Staff Reports
WC Monitor
8/7/2015
The Department of Energy’s environmental cleanup chief responded to the state of Tennessee’s concerns about reduced funding for Oak Ridge Reservation environmental projects and said they shared common interests, but he didn’t make any promises about future budgets or address the state’s specific concerns about funding trends. Mark Whitney, DOE’s acting assistant secretary for environmental management, was fairly general in his response to issues raised earlier this year by Robert Martineau, the commissioner of the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation.
In a June 11 letter, Whitney said he wanted to assure Tennessee officials that the Obama administration’s fiscal 2016 budget request would provide sufficient funding to “continue cleanup progress” at Oak Ridge and other DOE sites around the U.S. He cited a number of Oak Ridge projects that would be supported adequately by the funding request, including design work on the Outfall 200 mercury treatment facility at the Y-12 National Security Complex to support the start of construction by fiscal 2018; continuing CEUSP shipments of U-233 materials to Nevada; continuing cleanup work and demolition projects at the East Tennessee Technology Park; and the first project associated with a new groundwater strategy in Oak Ridge.
The DOE executive – who at one time headed the Oak Ridge cleanup program – said he wanted to “assure” Martineau that the state’s cooperation in extending the milestones for transuranic waste delivery from DOE’s Oak Ridge sites last year “did not result in a decrease of site cleanup activities in FY 2016.” Whitney said, “I am sensitive to your concerns regarding the FY 2016 President’s Request for the Oak Ridge cleanup program as well as future budget requests.”
Martineau indicated the state had information that the DOE guidance was to use its planned fiscal 2016 funding level of $365 million for Oak Ridge as a benchmark going forward, expressing his concerns about those spending levels being used in 2017 and the years ahead. “This is contrary to our understanding that the budget request would return to the $421 million threshold and that future compliance schedules would not be jeopardized,” Martineau wrote in a May letter to Whitney.
Whitney said: “No decisions have been made at this time regarding the amount of allocation of the FY 2017 funding request for the Office of Environmental Management. Your letter expressing concerns on behalf of the State of Tennessee was timely and informative. I look forward to discussing these issues further with you.”
