Hanford Task Force: Collaboration over litigation

At a number of USDOE sites around the country, USDOE and the regulators who oversee its sites have negotiated agreements that govern the cleanup of hazardous and/or radioactive contamination. Historically, these agreements have been hammered out in protracted and difficult inter-agency negotiations, behind closed doors. When the agencies have finally emerged to announce their hard-won agreements, the response from interested parties and the public has all too often ranged from lukewarm acceptance to severe criticism. The negotiations that led to the 1989 signing of Hanford's Tri-Party Agreement, officially known as the Hanford Federal Facility Agreement and Consent Order, as well as subsequent negotiated modifications to that Agreement, followed this pattern of closed-door agency negotiation, followed by a strategy of ''announce and defend.'' However, Hanford's latest Tri-Party Agreement negotiations, concluded with a signing ceremony on January 25, 1994, are persuasive evidence that a different approach can yield much more satisfying results -- for the agencies, for affected and interested parties, and for the public. The purpose of this paper is to give a brief description of that approach which can be a useful model for other USDOE sites that face similar negotiations