This would be the second time Regulbuto is subjected to a Senate hold. She was first nominated in the spring of 2014, and had at first largely been seen as an uncontroversial choice to head up DOE’s cleanup program. However, last year she was subjected to a hold by Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) over concerns with the Department’s transfers of uranium to help fund cleanup and other activities. In December, Barrasso lifted his hold on Regalbuto after receiving sought-after information from DOE on its uranium transfer policy. However, the Senate ultimately chose not to vote on her nomination before the end of the 113th Congress. The Obama Administration nominated her to the post for a second time in February to fill the vacancy left when Ines Triay stepped down as Assistant Energy Secretary for Environmental Management in July 2011.
Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) plans to block a Senate vote on the nomination of Monica Regulbuto to be the next Department of Energy Office of Environmental Management Assistant Secretary, he said at a Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee hearing to consider the nomination. Wyden cited both Hanford safety culture concerns and a failure to clean up liquid waste at the Hanford site as reasons for the hold. “It is time for the culture of hostility against the whistleblowers at Hanford to end,” Wyden said. “Until I see corrective action–concrete action–from the Department of Energy to address both the whistleblower issue and the treatment of radioactive waste, I am going to be objecting to the Senate proceeding to the nomination of Dr. Regalbulto. This is not a judgment of her qualifications, as she is highly qualified to serve in that role, but rather an insistence that needed changes at Hanford cannot be put off any longer.”
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