Secretary Granholm: Cleanup Poised for ‘Next Level’

PHOENIX – DOE achieved most of its environmental cleanup priorities in 2021 and now is poised to take it “to the next level,” Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said at the 2022 Waste Management Symposia on Monday.

Granholm noted EM made key progress in the past year while confronting challenges brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic.

“We reached important milestones on, or outright completed, well over a dozen different projects, from demolitions to hazardous waste management,” she said.

“Our team is rightfully proud of their contributions, but they know there’s more to do,” she said.

Granholm spoke via recorded remarks to the audience of about 2,000 attendees at the conference, the nation’s leading gathering of government, international and industry experts on waste management. She noted she addressed the group last year, less than two weeks after she took office, “and let me tell you, we’ve gotten to work in the time since.”

Granholm said she’s seen EM operations firsthand at the Savannah River Site and the Savannah River National Laboratory, and during a visit to the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory where EM was performing cleanup at the Bayview area.

DOE’s environmental management mission “is about so much more than just knocking down buildings and cleaning waste out of tanks,” Granholm said. “It’s about keeping promises we’ve made to the American people.

“Our nuclear programs have left behind two things: an environmental legacy, and a sacred obligation — an obligation to ensure the air, the water, and the communities surrounding our programs are safe, and that the families in those communities can thrive,” she said.

And beyond the cleanup mission, DOE also is addressing broader priorities such as deepening the talent pool in science, technology, engineering and math fields, training the next-generation workforce, and pursuing goals for climate action, Granholm said.

“After all, we need our environmental management at its best to ensure that the clean energy technologies we need to overcome climate change — like advanced nuclear — are safe and secure, so we can deploy them on a global scale,’ she said.