Anne Marie White was sworn in Thursday as assistant secretary of energy for environmental management. She went to work Friday as head of the Energy Department’s Office of Environmental Management, an informed source said Friday.
“It’s an honor to serve as Assistant Secretary of Energy for EM,” White said in a Friday press release from DOE. “I look forward to the challenges ahead and know that with the talented federal staff, our dedicated workers in the field, and the support of a wide array of stakeholders, we will deliver the EM mission safely and cost effectively.”
The Senate confirmed White’s nomination on March 22 by voice vote. The Energy Department apparently had to wait for formal paperwork to be sent from the White House before White could be sworn in. This paperwork typically includes a credentials certificate, suitable for framing, which says an individual was nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate, the source said.
Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) had placed a hold on White’s nomination while he sought to end the department’s uranium trading program, which is used to fund cleanup at the Portsmouth Site in Ohio. The lawmaker believes trading excess government uranium undermines the weak domestic uranium mining industry.
Barrasso lifted the hold after Energy Secretary Rick Perry in a March 20 hearing publicly agreed to suspend the uranium program.
White had already started working as an Energy Department adviser on general policy matters outside of environmental management.
A longtime nuclear cleanup consultant, who founded Bastet Technical Services, White is the first Senate-confirmed “EM-1” at the Department of Energy since Monica Regalbuto departed when President Donald Trump took office in January 2017.
The DOE cleanup program has effectively been run by department veteran James Owendoff since June 2017. While, by rule, Owendoff’s acting tenure expired before January 2018, he remained the senior official at EM until White’s swearing in.
For fiscal 2019, the Trump administration is requesting $6.6 billion for the Office of Environmental Management, up from $6.5 billion request for fiscal 2018 but less than the $7.1 billion omnibus approved March 22 by Congress.