The federal shutdown enters its 20th day on Monday Oct. 20 and with no breakthrough expected soon, the Department of Energy has called off next week’s meeting of advisory board leaders for the Office of Environmental Management (EM).
In an announcement emailed to Exchange Monitor late Friday, DOE said the EM Site-Specific Advisory Board (EM SSAB) Chairs virtual meeting scheduled for Oct. 28 has been cancelled.
According to the EM advisory boards website, a meeting of the Idaho Cleanup Advisory Board scheduled for Thursday Oct. 23 has also been called off.
In its Friday announcement, DOE said interested parties should visit the advisory boards website for updates related to future advisory board meetings.
The EM Site-Specific Advisory Board system is meant to involve stakeholders more directly in cleanup decisions for DOE nuclear complex sites, according to the website.
The Office of Environmental Management has eight local boards under its charter. The panels are the Hanford Advisory Board, Idaho Cleanup Project Citizens Advisory Board, Northern New Mexico Citizens’ Advisory Board, Nevada SSAB, Oak Ridge SSAB, Savannah River Site Citizens Advisory Board, Portsmouth SSAB and the Paducah Citizens Advisory Board.
While it does not fall under the Environmental Management Site-Specific Advisory Board umbrella, the West Valley Demonstration Project in Western New York state has its own local cleanup advisory board. The West Valley Citizen Task Force announced last week it is cancelling a late October meeting as well. The state of New York owns the West Valley property although DOE handles the remediation and foots 90% of the cleanup cost.