Oregon may be the only state in the U.S. where volunteer design professionals visit public elementary schools and teach students about architecture. And according to those volunteers, they get as much out of it as the kids.

Chanelle Wiley, a design and model curator at PLACE Studio in Portland, is in her second year contributing to the Architects in Schools program.

“I never had this opportunity as a young kid and to be exposed to it in elementary school is such a gift,” she said. “I wondered how (the students) would grasp some of the concepts, but they totally catch on and they really excel. It blew me away.”

Kim Knowles, associate director of Architects in Schools for the Architecture Foundation of Oregon, said the 40-year-old program, which recently began its annual six-week run, was originally intended to be nationwide. Portland architect Marjorie Wintermute started the program in the 1970s, and then AFO took the reins in 2003.

“She has really helped make sure the program could have the longevity that it has, long before it was statewide,” Knowles said of Wintermute. “There are other cities that have a curriculum they provide to schools or do some sort of programming in schools, but I have not found another program where a design professional actually goes into the classroom.”

Architects in Schools has expanded out of Portland to other areas in Oregon, Knowles said. Approximately 80 classrooms in Multnomah, Clackamas and Washington counties are being served this year. She said 68 design professionals and five University of Oregon graduate students are participating this year.

“We started the statewide program in 2006 and it took a couple of years to get it going, but now we’re ongoing in Salem, Eugene, Medford, Ashland, Bend, Tumalo and La Pine,” she said. “Actually, anywhere in the state that we can get a (design) professional and teacher together we will, and we’ve also been in Hood River, Corvallis and the Oregon coast.”

Volunteers receive training in the fall and then in the spring they each spend at least an hour each week in the classroom.

The designers don’t just lecture, said Luke Arehart, a design professional at design-build firm Guild in Portland, but also lead field trips. Arehart, who is volunteering at Faubion Elementary, recently took 27 third- or fourth-grade students to tour Veterans Memorial Coliseum with architecture writer Brian Libby and architect Stuart Emmons. Both men are staunch supporters of efforts to preserve the arena.

But students also learn about design by building their own structures in class, Arehart said.

“Our residency goal this year is to design 10 tributes to notable Oregonians,” he said. “We will be designing the siting, programming and building a scale model.”

One of those people who will be depicted, he said, is Sacajawea, who helped lead the Lewis and Clark expedition in the early 1800s. Her story will be tied to teacher Jamie Makara’s instruction.

This is Arehart’s third year as an Architects in Schools volunteer. He said he loves interacting with the kids.

“For me it’s a really good energy source,” he said. “Not all 60 want to be architects, but we can show how professional steps can help them achieve goals and also about setting goals.”

Wiley this year will work with teacher Melissa Dunn’s fourth- and fifth-grade students at Skyline School in Portland. Wiley is planning to repeat last year’s project – designing buildings for 25 years in the future.

Wiley said she believes the students learn a lot. She was amazed at the concepts they understood.

“Each student wrote me a small thank you card and almost every one of them had a little drawing of an elevation,” she said.

Nathan Corser, global director of design and design principal at engineering firm CH2M HILL, has been an Architects in Schools volunteer for 15 years. He said it’s a lot of work, but worth it – both for him and his students.

Corser said he usually works with fourth- and fifth-graders, but this year he is working with second-graders at the Beverly Cleary School in Portland. He plans to help students understand the history of architecture.

“When you pull up an image of the (Roman) coliseum or the Eiffel Tower, even second-graders know about these things,” he said. “It’s really fun to walk them through it, to talk about how man made shelter and what does it say about the people that built them.”

Corser also takes students on walking tours and makes flash cards for distinctive architectural elements along the route.

“It’s fun getting them to say things like ‘pilaster,’ ” he said.

Even though Corser has many years of program experience, he said every year he worries about the time commitment – always more than an hour per week. But he’s always glad he participates.

“It’s very refreshing for me to hear their input and see their excitement,” he said. “It always feels like a burden, but it makes a difference.”

People interested in becoming an Architects in Schools volunteer next year will be able to sign up in August, Knowles said. More information is available at: .

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Nine years ago, Samir Mokashi told his wife, Asawari, that he wanted to leave his architectural job at CH2M Hill and start his own company providing design teams with code analysis. Years earlier, when the couple immigrated to the U.S. from India, Samir owned only a suitcase and a dream and Asawari had $400 to her name.

