (MW) at Hanford due to the high impacts to ground water and risks from existing wastes, and the documented increase in impacts projected from offsite waste."

Here is the best path forward for DOE, which the Herald should join in supporting:

-- Remove the wastes from leaky Single Shell Tanks as fast as possible.

-- Clean up, rather than cap and cover up, contamination from tank leaks and tanks system discharges.

-- Clean up, not cover up, the 40 miles of unlined burial grounds.

-- Withdraw the decisions to bury more off-site waste at Hanford.

--- Gerry Pollet is executive director of Heart of America Northwest; Tom Carpenter is executive director of Hanford Challenge Brett VandenHeuvel is executive director of Columbia Riverkeeper.