Successful collaborations have fueled EM’s progress over the past 18 months, enabling a series of achievements while emphasizing health and safety protections during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Office of Environmental Management
June 22, 2021
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Successful collaborations have fueled EM’s progress over the past 18 months, enabling a series of achievements while emphasizing health and safety protections during the COVID-19 pandemic, Acting Assistant Secretary William “Ike” White told members of the Energy Facility Contractors Group (EFCOG) during its annual meeting earlier this month.
During the virtual gathering, White outlined EM’s accomplishments over the past year, including processing more than 1 million gallons of tank waste at the Savannah River Site (SRS) in South Carolina, successful demolition of the Biology Complex at the Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and significant progress on the tank waste mission at Hanford in Washington state.
Most impressive, White said, was that the EM program was able to work together with its contractors to accomplish these milestones while protecting the workforce during the pandemic.
To build on momentum, EM has laid out ambitious goals for the upcoming year. White said EM aligns with a number of the new administration’s top priorities, such as protecting the environment, promoting environmental justice, and building a diverse workforce.
White noted that President Biden’s fiscal 2022 budget request for EM emphasizes this alignment.
“This is the largest administration request for Environmental Management that I can recall,” White said. “The budget is a very clear statement by the administration that they prioritize the EM program.”
Looking ahead, EM plans to make significant headway at sites across the country. The program intends to advance the tank waste mission at Hanford, complete processing of 6 million gallons of tank waste at SRS, and progress toward startup of the Integrated Waste Treatment Unit at the DOE Idaho National Laboratory Site.
The program will also continue to drive deactivation and demolition efforts at various sites, including demolition of the Main Plant Process Building at the West Valley Demonstration Project in New York and continued cleanup at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Y-12 in Oak Ridge.
While EM moves forward with demolitions at some sites, it is investing in upgrades at others, according to White. For instance, infrastructure upgrades at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico will secure the site’s ability to support DOE legacy waste cleanup for years to come.
The program continues to employ its end state contracting model with contracts recently awarded at Hanford and the Idaho Cleanup Project, and others expected this year. EM will evaluate the efficiency and effectiveness of the model, which calls for cleanup work to be carried out through a series of negotiated task orders that aim to get projects to completion faster and more efficiently without sacrificing safety.
EM will also consider lessons learned from the telework experience prompted by COVID-19 as the program tackles its goals for the year.
“That sort of out-of-the-box thinking is something we can translate going forward,” White said.
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