“Look,” Samir said to his wife, “we built all this together. The worst that can happen to us is that I’ll have a suitcase and a dream, and you’ll have $400, and we’ll build it back again.”

The Mokashis’ company, Beaverton-based Code Unlimited, has since secured work on big projects such as Park Avenue West, the Collaborative Life Sciences Building and Portland State University’s School of Business Administration Building.

“Regulations are not written so that everybody can understand them,” Samir said. “Sometimes there are conflicting regulations and you can’t make sense out of them. There’s interpretations that also happen. What we do is make it simple and walk people through the process.”

Code Unlimited’s work impressed Robert Thompson, a principal at TVA Architects. The design firm worked on the Park Avenue West project.

“Code Unlimited is a fantastic company,” he said. “Those guys are fantastic in assisting us in valid justifications and explaining our interpretation so we can get through the city building departments with legitimate approvals for planning and zoning within the city. They are masters. They have a knowledge of the building codes far beyond most architects.”

Park Avenue West was designed for the top 10 floors to hold condominiums. However, after the project stalled for five years, condos were changed to offices. The problem was that occupancy in an office is much higher than in a condominium, and the constructed stairways were in conflict with fire codes.

“They were stuck between a rock and a hard place,” Samir said. “The city would not approve their plans. They had written 11 appeals and they were all rejected.”

TVA Architects finally brought in Code Unlimited. Samir reduced the problem to one issue: Building codes required three-hour-rated (survival time in a fire) columns. He proposed making the columns four-hour-rated by increasing the fireproofing by an eighth of an inch. He used that as a bargaining chip to keep the stairways as they were.

“It added a lot more safety value to the building that we could trade for other things,” Samir said of the four-hour-rated columns. “We wrote four or five appeals and got it all squared away and got them moving.”

To a certain degree, Code Unlimited is far removed from the limelight. When TMT Development, Park Avenue West’s owner, was asked for comment about Code Unlimited, a spokesperson responded that no one at TMT had ever heard of the company.

“It’s not minutia, (because) it’s important, but there are a lot of things that the owners don’t necessarily need to get involved in,” Thompson said. “That’s really our role to manage that level of detail. They’re a consultant to the architect; they’re not a consultant to the owner. I consider them a part of our design team.”

Long before Park Avenue West, or any other project, Samir and Asawari came to the U.S. to pursue their education. Samir earned his master’s degree in architecture from the University of Oregon and Asawari earned her doctorate in biochemistry and molecular biology from Oregon Health & Science University.

After Samir graduated, he got a job with CH2M Hill. He demonstrated a unique ability to understand code and became the company’s code expert, working in several states and internationally. Eventually, he started his own business.

Later, Asawari became a principal at Code Unlimited, managing its business operations and human resources. She has found the business world as fascinating as the world of science.

“The reason I got into research is because I’m a very curious person,” she said. “When I was doing research, I was asking questions and looking at patterns and there was analysis and math and software involved. I was constantly learning new things. When I became Samir’s partner, I was able to transfer all of my skills into being his business manager. This was a new thing for me. But I’ve enjoyed it.”

Code Unlimited has a diverse client base, mostly in the Pacific Northwest. The company works with both large and small companies with goals ranging from value architecture to avant-garde architecture.

It’s a team effort for the Mokashis.

“Having our own business, we both enjoy,” Samir said. “Working with each other … 80-90 percent of the time we enjoy it.”

He and Asawari both laughed.

“When you’re personal partners and business partners both, the lines get blurred – most of the time for the better,” Samir said. “Sometimes it’s challenging. But the best thing that I find with Asawari coming into it without having the background in this business is she brings a unique perspective and a way of looking at things that I would never even think of.”

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It costs a lot. It involves stacks of paperwork. It’s considered by some observers to be too prescriptive, and has debatable efficacy.

As other rating systems have arrived, many developers, architects and builders aren’t feeling as enamored as they once were with Leadership in Engineering and Environmental Design, or LEED, which for over a decade was the gold standard in green building certification.

