Historical Hanford Landfill Goes Under The Knife

Share

By Kyle Trompeter

Summary

The crews water the ground and the trucks dig up the bones of the past. It's a glance into the past that could reveal facts about the people who built the Hanford site back when FDR was president.

Story Published: Sep 17, 2009 at 4:43 PM PST

HANFORD - The crews water the ground and the trucks dig up the bones of the past. It's a glance into the past that could reveal facts about the people who built the Hanford site back when FDR was president.

“So we're looking to see if that is in fact the case. The only way to do that is open up the ground and take a look underneath,” said Supervisor Tom Marceau.

Work has gone on for a few weeks now. So what have they found so far behind door number one?

“At this point, everything that's turned up has been industrial waste and construction waste. It looks more like they used this area after the Hanford site and the town site were here which was left in 1946,” said Marceau.

“We have found some nice stuff. It's a little redundant right now. What we have found has included things like bricks that have some imprinting on them that say "American", I believe,” said Archeologist Sara Clowery.

What about toxic waste?

“So chemicals like gasoline and kerosene that might have been used to burn materials that leave a chemical residence behind were not used here and we don't believe they were used here,” said Marceau.

So it's a "clean" landfill compared to the other ones at Hanford. The work will be wrapping up next week. Now that the crews have found some buried treasure, the archeologists get their time to shine.

“Once they've gone through that, we help point out and select artifacts that we want to retain for further analysis. Then after that, we just repeat it over and over again,” said Clowery.