The Department of Energy said in a Tuesday notice it is extending the bid deadline for the Elemental Mercury Long-term Management and Storage contract to June 1, from the prior submission date of May 20.
In an amendment to the final request for proposals (RFP), the DOE said proposal packages are now due by 4 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time on June 1.
The change was signed by a DOE contracting officer, Jose Ortiz Delgado. The RFP for long-term mercury storage was published in March. This is the second time DOE has extended the bid deadline, which was originally set May 6.
Earlier in March, DOE’s Office of Environmental Management formally withdrew its designation of Waste Control Specialists in West Texas as the storage site for the mercury. The withdrawal is the result of a legal settlement with gold mining companies in 2020. The mining concerns are big producers of the mercury and had challenged both the fees DOE planned to charge and the process the agency used for selecting Waste Control Specialists.
The federal agency was initially supposed to arrange a long-term storage site for domestic mercury by 2013, under the Mercury Export Ban Act of 2008.
Though the Cerro Pelado wildfire was still burning Friday, local officials in Los Alamos County, N.M., announced Thursday public school students will return to their normal schedules on Monday, May 16.
Meanwhile employees of the Department of Energy’s Los Alamos National Laboratory and legacy cleanup contractor Newport News Nuclear BWXT Los Alamos (N3B) continue on “maximum telework,” according to a May 12 joint press release from fire officials with the lab, the county and DOE’s National Nuclear Security Administration.
Between Wednesday and Thursday, the Cerro Pelado fire in the Jemez Mountains grew by only 490 acres, the smallest expansion since the fire began in late April, according to the release. Calmer winds, the use of fire-retardant drops and the efforts of 1,000 firefighters all contributed to the improvement.
The fire remains a few miles outside the lab and crews at the federal complex are removing dead trees and underbrush that could fuel the blaze.
“The slowness of the fire is giving us a chance to take extra preparations,” Los Alamos Fire Department Chief Troy Hughes said in the release.
No evacuations have been ordered around the laboratory or Los Alamos County but local authorities have urged residents to put together both an evacuation plan and a “go bag,” according to the release.
Earlier this week officials said via Twitter the blaze has already burned 43,000 acres. The National Weather Services forecasts Los Alamos County will remain dry over the weekend but winds were not expected to exceed 15 miles per hour.
One of the earliest employees at the Department of Energy, deputy general counsel Eric Fygi, is retiring this week about 45 years after joining the fledgling agency, a spokesperson confirmed Wednesday.
“Fygi has been with the Department since its inception in 1977,” a DOE spokesperson said via email. “[H]e is currently DOE’s fifth-longest-tenured Federal employee, having served at DOE as well as the Department of Justice; the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare; the Executive Office of the President; the Federal Energy Office; the Federal Energy Administration; and the U.S. Army,” the spokesperson said.
In addition to serving as DOE’s deputy general counsel since the DOE’s founding during the Jimmy Carter administration in October 1977, Fygi has periodically served as the agency’s acting general counsel, according to his online federal biography.
Together with DOE general counsel Samuel Walsh, Fygi helps run the agency’s legal affairs, overseeing more than 100 government lawyers.
During his career, Fygi won four Presidential Rank Awards and other accolades, according to the biography. Fygi’s last day is Friday May 13, a nuclear energy source told ExchangeMonitor.