Kathryn Roberts, who helped regulate major nuclear cleanup projects in New Mexico, is leaving the New Mexico Environment Department to become a project manager at consulting shop Longenecker & Associates, the firm said Tuesday.
Roberts, most recently director of the state agency’s Resource Protection Division, will join the firm on Jan. 23, Martin Schneider, senior vice president at Longenecker, told Weapons Complex Morning Briefing.
Roberts worked alongside former New Mexico Environment Secretary Ryan Flynn on last year’s revised consent order for cleaning up Cold War nuclear waste at the Los Alamos National Laboratory. Roberts was also at Flynn’s right hand for most of the roughly three-year effort to reopen the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, following the 2014 underground radiation release and unrelated fire that temporarily closed the nation’s only underground disposal facility for transuranic waste.
Roberts did two stints totaling more than eight years at the New Mexico Environment Department. In between, she worked at Los Alamos. She will continue to work out of New Mexico, Schneider said Monday.
Flynn resigned as New Mexico environment secretary in August 2016, and shortly afterward became executive director of the New Mexico Oil and Gas Association.
