From the Board Chair, February 2018

The Idaho Cleanup Project (ICP) Citizens Advisory Board (CAB) accepts applications for Board membership throughout the year and appoints new members annually (normally around April) to maintain a membership of 12 carefully considered and diverse perspectives from the area surrounding the site. We encourage you to submit an application if you are interested in serving on the Board. 

Here’s what you need to know: Members are appointed for two-year terms, which may be renewed twice for a maximum service period of six years. The only requirements are that applicants have a sincere interest in issues related to Idaho Site cleanup activities and the time to study, discuss, and develop advice and input on those issues. 

You can access the application, and peruse other Board documents, on our new website: energy.gov/em/icpcab. Be sure to submit an application by October 15 to be considered for appointment to the Board the following April. Feel free to contact Jordan Davies, CAB Support Staff, to ask questions about Board membership, 208.557.7886. 

At the end of April, four of our members will retire from the Board. Bob Bodell, Jim Huston, Kristen Jensen, and Betsy McBride have all worked hard to provide thoughtful advice to the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management. They will be missed, both as contributors to our team and as friends. 

In October 2017, Kristen Jensen and I attended the Environmental Management Site-Specific Advisory Board (EM SSAB) Chairs meeting. The chairs and vice-chairs from the eight CABs across the country meet once or twice a year to discuss and submit recommendations to the Department on topics that affect EM activities nationally. 

As part of the October EM SSAB meeting, we toured the Hanford Site, which was a real eye-opener. There is significantly more cleanup work remaining at the Hanford Site than at the Idaho Site. 

That said, there are still some major cleanup items to complete in Idaho, including shipment of TRU waste to WIPP, commencement and completion of the IWTU project, and preparation of high-level calcine waste so it is road-ready by 2035, just 17 years from now. 

There is still a lot to do, but we’ll follow DOE-ID’s progress each step of the way, and provide our advice where we can. 

In closing, the ICP CAB would like to thank Bob Pence, DOE Federal Coordinator for the Board, as he heads into retirement. He has been a dedicated leader, always at hand to guide the Board. We wish Bob good luck in this new chapter of his life. We will miss him. We look forward to working closely with Brad Bugger who has been appointed to be the CAB’s new Federal Coordinator.

Hoping to see you all at our next meeting, Wednesday, February 21 in Idaho Falls!