The Department of Energy's planned spending at Hanford over the next decade would fall $8 billion short of paying for legally required environmental cleanup work, according to the Washington State Department of Ecology.

"A shortfall of this magnitude will send shock waves throughout the cleanup," wrote Jane Hedges, nuclear waste program manager for the Department of Ecology, in a draft of a letter the state plans to send to DOE this week.

DOE and its regulators -- the state and the Environmental Protection Agency -- made progress last week toward renegotiating Hanford cleanup deadlines in the legally binding Tri-Party Agreement.

But Hedges wrote that the $8 billion shortfall will require "full-scale changes" to the Tri-Party Agreement, including deadlines not being discussed in the current negotiations.

Proposed funding levels for the next two years are "bleak" and would be short more than $1 billion to perform legally required cleanup work, according to the draft letter.

At that amount, "actual cleanup and waste treatment and disposal nearly stops," it said. Hundreds of millions of dollars would be used for base operations, which "involves the surveillance and passive monitoring of contamination instead of remediation of the risk."

Funding shortfalls also would drive up labor costs because of the need to lay off workers and later rehire and train new workers, the draft letter said.

It pointed out that the Tri-Party Agreement requires DOE to take all steps needed to obtain funding that meets legal requirements, including consulting with EPA.

However, DOE has not provided the state with the detailed information it has requested for fiscal year 2010 and its baseline, which is a look ahead at planned work and spending, the draft letter said.

"While (DOE) considers the baseline to be official, certified and complete, Ecology hasn't been given the opportunity to review or engage in its development," it said.

Because Congress may not restore funding to bring cleanup back on schedule, the state prepared a list of priorities for spending as money becomes available. Its top priority is to empty radioactive waste from more than one leak-prone underground tank a year.

Next it wants work to clean up Hanford along the Columbia River to remain on schedule. The schedule calls for completing cleanup in the reactor areas by 2012 and cleanup in the 300 Area just north of Richland by 2018, other than ground water. DOE would be required to have ground water contamination along the river cleaned up by 2024.

Third priority is to contain plumes of radioactive and hazardous chemical contamination in the ground water beneath central Hanford.

The planned letter will be sent to James Rispoli, DOE assistant secretary of environmental management; Ins Triay, DOE principal deputy assistant secretary of environmental management; Dave Brockman, manager of the DOE Hanford Richland operations office, and Shirley Olinger, manager of the DOE Hanford Office of River Protection.