The public deserves answers about idle Hanford nuclear site workers | Opinion
It’s an age-old yarn that Hanford workers are the fastest in the world because they can leave work at 5 o’clock and be home by 4. But the recent revelations in court filings that workers assigned to perform fire system maintenance were idle and participated in non-work-related activities while on the job did nothing to discredit the slur.
The community deserves to know how this happened, what lessons Hanford has learned, and what action the Department of Energy and its contractors have taken to ensure it won’t happen again.
In 2021, a whistleblower accused Hanford Mission Integration Solutions (HMIS) of fraudulently collecting millions of dollars for work that wasn’t done. Eventually the U.S. Department of Justice got involved in the lawsuit.
HMIS contracts with DOE to provide fire protection and maintenance services at Hanford. According to legal documents, HMIS workers spent hours, sometimes entire shifts, napping, reading or watching movies and TV shows instead of checking pipes, sprinklers and fire extinguishers. It reportedly billed DOE for the idle time.
The workers aren’t really to blame. They weren’t working because HMIS management couldn’t get its act together and have work ready for them to do. Supervisors and managers compounded the problem by directing employees to assign hours to tasks that were already completed and to pick up extra hours on the weekends that could be billed at a higher rate.
To be fair, there’s been no conviction nor judicial finding. Maybe HMIS is innocent.
Then again, the Justice Department doesn’t get involved without a lot of evidence. The fact the case has been ongoing for more than two years hints that there’s something to it. If it were baseless, a judge would have thrown it out or there’d have been a lowball settlement already. The public is only finding out about it now because the judge in the case lifted a seal on the files.
Whatever the ultimate legal outcome, the story fuels perceptions that the essential cleanup work at Hanford either isn’t in competent hands or is a slush fund from which contractors and government agencies can dip. It’s a knock against the essential task of cleanup.
If this had happened at some small, privately-held company, it would hardly merit a mention. Only the owners would be losing money. But when something like this happens at Hanford, it’s a triple whammy in the Tri-Cities.
First is Hanford’s and DOE’s obligation to be responsible stewards of public dollars. Taxpayers pay for the Hanford cleanup. Americans – including Tri-Citians – deserve more than naptime for their investment. The HMIS contract is worth up to $4 billion over a decade.
Second, Hanford jeopardizes its credibility on safety. The site is home to radioactive and toxic materials, the legacy of decades of producing the raw materials for nuclear weapons. If the allegations are correct, a contractor responsible for fire safety didn’t deliver it. If Hanford is slack about fire, who’s to say it isn’t letting containment of hazardous materials slip as well?
Third, the incident risks the economic future of the region. Like it or not, the Tri-Cities are tied to Hanford. Not only do thousands work there, but thousands more work at ancillary businesses that support Hanford’s work and provide services to its employees and their families. If a crisis in confidence led to scaling back Hanford operations, it would have a huge economic impact.
DOE cited “ineffective work planning and unproductive work execution that went uncorrected by contractor management,” when explaining what had happened. The president of HMIS could only “disagree with the DOE position.” That’s corporate speak for, “We have no way to explain this that won’t make everyone madder.”
Perhaps this is just a case of a relatively small group of bad employees working on one aspect of a complex contract and not endemic to the whole. If that’s true, HMIS should come clean and explain that they’ve fixed the situation. If it is something bigger, heads should roll.
Are these accusations slanderous? Are they true? Or somewhere between? Give us your opinion by writing to “Letters to the Editor” at letters@tricityherald.com.
