The federal government is proposing cutting millions of dollars traditionally paid to Tri-Cities area local governments.
In the past U.S. Department of Energy has forked over as much as $9.3 million annually in lieu of local taxes that can’t be collected at the 580-square-mile Hanford nuclear reservation.
The money has gone to agencies and to local government programs in Benton County, with smaller amounts going to Franklin and Grant counties.
The largest amount collected by Benton County goes to the Richland School District, with other school districts also receiving money, and the county retaining some money for roads, capital projects, human services and indigent veterans.
Additional money goes to rural libraries, the Port of Benton and the Prosser Hospital District.
“This goes to kids, hospitals, books and veterans,” Adam Fyall, sustainable development manager for Benton County, has said as Benton County wrangled previously over the amount of money DOE owed.
But the Biden administration’s recent budget proposal to Congress for fiscal 2022 includes no money for the communities that bear the burden of the DOE’s largest environmental cleanup projects in the United States — the Hanford site in Eastern Washington and the Savannah River, S.C., site.
Other cleanup sites across the nation would continue to receive DOE payments in lieu of taxes, or PILT.
Read ECA's previous coverage on this story here.
