Hanford could end up as the permanent burial ground for far more of the radioactive wastes produced during World War II and the Cold War if voters approve Initiative 297, Rep. Doc Hastings, R-Wash., warned Wednesday.

The warning came as a break from the congressman's long-held policy of remaining publicly neutral on state ballot initiatives. Initiatives are for voters, not elected officials, to decide, he believes.

But I-297 would be so harmful that he is publicly opposing it, Hastings said in a speech to the Tri-City Area Chamber of Commerce.

"It is deeply flawed and should be defeated," he said.

The initiative to be decided in November would attempt to block nuclear waste from being imported to Hanford from other Department of Energy weapons sites. Supporters want no more radioactive waste to be brought to Hanford while DOE still has massive amounts of waste to clean up there from the past production of plutonium for the nation's nuclear weapons program.

"We in the Tri-Cities know that the most dangerous wastes at Hanford are on schedule to be shipped out of our community and out of our state for storage at national repositories in other states," Hastings said.

But refusing to accept waste from other sites could jeopardize that plan, he said.

Waste now scheduled to be shipped from Hanford to other states includes 10,000 canisters of glassified high-level waste from underground tanks, 104,000 nuclear reactor fuel rods, 18 tons of plutonium-bearing materials and 2,000 nuclear waste capsules, he said. In addition, work has started on shipping 120,000 drums of plutonium-contaminated waste to a repository in New Mexico.

The planned shipments from Hanford would contain 90 percent of the radioactivity in the site's nuclear wastes, Hastings said. The materials would go to Nevada, New Mexico and South Carolina.

Shipments planned to be sent to Hanford, some of which would be permanently buried there, would hold less than 1 percent of the radioactivity already at the site, he said.

"The fundamental failure of I-297 is that while it tries to keep waste from coming into Washington state, it gambles all of Hanford's massive volumes of nuclear waste that other states won't do the same thing," he said.

"If Washington loses the I-297 gamble, then we may get to forever keep the 90 percent of Hanford waste currently headed out of our state."

That's not all that's wrong with the initiative, Hastings said.

It also would establish a new tax on the federal cleanup dollars coming into the state and divert money away from cleanup of contaminated ground water, soil and buildings at Hanford, he said.

Some of that tax would be required to be given away to interest groups, including the groups that wrote the initiative and put it on the ballot, he said. Heart of America has spent $446,000 on the initiative, according to state lobbying reports.

More than twice that much money could be diverted annually to interest groups from cleanup money if the initiative passes, Hastings said.

Some money also would be used to start a new public advisory board, he said. However, that would simply duplicate the Hanford Advisory Board, which has been providing Hanford advice for a decade, he said.