“The general feeling on the street in Portland is that there are other rating systems more aggressive,” said Ozzie Gonzalez, sustainability director for CH2M Hill. “There are newer dimensions to sustainability.”

Fewer clients are asking for LEED, according to architect Trish Nixon, managing principal at LRS Architects.

“The conversations we’re having are different,” she said. “People are looking for alternatives. They’re more aware these days.”

Lease Crutcher Lewis‘ Janice Westcott also perceives a shift.

“We’re still trying to define what the next benchmark will be,” she said. “The industry hasn’t figured that out yet.”

LEED, devised around 15 years ago, is a points-based rating program for green building design and construction. More than 24,000 U.S. buildings have a LEED rating. It’s required for most public-sector projects, and in eco-forward Portland, it’s the norm for Class A commercial construction. U.S. Green Building Council has certified 557 projects in 10 years. Some that earned platinum status – LEED’s highest level – include REI‘s headquarters in downtown and the Port of Portland‘s headquarters at Portland International Airport.

But building professionals say the system has fallen out of favor with some clients who want to go above and beyond LEED, are tired of overwhelming documentation, or simply care less about earning a LEED plaque.

“It’s been a really great driver for the sustainability conversation … it’s my own belief that it’s been revolutionary,” Nixon said. “But now there’s a big focus on energy efficiency.”

Designers like Nixon said they often use a LEED scorecard on materials and construction practices, even if an owner doesn’t want a formal LEED rating. That is in part because LEED can add between $80,000 and $100,000 to an average project budget, plus the $900 registration fee and other costs. Also, tallying points requires thorough documentation and vetting.

“We feel it should affordable,” said green consultant Summer Gorder of EcoReal Solutions. “Developers now are sick of the documentation … they’re kind of exhausted by (LEED).”

Then there’s the question of the program’s effectiveness. Studies tracking energy and water usage in LEED buildings have found little distinction between the four rating levels – certified, silver, gold and platinum. The program focuses on a building’s construction, and observers have noted that owners and occupants can operate a building however they like.

Meanwhile, some owners simply don’t care about LEED anymore. A plaque doesn’t carry the same cachet it once did, according to building industry professionals, and standing out in a city teeming with green structures is more difficult now. Some observers believe that some builders pursue LEED merely so that they can charge tenants more to occupy fancy eco-friendly buildings.

“We’re at an interesting time right now,” said Renee Loveland, sustainability director for commercial developer Gerding Edlen. “Many people are still using it, but we’re kind of looking for the next big thing. You know, how do we go further?”

New standards include eco-districts, net zero buildings, Green Globes certification, the Living Building Challenge and the WELL Building Standard. Eco-conscious owners now want to consider the health and rhythms of a building’s occupants, and the vitality of its surrounding neighborhood. They’re looking to generate their own power, and recruit occupants’ buy-in on sustainability goals. Indoor air quality and acoustics are being considered.

The fourth version of LEED is being rolled out now through Oct. 26, 2016. Some updates are meant to address a common critique of LEED – it fails to account for how a building operates. They include building orientation and climatic site considerations, more aggressive energy and water metering and stricter material source disclosure.

“We’re trying to reduce a building’s carbon footprint, and do it more holistically,” said Elaine Aye of the USGBC Portland office.

The update process began in 2012. Every firm on the USGBC’s disparate update committee had a vote, which slowed the process, Aye said. To improve the system, more rigid rules were required, but there was already a feeling that the LEED process was “pretty stern,” she said.

“It was a painful process for the GBC,” she said.

If LEED is falling out of favor, it’s the product of its own success, Gorder said.

“I think there are more options now, and that’s a good thing,” she said. “In Portland, we look at what makes sense, not just getting a plaque.”

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A corner office was once the mark of success in the professional world, but employees today are less interested in such a perk than amenities like fitness centers, bike repair areas and rooftop decks.

It’s this shift in employee preferences that’s driving up rents and driving down vacancy rates in Class B buildings in Portland’s Central Business District, according to Patricia Raicht, vice president of research for Jones Lang LaSalle.

“In the Class B and Class C buildings where owners have done something to upgrade the space in terms of infrastructure – (removed) dropped ceilings, exposed brick walls, done lobby renovations – the vacancy rates there are 200 points lower than in non-improved buildings,” she said. “We’ve seen a 20 percent increase in rent in buildings with creative spaces.”

