In the early 1900s, Hanford and White Bluffs were bustling little communities with small, family-run stores, a weekly newspaper, two schools, an active farming industry, a small ferry and a little railroad called "Sagebrush Annie."

All of that changed in early 1943, when the federal government forced residents of these small towns to pack up their families and evacuate their homes, businesses and farms in the name of national security.

Residents were given 30 days, regardless of whether there were crops to harvest, and they received meager compensation for their sacrifice.

On a flight I look over Hanford last summer, I could still see the outlines of abandoned orchards and foundations from homes and small stores.

The U.S. used this land to produce plutonium for nuclear weapons from 1944-89. The legacy includes roughly 53 million gallons of high-level nuclear wastes - enough to fill 2,400 average-size swimming pools.

About a third of the 177 tanks containing this waste are far beyond their 25-year design life and are known or suspected to have leaked, spilling roughly 1 million gallons of waste.

These tanks can't be emptied until a waste treatment and disposal process is under way at Hanford.

Why is all this important? Because 2,700 miles away in Washington, D.C., the federal government is trying to unilaterally pull the plug on development of the nation's only scientifically studied and Congressionally approved high-level nuclear waste repository, putting families and communities that have already sacrificed at even greater risk.

That's why the Washington State Attorney General's Office is working on several fronts - through the courts, through the regulatory process and through testimony before the federal government's Blue Ribbon Commission - to stop the Department of Energy from putting politics before people and the promises made to find a safe, permanent home for the nuclear waste the federal government generated.

The state filed a lawsuit in Washington, D.C., in mid-April to prevent DOE from irrevocably removing Yucca Mountain as an option by withdrawing "with prejudice" its license application to become the nation's radioactive waste repository. The court has granted expedited review of this case with oral argument scheduled in late September.

We scored a victory last month in Las Vegas, when the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) licensing board accepted our argument that the DOE lacked authority under the law to withdraw its licensing application. That is an important first step in requiring the federal government to follow the law.

This week before the Blue Ribbon Commission, the Attorney General's Office again called upon the federal government to follow the law when considering alternatives to the Yucca Mountain facility.

This is no recent dispute. Congress passed the Nuclear Waste Policy Act in 1982 to address concerns about public and environmental risks by establishing specific federal guidelines for the disposal of high-level radioactive waste and spent nuclear fuel. For roughly 30 years, the federal government had sought a solution to this problem only to be thwarted by intense political pressures at every turn.

After 20 years of scientific research, consuming millions of hours and more than $4 billion, Congress in 2002 designated Yucca Mountain as the nation's sole repository site for deep geologic disposal of high-level radioactive waste and spent nuclear fuel. Congress then directed DOE to file a license application for the site with the NRC.

Based on this decision, roughly $12.3 billion already has been spent on a waste treatment plant at Hanford that continues to be designed and constructed to meet standards specific to the Yucca Mountain facility. Design and engineering for the plant is 78 percent complete and construction is 48 percent complete.

Now the federal government is actively cancelling contracts with no solid science to back up this decision. In fact, in its filing before the NRC, DOE noted, "the Secretary's judgment… is not that Yucca Mountain is unsafe or that there are flaws… but rather that it is not a workable option."

In a worst-case scenario, termination of the Yucca Mountain repository could mean tearing down and rebuilding portions of Washington's waste treatment plant to implement design and engineering changes to meet another repository's waste acceptance criteria. This would result in significant costs and delays in Hanford's entire tank waste clean-up mission.

Congress passed the Nuclear Waste Policy Act to infuse science and certainty into the highly charged discussion of nuclear waste storage and disposal. It's time to once again put people and promises ahead of politics - and most importantly, for the federal government to follow the law.

-- Rob McKenna is Washington's attorney general.