Spreading The Stimulus Dollars Somewhat Haphazardly

Recovery.org is a private website that is doing an excellent job of tracking the spending associated with the “Stimulus” bill of earlier this year. Their front page shows a map of the U.S. illustrating how much money each state has received to date. As you would expect the larger states — California, Florida, Texas and New York — seem to be getting the most money.

One state does stand out though and that is Washington. As of now it has received the most money of any state. There is currently plans to execute about $6.4 billion in contracts and projects in that state. California is at just under $6 billion and Texas at just under five. To many this would seem a weird distribution of funds as there have been complaints that some states are not getting their “fair share” like Michigan.

Washington’s funding is skewed though by having pretty much the largest, single contract action related to using the “Stimulus” funds. This is a $1.6 billion program to do “Hazardous Substance Removal and Disposal, Demolition, Salvage, and Excavation” at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site.

Hanford was one of the original U.S. facilities used to produce material and technology for nuclear weapons. Work there has slowly wound down over the last twenty years and as you can imagine it is fairly dirty and dangerous site. According to the 2007 statement on its status Hanford possessed “53 million gallons of radioactive and chemically hazardous waste in 177 underground storage tanks, 2,300 tons (2,100 metric tons) of spent nuclear fuel, 9 tons (8 metric tons) of plutonium in various forms, about 25 million cubic feet (750,000 cubic meters) of buried or stored solid waste, groundwater contaminated above drinking water standards and spread out over about 80 square miles (208 square kilometers), more than 1,700 waste sites, and about 500 contaminated facilities”.

This will be an expensive, long and dangerous project. This also illustrates a problem with the use of the “Stimulus” funds. This clean up was going to take place and the Federal Government had to pay for it. They are just using the funds available to do more of it quicker. It also relieves pressure on the regular Department of Energy. Certainly it will add jobs and get money into the economy but it also may be a long, drawn out contract award process due to the nature of the work and the size of the contract. It is also at least a five year contract so the money will be spent over a great deal of time.

It will be worth watching to see how quickly this moves through the system.