March 17, 2014

EM WON’T PLAY SECOND FIDDLE TO NNSA, ACTING DOE CLEANUP CHIEF SAYS

By ExchangeMonitor

Acting Assistant Secretary for Environmental Management Dave Huizenga emphasized in a an interview last week that DOE’s cleanup program won’t play second fiddle to the U.S. nuclear weapons program despite a recent DOE reorganization. In July, DOE announced that EM would report to Under Secretary for Nuclear Security Tom D’Agostino, who also heads the National Nuclear Security Administration. The move has led to concerns that EM will receive less of a priority going forward—a view Huizenga sought to dispel. “I think fundamentally Tom recognizes that he wears two hats and people are paying attention to that. There would never be any desire on his part to move money from one place to another,” he said.

Huizenga went on to say, “The criticism [of the realignment] fundamentally was that’s why EM was created, because Defense Programs years back was spending more money on the defense mission than on the cleanup mission. So we’re all very, very aware of that, and in a sense perhaps overly attuned to the fact that people are watching us in that regard. The secretary, I think, had a clear vision of the fact that the under secretary for nuclear security was thinking thoughts that were more aligned with the EM mission than any other under secretary. And this was why he made the switch.”

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