Richland-based Fowler General Construction Inc. will build three projects at the Hanford site under a trio of new contracts worth a combined $19 million.

Washington River Protection Solutions, which holds the tank operations contract at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Hanford Site, announced the new contracts on July 6.

Two projects totaling $13.5 million are for projects at the Hanford Effluent Treatment Facility, where wastewater generated by Hanford activities will be stored and treated.

The work comes as DOE and its contractors prepare to begin heating up the high-temperature melters at the heart of the $17 billion radioactive tank and waste vitrification plant, where low-activity waste left over from decades of weapons production will be combined with sand to form glass that can be safely stored for decades and centuries to come.

Fowler’s first contract is to design and build a system to remove a hazardous chemical, acetonitrile, from the liquid waste stream generated at the Waste Treatment Plant.

Its second contract is to expand the facility’s existing load-in station and to construct a backup load-in station for waste tanker trucks. While most wastewater is pumped to the facility via underground pipes, about 1.2 million gallons per year will arrive by tanker truck, according to Brandon McFerran, manager for the effluent treatment plant.

The disposal facility will provide a permanent disposition site for vitrified low-activity waste containers arriving from the Waste Treatment Plant.

But water from precipitation and dust suppression must be collected and sent to the effluent facility for treatment.

The third contract, worth $5.3 million, is to construct a 17,600-square-foot office building at Hanford’s 222-S Laboratory. The lab provides analytical services in support of the tank waste cleanup and treatment mission.

“Upgrades to these facilities will help ensure critical infrastructure is in place to treat tank waste through the Direct-Feed Low-Activity Waste Program at Hanford’s Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant (WTP),” said Delmar Noyes, manager of the DOE’s Office of River Protection tank farms project division.

Washington River Protection Solutions continues to serve as tank farms manager after DOE received an appeal of its decision to award a new $13 billion, 10-year contract to Hanford Works Restoration, led by BWSXT of Lynchburg, Virginia.

DOE rescinded the award and released a request for proposals for a new 10-year, $26.5 billion contract to manage both the tank farms and the vitrification project.