Stoller Corp. awarded $18.5M contract extension for Hanford cleanup

The Stoller Corporation, a Colorado-based environmental, waste management, remediation, and ecological services company, has been awarded a two-year, $18.5 million contract extension for management of the disposal facility at the abandoned Hanford nuclear site in Washington.

  The project, though based in Richland, Wash., falls under the administrative jurisdiction of Stoller’s northwest regional headquarters in Idaho Falls.

  “It’s a big job,” said company spokesman Jim Van Vliet, who is based in Idaho Falls. “We receive on the order of 200 loads per day – that’s one about every two-and-a-half minutes.”

  The Hanford Environmental Restoration Disposal Facility (ERDF) has been receiving waste from the cleanup project since 1996, and handles about one million tons of low-level radioactive material each year. Stoller received its first $18 million contract to manage the disposal facility in March 2006. The renewed contract will last until February 2010.

  “The need will certainly continue, and the customer will have to extend or re-compete,” Van Vliet said. “We hope they extend.”

  The ERDF project – which is Stoller’s second largest next to management of the Department of Energy’s 80+ cleaned sites – employs about 75 people onsite. About 70 work at the Idaho Falls headquarters.

  Van Vliet said the company does similar work at the Idaho National Laboratory (INL), managing the Idaho Comprehensive Environmental Response Compensation and Liability Act Disposal Facility which it constructed from 2003-2005. Since opening in 2003 the facility has disposed of nearly 300,000 tons of bulk waste, 10,000 tons of debris, managed more than 176,000 gallons of waste water and stabilized nearly 800 tons of mercury-contaminated soil.  The contract is worth about $4 million each year.

  With annual revenue of about $110 million, the company employs fewer than 500 workers and has 14 offices in 10 states, and one office in England.