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After a flurry of stimulus spending, questionable projects pile up

The $787 billion stimulus bill was passed in February and was promised as a job saver and economy booster. Here is where some of the money went:

- $300,000 for a GPS-equipped helicopter to hunt for radioactive rabbit droppings at the Hanford nuclear reservation in Washington state.

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The goal was to pinpoint soils contaminated with harmful radioactive materials that had been spread far a field within the complex by animals and the wind.

The tainted soils are to be removed in an effort to stop the waste from leaching into the local water supply, where it could cause cancer in humans.

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As unappetizing as nuclear waste might sound, its radioactive salts strontium and cesium were apparently irresistible to rabbits, badgers, and other wild animals.

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The tab for the U.S. $300,000 project was paid for with funds provided by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, aka the Obama stimulus program.

Ground crews would have cost approximately $700,000 more and taken months to complete the mapping, Milliken said.

"We are bringing workers in quicker by using the aerial surveys."

Using the survey map, a subcontractor will send out a team to remove the contaminated soil—radioactive droppings and all—and transport it to Hanford's site for low-level waste, Milliken said.