Data compiled by JLL indicates that, in Class B and C properties, creative space has outperformed total space – and the gap is widening.

Between the second quarter of 2012 and the third quarter of 2014, vacancy for creative space fell 280 basis points to 6.1 percent, while vacancy for total space fell 230 basis points to 8.4 percent. Average rents for creative space increased 29.7 percent to $28.10 per square foot during the same time period, while average rents in total increased 13.3 percent and are now at $23.40 per square foot, according to the data.

When researching, JLL defined creative spaces as those that are usually older, and with open floor plans, high ceilings, exposed brick walls and good natural light. These types of spaces make up slightly more than 30 percent of the 10.9 million square feet of Class B and C inventory in the Central Business District.

Todd Gooding, ScanlanKemperBard‘s president, said his firm first noticed tenants’ desire for creative office space in 2012 after purchasing The Round in Beaverton. After renovations, SKB was able to charge $2 more per square foot for space in The Round than in other, similar spaces, he said.

Gooding said his firm recently completed a lobby remodel of the building that houses the Portland office of engineering firm CH2M HILL, at 2020 S.W. Fourth Ave. He believes it’s a good example of the type of space that tenants want.

“We’re moving toward creating collaborative buildings where tenants from each space have a common area to collaborate in,” he said. “While the number of square feet per person in an office space is shrinking, if you look at the space as a whole, more area is being dedicated to common areas for workers versus individual space.”

He compared the shift in the way employees occupy office space to the increase in the market for micro-housing, saying that as millennials move to Portland to take jobs in the growing high-tech industry, they’re requesting a new work environment.

“People want a bike storage and repair area; they want a couch and a keg, a TV room or a building that’s dog-friendly,” he said. “In Portland, everybody is ripping out ceilings, creating roof decks and remodeling lobbies.”

Brad Christiansen, a Colliers International vice president, said three buildings being developed in Portland – Pearl West, one at 1241 N.W. Johnson St. and one at Southeast Third Avenue and Clay Street – are designed to “look like a converted warehouse.”

“There is a shift in the workplace because the millennials want to go to work in these types of spaces,” he said. “In a macro sense, there is a great demand for the type of finished work environment that speaks to a collaborative work space.”

Christiansen said he believes it’s in a developer’s or business owner’s best interest to put the money into a remodel to attract tenants, pointing out that the amount a remodel costs is easily offset by the increase in rent the new space will command.

“The last lease in the Yeon Building – considered historic, creative, Class B space – was above $26 per rentable square foot,” he said. “At present, there are ‘traditional’ Class A buildings that are having a difficult time securing $26 per rentable square foot. Currently, there is more demand for creative/redeveloped historic buildings.”

With the shift in preferred work environments, Christiansen said traditional perceptions of office buildings are becoming less relevant.

“Is it Class A, Class B, C, creative, historic? It almost doesn’t matter,” he said. The classification of buildings is becoming archaic.”

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The Cascade chapter of the Northwest Environmental Business Council will hold a luncheon from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. on June 12, at the Sentinel Hotel, 614 S.W. 11th Ave., in Portland.

The luncheon will feature Bruce Hope, who serves as CH2M HILL‘s principal environmental toxicologist, and Ken Williamson, who is the regulatory affairs director for Clean Water Services. Hope and Williams will discuss Oregon’s response to a legislative requirement that the state sample for pollutants in the effluent of its biggest wastewater treatment plants.

The cost to attend the luncheon is $40 for NEBC members and their guests, $55 for nonmembers, or $25 for full-time students.

For more information and registration, click on the “events” tab at www.nebc.org.

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The project to construct the Gibbs Street Pedestrian Bridge requires a lot of coordination, which could be expected for a 700-foot-wide bridge being built over Interstate 5.

For general contractor of Eugene, however, traffic logistics is not the project’s biggest challenge.

“As a bridge contractor, we’re fairly used to working with traffic,” Wildish project manager Ryan Elliott said. “What’s really different is the elevator.”

A tower for an elevator large enough to hold bicycles or wheelchairs will connect the bridge’s east side to the South Waterfront District. The elevator is merely one project challenge facing Wildish.

