page_title: Tri-Cities, Washington
section_title: 1980s – 1990s
hierarchical_section_title: Tri-Cities, Washington / Area history / 1980s – 1990s
caption_attribution_description: English: Photos of Richland, Washington taken on a 50°F Sunday, January 15, 2006 for the specific purpose of being uploaded to the Wikipedia. This photo shows the William R. Wiley Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory (EMSL), a U.S. Department of Energy national scientific user facility at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. EMSL provides integrated experimental and computational resources for discovery and technological innovation in the environmental molecular sciences. All rights are released; they are henceforth &amp; forever in the public domain.
context_page_description: The Tri-Cities are three closely linked cities at the confluence of the Yakima, Snake, and Columbia Rivers in the Columbia Basin of Eastern Washington. Each city borders one another, making the Tri-Cities seem like one uninterrupted mid-sized city. The three cities function as the center of the Tri-Cities metropolitan area, which consists of Benton and Franklin counties. The Tri-Cities urban area consists of the city of West Richland, the CDPs of West Pasco and Finley, as well as the CDP of Burbank, despite the latter being located in Walla Walla county.
  The official 2016 estimate of MSA population of Tri-Cities is 283,846, more than 12% increase from 2010, and 2016 US MSA estimates show Tri-Cities as over 300,000. The combined population of the three major cities themselves was 193,567 at the 2010 Census. As of April 1, 2016, the Washington State Office of Financial Management, Forecasting Division estimates the cities as having a combined population of 217,430
  The Tri-Cities Airport located in Pasco provides the region with commercial and private air service. Pasco is the seat of Franklin County, while the other two cities are located in Benton County.
context_section_description: Completion of the Interstate 182 Bridge in 1984 made Pasco much more accessible, fueling the growth of that city. With the end of the Cold War, many in the area feared a shutdown of Hanford, followed by the Tri-Cities quickly becoming a ghost town. These fears were allayed after the United States Department of Energy switched the facility's purpose from the creation of nuclear weapons to the effective sealing and disposal of radioactive waste. During the 1990s, several major corporations entered the Tri-Cities, which helped to begin diversifying the economy apart from the Hanford sector. In 1995, a sixth public high school, Southridge High, was founded in south Kennewick.
caption: The Environmental Molecular Science Laboratory at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, a major national laboratory in Richland
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