Gary Petersen, retired vice president of the Tri-City Economic Development Council in Washington state and a former manager at the Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, died Oct. 27 at age 83, according to published reports.
The Tri-City Herald newspaper reported Monday that over a long career Petersen was a vocal advocate of nuclear cleanup at DOE’s Hanford Site as well as economic development around the Tri-Cities.
Petersen retired from the regional economic development post in 2017 and was succeeded by David Reeploeg. In a 2016 interview with the Hanford History Project, Petersen said he worked at Hanford for Battelle and then the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.