“There are a lot of architectural items, like windows and window frames, that we don’t normally (install),” Elliott said. “Nothing is plumb or square.”

As a result, the team has adopted a different approach than usual. For example, Elliott said the team does not normally communicate with architects, but the project’s designer from CH2M HILL was on the construction site Thursday afternoon.

Presently, crews are working on the elevator tower and sidewalk and curb improvements on both ends of the bridge. During the first two weeks of October, crews will install the girders that connect the four bridge columns, and also pour the concrete deck.

Some lanes of I-5 will be closed while the bridge deck is being installed; however, that will happen in phases, so a complete closure of the freeway won’t be necessary, Biggs said.

When it’s completed, the Gibbs Street Pedestrian Bridge will be open directly under the OHSU tram car 24 hours a day. It will include an at-grade entrance on the west side of I-5, and the elevator tower and stairway entrance on the east side. The stairway will include a “wheel trough” so that bicycles can be rolled along the stairs. A multilevel weir wall system next to the stairs will hold planters to manage storm water.

The stairs and weirs must all be installed along the steep slope between Macadam Avenue and the South Waterfront District, which is a challenging and tight site sandwiched between a day care facility, busy streets and other construction projects. On the west side, the site is even tighter and has less parking because it’s in the middle of a residential neighborhood.

Gibbs Street project crews must coordinate with others working nearby in the South Waterfront District. Work is under way to clean up the Zidell site, build the Portland-to-Milwaukie light-rail bridge, and raise Moody Avenue.

Portland Bureau of Transportation project manager Jean Senechal Biggs said that PBOT is working to coordinate the Moody Avenue and Gibbs Street Pedestrian Bridge projects. PBOT is managing the two projects, and some staffers, including Biggs, are working on both.

“There’s definitely coordination going on,” Biggs said.

On Thursday afternoon, Moody Avenue project crews were working directly outside the fence where crews were working on the Gibbs Street elevator tower. Moody Avenue crews have even had to come inside the fence to work, Elliott said.

“It’s made getting into the site that much more challenging,” he said.

Work on the $6.7 million Gibbs Street Pedestrian Bridge project started in January, and is expected to be completed next March – about two months later than planned originally.

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CH2M Hill, a global design-build firm founded in Corvallis, has been selected as the preferred bidder to design, build and operate Wilsonville‘s proposed new wastewater treatment plant.

CH2M Hill and a team lead by Veolia Water of Pleasant Hill, Calif., both submitted proposals for the project in January, which was preliminarily estimated by the city to cost between $60 million and $70 million. City staffers evaluated the proposals with help from engineers as well as financial and legal advisers. While both proposals scored high marks, technical advantages gave the edge to the CH2M Hill team.

After reviewing the proposals, the city lowered the the cost estimate of the project to a figure less than $45 million. In addition to cost cutting efforts made by CH2M Hill, city staffers said low-cost financing and current low bid pricing also played into the project cost savings.

Negotiations with the preferred bidder will begin in May following further review of project financing options. A contract could be ready for the city council to review as early as July.

If negotiations are successful and a contract is signed, CH2M Hill would take over the operation of the current wastewater plant in September. Project design on the new plant would start later in the year, and construction is slated to be complete sometime in 2014.

A public open house is set for May 25, 6:30 p.m., at Wilsonville City Hall to further discuss the project and the design, build and operate concept.

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Revised plans for the Sellwood Bridge replacement could reduce construction costs by up to $41 million, according to a new estimate by the project’s advisory committee.

The biggest changes to the design are associated with the bridge intersection with Oregon Route 43. The committee has recommended reducing the size of that interchange to save money, said Mike Pullen, a spokesman for Multnomah County, which is leading efforts to replace the bridge.

“Reducing the size makes the project cheaper and also reduces the visual blight of what would have been an 80-foot rock cut in the side of the mountain in that area,” Pullen said. “That was a big visual impact that the community didn’t like.”

The 85-year-old, two-lane Sellwood Bridge has only a two-point rating on a 100-point scale for structural sufficiency, which has led to load limits and the need for a replacement.

The initial plan for that replacement included an expensive horseshoe ramp beneath the bridge and Highway 43 to connect the span to a boat retailer in the area. That company has since folded, however, and the owner is willing to negotiate sale of his land, Pullen said.

