Hanford appears on track to finish pumping liquid radioactive wastes from its leak-prone, single-shell tanks at least nine months ahead of schedule.

Hanford officials announced Wednesday that 1 million gallons of Hanford liquid wastes have been removed from the site's single-shell tanks since 1998.

"Each gallon (of pumped wastes) reduces the risk to the environment and Columbia River," said Ami Sidpara, the federal Office of River Protection's assistant manager for operations.

And if the work continues to stay ahead of schedule, that would be one less item the state might sue the federal government over when it comes to cleaning up Hanford.

In 1998, Gov. Gary Locke, state Attorney General Christine Gregoire and Washington's Department of Ecology were angry about Hanford falling behind on pumping the liquids from the 149 single-shell tanks into the 28 double-shell tanks. So, they threatened to sue the Department of Energy.

That led to the state and DOE signing an agreement outlining a timetable for transferring the liquids -- with completion by Sept. 30, 2004.

Under the agreement, if Hanford falls behind on the timetable, the state can go immediately to federal court to try to force DOE to comply with the schedule.

At the current rate, pumping may finish nine to 12 months early. There are still about 2.6 million gallons of liquid waste to go.

Central Hanford has almost 54 million gallons of radioactive liquids, sludges and gunk in 177 underground tanks -- 149 older single-shell tanks and 28 newer and safer double-shell tanks.

So far, 67 of the single-shell tanks have been suspected of leaking significantly more than 1 million gallons of waste into the ground.

In 1998, roughly 34 million gallons of waste were in the single-shell tanks, and about 20 million gallons of mostly liquid waste were in the double-shell tanks.

The contents of the single-shell tanks include about 3.6 million gallons of liquid wastes while the rest is salt cakes, sludges and gunk can't be pumped out.

It's those 3.6 million gallons of radioactive fluid that DOE must pump to the double-shell tanks by 2004. Then, Hanford will have to tackle what to do with the solids and sludges left in the single-shell tanks.

Pumping a tank can run from a few months to more than a year. It took two years to pump out the first 1 million gallons. Hanford officials hope to reach the 2 million mark by this summer.

At this time, all liquids that can be pumped have been removed from 126 of the 149 single-shell tanks, said Rick Raymond, single-shell tanks project manager for CH2M Hill Hanford Group, the contractor caring for the tank farms.

Each of the 126 pumped tanks still have up to a few thousand gallons of liquids within the crevices of the remaining sludges and solids, which cannot be reached by the pumps.

Meanwhile, CH2M Hill has begun pumping five of the eight tanks that it must start on for fiscal 2001, which began Oct. 1.

CH2M Hill also hopes to start pumping an additional seven tanks by Sept. 30, 2001, Raymond said.

Two of the 67 suspected leaking tanks -- BY-105 and BY-106 -- still have to be pumped and will be worked on next year.

But several nonleaking tanks -- which pose greater ecological threats if they ever leak -- are in line ahead of Tanks BY-105 and BY-106, Raymond and Sidpara said.