Blue Goose ~ Day 28

June 28, 2014 ~ Kennewick, WA to Suunyside, WA

I read a book a year or so ago about Richland, WA. It was Plutopia by Kate Brown, subtitled Nuclear Families, Atomic Cities and the the Great Soviet and American Plutonium Disasters. And Andree worked for a lawyer one summer reading depositions of participants in a group legal action seeking redress for radioactive pollution and resultant thyroid cancers. All this history intrigues me, but it might not be all that interesting to you so scroll down if you want...

NSNEWSNETWORK.ORG

In southeast Washington, and in southern Russia there are two atomic cities a world apart but with surprising similarities. The new book “Plutopia” studies the cities of Richland, Wash. and Ozersk, Russia. Both places made plutonium for nuclear bombs. And both sprung up from desolate places during WWII and the Cold War. Kate Brown says people who lived in Richland and Ozersk during the plutonium production days remember both towns as delightful places to live.
“Strangely enough. Despite the fact that they are at the bull’s-eye of the Cold War in so many ways," says Brown. "They are vulnerable of attack from the enemy abroad, they are vulnerable to big explosions and they are vulnerable to sort of daily doses of low-levels of radiation.”

Brown says, sure, both the Russians and the Americans were dealing with some of the most toxic stuff on earth. But the governments made sure that most who came to work had secure jobs, there was plenty to eat and there were good schools for children...Brown says the urgency of war and limited resources also meant both the Americans and Russians disposed of waste harming the environment -- legacies that affected multiple generations in surrounding communities. Americans disposed of liquid and solid radioactive waste in pits in the desert sand, filled underground tanks with millions of gallons of radioactive waste, and sent more downstream in the Columbia River. In the late 1940s, the Russians filled their own underground tanks, sent thousands of curries of highly-radioactive waste downstream and sickening riverside communities.

“They didn’t tell any of the 28,000 people living downstream who didn’t have wells," Brown says. "They drank from those rivers, cooked with it, watered their livestock, watered their crops and ate the fish.”

Much of that waste both in Russia and near Richland has yet to be cleaned up...And in the American Northwest downwinders and atomic workers also suffered from poisoning from Hanford. 

WIKIPEDIA

The B Reactor (105-B) at Hanford was the first large-scale plutonium production reactor in the world. It was designed and built by DuPont based on an experimental design by Enrico Fermi, and originally operated at 250 megawatts (thermal)...Construction on B Reactor began in August 1943 and was completed just over a year later, on September 13, 1944. The reactor went critical in late September and, after overcoming nuclear poisoning, produced its first plutonium on November 6, 1944...This first batch of plutonium was refined in the 221-T plant from December 26, 1944, to February 2, 1945, and delivered to the Los Alamos laboratory in New Mexico on February 5, 1945.^[32]

DAILYUW.COM (October of 2013)

Hanford is the largest superfund site in the country, a consequence of decades of large-scale nuclear material refining efforts. Most of the physical facilities at Hanford have already been contained and buried on site, but there is much more work left to do, including the prevention of polluted groundwater from reaching the Columbia River...Hanford will eventually be cleaned up, and at the moment the danger that the site poses to the public is likely overstated, although contamination to the Columbia River is clearly a very serious concern. The federal government has promised to make Hanford and the Tri-Cities a safe region, and it will make good on that promise, eventually.

The time estimates for completely cleaning up Hanford extend well into the mid-21st century, which is a shame. The centerpiece of the effort is a waste treatment plant to be used for vitrification, a process of encapsulating waste in contamination-resistant glass. It should have been built by now, and because it is still not complete, the work it is meant to do is being delayed decades into the future.

There are tours of the Reactor B site which I declined. In 2000, President Clinton designated all of this as a National Monument, albeit one with limited public access. Within the Hanford Reach is Saddle Mountain NWR. That is my point here.

WIDIPEDIA

The Hanford Reach National Monument is a National Monument in the U.S. State of Washington. It was created in 2000, mostly from the former security buffer surrounding the Hanford Nuclear Reservation (Hanford Site). The area has been untouched by development or agriculture since 1943.
The monument is named after the Hanford Reach, the last non-tidal, free-flowing section of the Columbia River in the United States, and is one of only two National Monuments administered by the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service. President Bill Clinton established the monument by presidential decree in 2000...Ancestors of the Wanapum People, Yakama Nation, Confederated Tribes of the Colville, Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Reservation and the Nez Perce used the land for hunting and resource collecting...Geographically, the area is part of the Columbia River Plateau, formed by basalt lava flows and water erosion. The shrub-steppe landscape is harsh and dry, receiving between 5 and 10 inches (250 mm) of rain per year. The sagebrush-bitterbrush-bunchgrass lands are home to a wide variety of plants and animals, and the Hanford Reach provides one of the Northwest's best salmon spawning grounds. Forty-eight rare, threatened, or endangered animal species have found refuge on the monument, as well as several insect species found nowhere else in the world.^[2] 

This is what the area looks like:

Hanford Reach National Monument - WA

Hanford Reach National Monument with the Columbia River and Reactor B in the distance - WA

Saddle Mountain NWR is included in the Hanford Reach but is closed to the public at this time; however when deemed "safe" by the DOE, it will be opened again, the point being I could only see it from a distance. There are some parts of the Reach, south of the river and nearer to Richland, that are open for public use, but this is formidable country what with rattlesnakes, heat, lurking / leaking radioactive material and the fluctuating water levels of the Columbia. And why exactly it this called a "reach" and why exactly did Clinton make it a National Monument?

If this interests anyone in any way, read Plutopia.

By mid afternoon, I was on the Columbia NWR, west of the town of Othello, which had an odd odor, like a kitchen in a cheap greasy-food restaurant.



The refuge had lakes, including Soda Lake and isolated rock cliffs (drumhellers), all in a shrub-steppe landscape (defined as open areas with sagebrush).

Soda Lake at Columbia NWR - WA

I find it interesting to drive along and see how the land has been changed by humans and then enter a refuge and see what is was. Not always as there often is extensive and ongoing management on refuge lands, but there isn't much obvious human disruption...a few roads, some fencing, discrete interpretive signs and primitive day use areas...

Birdwatchers at Soda Lake - Columbia NWR - WA

I failed at watchful waiting here. I got to about 20 minutes and moved on. I did not see either Rock or Canyon Wrens that use this habitat. What I do see everyday though (besides Robins and Common Yellowthroats) are Northern Harriers, hawks with white rumps which fly low over the fields cruising for food.

Checking where to go next, I decided on Toppenish NWR  which was southwest, so retraced my route of earlier today for 40 miles and drove another 40 miles south and west to Sunnyside, WA, near which there was a cultivated crop with a sweet minty fragrance. Agriculture is big all through this area, especially veggies, fruit and vineyards. There is a significant Hispanic culture here with bilingual signs, Mexican restaurants and Spanish-speaking employees in the stores. Irrigation with elaborate delivery systems turns the brown fields green. I was reminded of The Milagro Beanfield War.  

I found a spot under a shade tree at a busy Walmart. What did I eat for dinner? Cheese and crackers, pickled herring, a glass of wine and some bite-size Milky Way pieces.

I am forcing myself to read 15 pages a day of Look Homeward Angel by Thomas Wolfe, which I've been reading for five years, but so intermittently that I can't remember where I left off months earlier and am probably re-reading several chapters. It is too florid in places for my taste and could be cut by one-third. Still, I understand why it is a classic. Are all of Eugene's (Wolfe's) high strung emotions that important for the story?