“Without the business there, the needs to build this ramp have also gone away,” Pullen said. “And by buying this boat business, we’re able to move the whole project toward the river and away from the hillside, so instead of an 80-foot rock cut, it’s only 40 feet high and we can do some planting in the area to make it look nicer.”

Shifting the interchange will reduce its size to about half of what was planned originally, which means fewer construction materials will be needed and the rock cut will be less costly, he said.

The group also decided to lower the cost of possible streetcar development on the bridge by leaving room for eventual streetcar tracks but not installing them as part of the bridge plan, Pullen said.

“The streetcar plan might not happen for 20 years or so, whereas saving money in 2011 or 2012 is a much more pressing concern,” Pullen said.

Also, the committee decided to not build a bus queue in the area, which will also save some money and allow the new bridge to meet traffic demands.

“The bridge will still be up to modern standards, functional and safe, but it will be cheaper,” Pullen said.

The new estimate reduces the cost from $331 million to $290 million, he added.

Funding for the project will come from Multnomah County vehicle fees, the city of Portland, the Oregon Department of Transportation and some federal programs, he said.

“Even with the reduced costs we don’t have all the funding we need, but the amount that we don’t have has gotten smaller – we’ll still have about 10 percent of the project that we need to find funding for,” Pullen said.

The goal is for construction of the new bridge to start in July 2012. Work is expected to last three to four years, and the old bridge will remain operational during the construction phase.

Construction bidding closed on Jan. 10, and the county should decide on a primary contractor by March, he added.

T.Y. Lin International and CH2M HILL were chosen as the design team in December, and the challenge period has passed. The contract is still under negotiation, however, Pullen said.

“They were involved in planning the project, so it’s good that they’ll be doing the design,” Pullen said.

The committee will present changes at a public stakeholder meeting on Jan. 18 from 3:30 to 5:30 p.m. in Rooms A & B of the ODOT Region 1 Building at 123 N.W. Flanders St. in Portland. The meeting is open to the public and time will be allotted for public comment.

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The amount of plutonium at the Hanford nuclear waste site near Richland, Wash., is almost twice what was last reported and could seep into the Columbia River within the next 1,000 years, according to a report released earlier this week.

Robert Alvarez, senior scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, D.C. and a former Department of Energy employee, determined that 4 metric tons of plutonium was discarded at Hanford between 1944 and 2009, nearly two times the amount last reported by the DOE in 1996.

Of the 4 metric tons, Alvarez is most concerned about plutonium waste buried in the ground before 1973, before the Atomic Energy Commission required the waste be encased inside an underground repository. The cancer-causing material is migrating at a faster-than-anticipated rate toward the site’s subterranean groundwater, Alvarez said.

“The Department of Energy has been finding plutonium contamination at depths of 120 to 130 feet,” Alvarez said. “The groundwater starts at 200 feet. This dumped plutonium is likely to reach the shore of the Columbia River in less than 1,000 years at concentrations 238 times the federal limit for drinking water. It could render the near shore of the Columbia uninhabitable.”

After the federal government decommissioned the nuclear reactors at Hanford in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the DOE in the late 1980s began a cleanup effort at Hanford to reduce contamination at the site and stabilize the hazardous materials stored there.

CH2M HILL Plateau Remediation Co., the contractor in charge of cleanup at the site, is working with subcontractor Skanska USA to build a multimillion-dollar groundwater treatment facility to treat water at a 5-square mile contaminated area  known as the Central Plateau, where a waste reprocessing facility once operated. The plan is to draw groundwater from 30 wells drilled at the site in 2009 and send the water to the groundwater treatment facility to be cleansed. Once the water is clean, it will be pumped back into the ground.

Despite pumping and treating 85 million gallons of groundwater per month, CH2M HILL Plateau Remediation Co. estimates it will take 25 years of facility operations to treat all of the contaminated groundwater. Because the migration of the contaminated groundwater is far deeper than previously thought, Alvarez said that proper treatment of the area would require more equipment and money. Dee Millikin, spokeswoman for CH2M HILL Plateau Remediation Co. said that for now, the cleanup plan is the same.

“Our work schedule has not changed,” Millikin said. “We plan to continue to support the (Department of Energy’s) plan and goals at Hanford.”

