The Department of Energy has been ordered to pay as much as several million dollars to Benton County in payments relating to a long-dead Hanford program.

Benton County learned Thursday that DOE's Office of Hearing Appeals ruled in its favor in a long-running dispute over "payments equivalent to taxes" on the defunct Basalt Waste Isolation Project, or BWIP.

The ruling comes almost two years after county and DOE attorneys argued the issue at a hearing in Washington, D.C.

BWIP was a $500 million project to study creating a burial site at Hanford for spent fuel rods from the nation's commercial nuclear reactors.

BWIP died in 1987 - at least 20 years after the first preliminary studies - when DOE picked Yucca Mountain in Nevada as the burial site.

Benton County has contended that a 1982 law requires DOE to make tax-like payments on the work and improvements on Hanford's 11,000-acre BWIP site - arguing those efforts increased the land's value. Those assessments are dubbed "payments equivalent to taxes."

DOE has contended BWIP was a failed project that cost a lot of money - not something that increased land values.

The main permanent physical "improvements" to the site were 116 holes bored in the basalt.

After a few years of initial sparring, Benton County and DOE took the dispute to DOE's Office of Hearing Appeals in January 1995.

At that point, Benton County contended DOE owed it $51 million for several years of payments plus interest.

But DOE argued it already had paid $700,000 when it only owed $400,000 - and wanted $300,000 back.

The hearing tribunal decided largely in the county's favor, said Ryan Brown, a Benton County assistant prosecutor specializing in government matters.

That means DOE owes money to the county.

While the hearing tribunal generally agreed with the county appraisals stances, it altered the formulas a bit - which Brown expects will make the payments less than the $51 million that originally was sought.

The county has 90 days to recalculate the payments under the modified formulas.