A "town hall" meeting is scheduled for Dec. 4 in Richland to get public feedback on the Department of Energy's proposal to speed cleanup efforts along Hanford's Columbia River shore.

That meeting is to start with a briefing on the concept at 6:30 p.m., followed by public input at 7:15 at the Richland Red Lion Inn.

This will be part of a public comment period of at least 30 days to begin Monday.

DOE wants to shift extra money and efforts to the old reactor areas and the 300 Area along the Columbia River, hoping to clean up most of the shore area by 2012. The idea is to show major tangible progress at Hanford by 2012 to a Congress and public that have been skeptical whether the site is accomplishing much.

To work, DOE believes that plan needs Congress to increase the site's non tank farm budget from $755 million in fiscal 2001 to about $800 million in fiscal 2002, and to stay at that annual $800 million level through 2016.

Congress wants DOE to send it a report -- outlining how DOE wants to clean up the 100 square miles of Hanford closest to the river -- in January. At that time, a new Congress and a new presidential administration will be tackling Hanford's cleanup.

DOE wants the green light soon from Washington, D.C., because it is scheduled to send its fiscal 2002 Hanford non tank farm cleanup budget request -- the one needing the $800 million -- to Congress February.

The Hanford Advisory Board plans to provide formal input into the concept on Dec. 7-8. This input could be a formal stance or a list of pros and cons the board wants Washington, D.C., to consider.

On Tuesday and Wednesday, board members came up with some aspects that it believes DOE should mull over. These included:

-- The 618-10 and 618-11 burial sites a few miles north of the 300 Area. These are probably the most contaminated sites in the river shore area and were not in DOE's original accelerated cleanup proposal.

-- Site 618-7, about a half-mile northwest of the 300 Area. Little is known about this site, except it is filled with "hundreds" of barrels of zircaloy metal, which was used in old reactor fuel casings.

-- Disposing of 1,200 to 1,500 barrels partly buried just north of the 300 Area that are filled with uranium chips plus oil to prevent the uranium from catching fire.

DOE has already dug up 338 barrels, and about 150 of those leak.

In a few weeks, DOE hopes to have a rough plan lined up on disposing of the barrels, which will likely include incineration or glassification, or both.

-- Figuring out how "clean" a cleaned-up river area should be and what are the cost implications among different levels of clean.

-- What are the contaminated ground water aspects of an accelerated cleanup?

-- What federal and state laws must be taken into account, especially requirements for environmental studies and public input?