A 2021 aerial photo of Hanford’s 200 Area, which houses the tanks and under-construction Waste Treatment Plant, in southeast Washington. (Credit: U.S. Department of Energy) Listen (Runtime 1:01) Read There […]Read More
A snapshot of the Hanford cleanup site showing the various groundwater plumes across the site. (Credit: U.S. Department of Energy / Office of Environmental Management) Listen (Runtime 1:00) Read A […]Read More
Workers clear canals of debris in preparation for spring irrigation season in the Roza Irrigation District. (Courtesy: Dave Rollinger) Listen (Runtime 1:00) Read A story in plot points: a federal […]Read More
Washington Rep. Steve Tharinger of the 24th district became intimately acquainted with levee setbacks when he discovered the levee protecting his house on the lower Dungeness River was not only not protecting his house, but harming the ecosystem too.
“I sold my house and the five acres in a barn we had, so that we'd have more room to move that levee back and give the Read More
While hiking, Nancy Lust, with Friends of Rocky Top, watches a truck dump waste into a landfill in Yakima County. Lust lives near the landfill and has fought to learn […]Read More
While hiking, Nancy Lust, with Friends of Rocky Top, watches a truck dump waste into a landfill in Yakima County. Lust lives near the landfill and has fought to learn […]Read More
It was a clear day in Tacoma on January 17, 1993. Commencement Bay was crowded with boats. Families gathered on boat decks and across North Tacoma sidewalks to watch the demolition of what was once the tallest smokestack in the world, the ASARCO smokestack that loomed over Tacoma’s waterfront for nearly 100 years.
With the press of a button, a child, supervised by Read More
Jennifer Garcia with her daughter, Hannah, 2. Garcia found out the soil in her yard tested high for arsenic. It’s left over from pesticides sprayed before the 1950s on this […]Read More
Columbia River. Photo from www.ecology.wa.gov. Listen (Runtime 1:09) Read Environmental organizations are making Hanford site information more accessible for underserved communities around the Columbia River. Educational programs, multilingual meetings and […]Read More
Storing renewable energy is critical in the Northwest. A draft review for the region’s largest proposed energy storage project is available for public comment.Read More
New homes built in Central Washington could be constructed on top of old orchards, where soils might contain the remnants of pesticides from the early 1900s.Read More
A large-scale Northwest farmer allegedly stole Snake River irrigation water during this past summer. And Washington state has clamped down hard with an unusually-large fine.Read More
Dry conditions across Washington have prompted the state’s Department of Ecology to declare a drought emergency. Read More
It’s back to the drawing board for state regulators, after the Washington Court of Appeals ordered the Department of Ecology to rework permits for confined animal feeding operations, known as CAFOs. A panel of judges ruled that current waste discharge permits don’t adequately protect groundwater and don’t take climate change into account.Read More
A large energy storage project in Washington will have to reapply for important water quality certifications. The state recently denied the certification because officials didn’t have enough information about the Goldendale Energy Storage Project.Read More
We’ve all probably seen it: a vehicle driving down the highway with boxes and tools and furniture jammed into the back of bed. A chunk of something might fly out at any moment. It hasn’t been properly tied down. Washington State Patrol is conducting emphasis patrols to educate drivers on how to properly secure their loads.Read More
Smoke forecasting is notoriously hard to do, but a new tool from the state Department of Ecology may help us anticipate hazardous air five days in the future.Read More
If you have half-used paint cans piling up in your garage and just don’t know how to get rid of them, you’re in luck. Washington has started a new paint recycling program. It follows a similar, decade-old program in Oregon. Read More
The Washington Department of Ecology defended its denial by saying the refinery, which would convert fracked natural gas into methanol to be shipped to Asia, would emit vast amounts of greenhouse gases. If built, it would be among the top 10 greenhouse gas emitters in the state.Read More
David Bowen has owned his own bar in Cle Elum, been a Kittitas County commissioner and managed groundwater nitrate cleanup in the Yakima Valley. Now, he’ll hold the U.S. Department of Energy accountable for its cleanup at the site using the Tri-Party Agreement. That’s a 1989 document struck between Ecology, the federal Department of Energy and the U.S. Environmental Read More
A train carrying crude oil derailed and caught fire in Whatcom County Tuesday morning, prompting officials to evacuate all nearby residents and businesses for several hours.Read More
Fans of rapper Eminem, whose movie "8 Mile" featured his hit song “Lose Yourself” might note, as the song’s lyrics do, “You only get one shot, do not miss your chance to blow. This opportunity comes once in a lifetime.” Now, the public has an opportunity to comment on the environmental review of the aging Eightmile Dam in central Washington's Alpine Lakes Wilderness.Read More
