Two former employees of Department of Energy contractors will join three Democratic senators on Thursday in Washington, D.C., to unveil a new government report on whistleblower retaliation at DOE nuclear cleanup sites, the lawmakers said late Friday in a joint press release.
The lawmakers and erstwhile DOE site workers — identified in the release as former Savannah River Nuclear Solutions employee Sandra Black and former URS Energy and Construction employee Walter Tamosaitis — will gather at the Senate Dirksen Office building at noon EDT to present the results of a new Government Accountability Office investigation.
According to the presser, Black, a contractor at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina for 30 years who most recently was a manager in Savannah River Nuclear Solutions’ employee concerns program, was fired for cooperating with the GAO while the office was collecting information for the report to be released Thursday.
A spokesperson for Savannah River Nuclear Solutions wrote in a Monday email that “Sandra Black was not terminated for cooperating with the GAO. SRNS continues to vigorously deny that Ms. Black was terminated for an improper reason or in violation of any law or regulation.”
Tamosaitis, meanwhile, was fired in 2013 after raising safety and design concerns at URS Energy — now part of AECOM — prime subcontractor for Bechtel National Inc. of San Francisco regarding the Hanford Site’s Waste Treatment Plant at the Hanford Site in Washington state. The multibillion-dollar facility eventually will turn millions of gallons of liquid chemical and radioactive waste into more easily storable glass.
AECOM settled a lawsuit filed by Tamosaitis for $4.1 million in 2015, but said it did so to avoid the cost and distraction of litigation and denied any retaliation against the former manager.
Sen. Ron Wyden’s (D-Ore.) office will stream the GAO report’s unveiling on YouTube at 12 p.m. Wyden has often criticized DOE for retaliating against workers who raise safety or programmatic concerns at the agency’s big nuclear cleanup sites. Wyden has used his seat on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee to highlight this perceived abuse of whistleblowers by blocking or slowing approval of some White House nominees for senior DOE positions, including Monica Regalbuto, who would go on to become the department’s top nuclear cleanup manager.
The other two lawmakers slated to appear at the unveiling are Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.). McCaskill is the ranking member of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs permanent subcommittee on investigations. Nominees for executive agency inspector general positions must pass through the full Homeland Security committee before their nomination proceeds to the full Senate.
A DOE spokesperson in Washington did not immediately reply to a request for comment Sunday.
Editor’s note: the story now correctly says Walter Tamosaitis’ employment with URS Energy and Construction was terminated in 2013. July 11, 2016, 10:08 a.m.