The Obama administration’s Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future is visiting Hanford this week to tour the site and meet with elected officials and community groups to receive input on what to do with used nuclear fuel and waste at Hanford, according to John Kotek, staff director for the commission.

Alvarez also is at Hanford this week to give input and answer questions about his report, which was compiled using the DOE’s own documents on Hanford. When environmental cleanup at Hanford concludes, the DOE plans to leave in the ground approximately 0.7 metric tons of plutonium disposed before 1970. But Alvarez said that action is highly inadvisable, and added that all of the waste should be removed from the site and stored at a geological disposal site in New Mexico.

“I’m not certain this is something the Department of Energy wants to undertake,” Alvarez said. “It’s going to mean the cleanup is more expensive, and there is bureaucratic pressure to keep expenses down. I’d like to engage in a dialogue with them about how we can do this.”

“The figures presented in (Alvarez’s) paper are being reviewed,” said Geoffrey Tyree, spokesman for the DOE’s Richland operations office. “It’s too soon to know what, if any, impact it could have on the cleanup.”

Gerry Pollet, executive director of Heart of America Northwest, a Hanford watchdog group, agrees with Alvarez that the waste cannot remain at Hanford in the long term. He too is at Hanford this week to appeal to the commission to find a stable resting place for Hanford’s hazardous materials.

“This stuff has a half-life of 24,000 years,” Pollet said. “You don’t just put it back in a shallow landfill.”

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It took only about 20 years of operations at the Hanford nuclear production complex to dump billions of gallons of radioactive waste into the groundwater supply near Richland, Wash.

But contractors will have less than two years to construct a complex groundwater treatment facility that will be used to cleanse the contaminated water over the next 25 years.

CH2M Hill Plateau Remediation Co. is looking for a general contractor with both the skill and size necessary to tackle construction of the multibuilding 200 West Pump and Treat Facility, a project worth tens of millions of dollars according to Jim Pearson, a contract specialist with CH2M Hill.

“I can’t tell you how much it will cost exactly, but it is big,” Pearson said. “Normally, we would hire several contractors to tackle separate parts of a project, like the building, electricity and plumbing. For this, we want one big company with a large, full-time staff.”

Pearson is looking for expressions of interest by Jan. 15 from contractors interested in receiving a future Request for Proposals for the project. The remediation company is fast-tracking the project because it is being paid for with federal stimulus money; CH2M Hill received $1.4 billion to manage the entire cleanup of the site. Federal rules stipulate that all stimulus money must be contracted by the end of 2010 and be spent by the end of 2015.

Construction of the treatment facility is scheduled to begin in March and last through December 2011.

Haste also is needed to treat the groundwater before it contaminates the nearby Columbia River. Over the years, wastewater from the plutonium-production facility, which was used to create nuclear weapons during World War II, has leached into the soil and created an underground plume that extends beneath a 5-square-mile area at the site. If left untreated, the tainted water could eventually reach the Columbia River, only eight miles away.

Pearson said he wants a large general contractor that is well-versed in managing complex construction projects and has good relationships with local subcontractors. The general contractor would hire smaller, local companies to assist with the project.

“The work involves constructing two very large buildings and installing about $20 million worth of processing equipment within those buildings to clean up the groundwater,” Pearson said.

Construction on site preparation began in July 2009 and includes the drilling of 30 wells. Water from the wells will be drawn from the ground into several transfer buildings, and then sent to a main processing building for treatment.

Once water is deemed clean, it will be pumped back into the ground.

“The facility will pump and treat 85 million gallons of groundwater per month,” Pearson said. “But it will still take about 25 years of facility operations to treat all of the contaminated groundwater.”

Though enriched uranium used to create plutonium at the site has been a cause for concern in the past due to risk of cancer and respiratory ailments, Pearson said the area has been thoroughly surveyed and is free of any known radioactive contamination and that contractors should not encounter any contamination during their work. But radiological control technicians from CH2M Hill Plateau Remediation Co. will be on hand to periodically survey the site during excavation, to ensure safety.

Firms interested in submitting an expression of interest for the project should visit the Expressions of Interest . Submittals are due via e-mail by Jan. 15. A Request for Proposals will be issued in February, and construction is anticipated to begin in March.

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