More than a year after President Joe Biden announced the effort, much of the Department of Energy’s weapons complex is struggling to understand the particulars of the Justice40 Initiative if comments Wednesday by nuclear cleanup advisory board chairs are any indication.
In broad terms, Justice40 was set up by Biden’s July 2021 Executive Order 14008, “Tackling the Climate Crisis at Home and Abroad,” and sets a goal that 40% of the overall benefits of certain federal investments go to disadvantaged areas, said Nicole Nelson-Jean. Nelson-Jean heads field operations for DOE’s Office of Environmental Management.
But specifics are still elusive, Nelson-Jean said during a remote presentation to a Environmental Management Advisory Board chairs meeting in Santa Fe, N.M.
“Even the term disadvantaged community,” has not been defined yet by the White House Office of Management and Budget in its implementation guidance, Nelson-Jean said.
During the meeting, streamed via YouTube, Nelson-Jean and Michael Mikolanis, who heads Environmental Management field office for the Los Alamos National Laboratory, were quizzed on the subject. One board member tried to get a sense of where the program fits among DOE priorities, another asked if the 40% figure is way too low and a third said despite hearing multiple presentations, he still isn’t sure how Justice40 is supposed to work.
Justice40 will “not turn the cleanup program on its ear,” Mikolanis said. Los Alamos has been chosen as a DOE pilot program. But even if it had not, the cleanup contract would still have installed a hydraulic barrier to prevent the spread of an underground hexavalent chromium plume, the field office manager added.
While Environmental Management’s mission remains cleaning up the radioactive legacy of Cold War and Manhattan Project sites, Justice40 stresses “robust” stakeholder engagement with more “listening sessions,” Mikolanis said.
“Real engagement in this process is going to be listening, not talking —like what I’m doing now,” Mikolanis said. For example, discussions with tribal communities have been important when DOE considers what type of vegetation it wants to plant as part of its “cap and cover” work over remediated land. Planting the wrong species can affect migration patterns of wildlife such as elk, Mikolanis said.
The Los Alamos field manager also said the 40% target is not a maximum level for federal investment. Mikolanis also added that Newport New Nuclear BWXT-Los Alamos has been active in job fairs and recruitment events in pueblo communities in Northern New Mexico.
There is “a very productive workforce that’s available” in some of these communities where DOE has not aggressively recruited in before, Mikolanis said.
