Background

The Hanford Site was established in central Washington State in the early 1940s as part of the Manhattan Project. For 50 years, plutonium for nuclear weapons was created and refined at Hanford. Information is available from the U.S. Department of Energy about the history and operations of the site. For both security and public safety, access to the production facilities and a large buffer zone was strictly controlled. The result is a site 1482 square kilometers in size (570 square miles) that is largely undisturbed by human activity. The Hanford site contains abundant native wildlife and plant communities.

Principle topographic features of the Hanford Site include Rattlesnake Mountain, a large, treeless, basalt ridge that forms the western site boundary; the eastern ends of Yakima and Umtanum ridges, also on the western edge of the site; the Saddle Mountains, which form the northern boundary; and Gable Mountain and Gable Butte, which are large basalt outcrops in the central portion of the site. The Hanford Dunes cover approximately 2400 hectares (5900 acres) in the east-central portion of the site. The major water feature is the Hanford Reach of the Columbia River, which is the last free flowing stretch of the Columbia River in the U.S. The area is within the Shrub-steppe ecoregion, and is relatively dry (annual precipitation is about 18 centimeters [7 inches]). Elevation ranges from about 120 meters (400 feet) at the Columbia River to 1100 meters (3630 feet) at the summit of Rattlesnake Mountain.

In the 1970s, the National Environmental Research Park (NERP) program created seven NERPs to set aside land for ecosystem preservation and study. The Hanford NERP, includes:

• Central Hanford, managed by DOE, exclusive of the 100 and 200 area industrial sites which contains nuclear production facilities in various stages of closure, and
• The Hanford Reach National Monument, managed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The National Monument includes all of the lands north of the Columbia River and the 312 square kilometers (120 square miles) Fitzner-Eberhardt Arid Lands Ecology Reserve, which is located on the western side of the site.