Wasteland

Washington Governor Christine Gregoire--the former WA State Attorney General who battled the feds for cleanup of the Hanford Nuclear Reservation after serving as head of WA State Ecology and being ignored by US DOE--said on 60 Minutes this evening that the millions of lethal gallons already in the groundwater are headed for the river, and that "Time is not on our side."

The CBS story focused on the faulty containment structures and plans for the millions of gallons that haven't yet leaked out of the disintegrating underground tanks. Everything recently built was built incorrectly, and has to be retrofitted or abandoned.

Gregoire did say the Columbia River was the lifeblood of the Northwest, but did not have time to elaborate. What she was unable to get into is the fact that the municipal water supplies and irrigation districts and hydropower stations downstream will become little Chernobyls. It's also not difficult to imagine what will happen to Oregon and Washington's lucrative tourism industry when their world-renowned beaches become radioactive wastelands.