Homes, schools, parks and daycares on Central Washington’s former orchards could soon be one step closer to sitting atop less contaminated ground. A workgroup is finalizing a report to help spread the word about pesticide contamination from more than a century ago – and to give advice on how to help clean it up.Read More
Environmental groups and the Washington dairy industry are unhappy with a state permit that regulates pollutants. The groups made their cases before a state appeals court this week. In 2017, the Washington Department of Ecology issued what’s known as a discharge permit for large dairies or other concentrated animal feeding operations. Read More
Earlier this year, there was only one electric school bus in the entire state of Washington. By this fall, the electric school bus fleet should be vastly expanding. Forty new buses may transport students in districts throughout the state possibly starting in the fall — assuming in-person classes are back on.Read More
Water temperatures are expected to increase as the climate warms. Rivers saw a glimpse of what the future could hold five summers ago, when low water flows and hot temperatures killed thousands of salmon.Read More
Highway rest area dumpsters have been filled to the brim. Recently, Washington Transportation Dept. employees hauled two truckloads of appliances, scrap metal and other junk from the side of State Highway 225, outside Benton City.Read More
The state Dept. of Ecology will bring the student crews back next summer. But the agency will will hire more adult crews, ages 18 and up, to pick up litter. There won’t be as many openings as with youth workers because the adults will work longer than three weeks. Read More
Crews from multiple state agencies responded Monday to reports of a 38-foot tugboat that has sunken in the Columbia River. According to the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality, the tugboat reportedly has 750 gallons of diesel on board.Read More
Washington Department of Ecology leaders say without access to this data, they can’t effectively protect the land, air and water for residents in eastern Washington and surrounding communities. They say they’ve attempted to negotiate this issue with federal Energy managers for years.Read More
A $2 billion methanol project proposed for the Lower Columbia River town of Kalama, Washington, hit a new roadblock Friday, when the Washington Department of Ecology said the environmental review did not adequately assess its greenhouse gas emissions and contributions to climate change.Read More
A new federal report says that a massive building at the Hanford Nuclear Site is worse off than managers thought. The so-called PUREX -- Plutonium Uranium Extraction -- plant isn’t clean. Starting in 1956 the plant processed loads of plutonium. Its walls are up to 6 feet thick, and it’s as long as three football fields.Read More
The state of Washington is setting new deadlines for cleanup at Hanford and the plutonium production site that contains a massive quantity of radioactive waste.Read More
Of the 70,000 acres of mudflats in Willapa Bay, less than 10,000 acres are used for shellfish cultivation. Researchers estimate about a quarter of that farmable land has already been taken over by burrowing shrimp. But the battle over land between shellfish growers and the shrimp is not entirely new. Read More
Washington could soon join the ranks of its West Coast neighbors, requiring fuels at the pump that produce less carbon pollution. A low-carbon fuels bill passed its first big test Monday, moving out of the House Appropriations Committee.Read More
The partial government shutdown is blocking some of important oversight at Hanford. In the past 10 years, the Environmental Protection Agency office in Richland has shrunk from nearly 10 experts working on Hanford issues to just three – including the top manager. Read More
After nearly 20 years, a troubled landfill-turned Superfund site outside Pasco may soon have a final cleanup plan. Washington State Department of Ecology managers presented options Wednesday at a public meeting in the Tri-Cities.Read More
Recently, several mayors in the Tri-Cities publicly called for Tunnel 2 to be filled in immediately. They’re worried a collapse of the tunnel could throw up a plume of dust exposing workers or the public.Read More
The U.S. Drought Monitor says the entire state of Washington is abnormally dry. In Oregon, nearly 90 percent of the state is facing moderate to severe drought.Read More
The Washington House Environment Committee hosted public hearings Tuesday on two bills that would restrict a class of chemicals found in everything from firefighting retardant to food wrappers.Read More
A new study estimates smoke from wildfires contributes to 25,000 deaths per year around the world. CREDIT: INCIWEB Listen The wildfires that burned through the Northwest this past summer […]Read More
File photo. landowners near Moses Lake, Washington, have been fined $618,000 for illegally pumping 500 million gallons of water from the Odessa aquifer. | ANNA KING / NORTHWEST NEWS NETWORK […]Read More
