The Energy Department replaced Susan Cange as the acting head of its nuclear cleanup program this week, the most prominent of a trio of June departures from the Office of Environmental Management’s Washington headquarters.
DOE veteran James Owendoff replaces Cange as both acting assistant secretary and principal deputy assistant secretary for the Office of Environmental Management (EM). This is his third stint at EM, where he has previously served as acting assistant secretary. DOE broke the news in a press release.
Cange, a longtime DOE-cleanup hand who remains employed by the department, is headed to her Nashville, Tenn., alma mater, Vanderbilt University.
“Susan Cange is a Visiting Scholar in the civil and environmental engineering program. It is a two-year appointment. Her start date is July 1,” a Vanderbilt spokesperson wrote in a Wednesday email. “Our understanding is that she is not leaving the DOE.”
Cange received bachelor’s and master’s degrees in environmental engineering from Vanderbilt.
Cange’s stint at DOE EM headquarters was a short one. She took the No. 2 spot at the office in December, replacing former Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary Mark Whitney — as his handpicked successor, one source said. Cange had previously managed remediation of DOE’s Oak Ridge site in Tennessee. Cange became acting EM boss just as Donald Trump was sworn in as president on Jan. 20.
After Cange’s departure became public knowledge, a pair of informed sources said Betsy Connell, DOE EM’s chief of staff during President Barack Obama’s second term, would be leaving the office’s headquarters to return to the Savannah River Site in South Carolina, where she began her DOE career some 30 years ago.
Connell recently updated her LinkedIn profile to identify herself as a DOE “manager.”
Cange and Connell were preceded out the door by Monica Regalbuto: the last full-time assistant secretary for environmental management in the Obama administration. After Trump took office, Regalbuto stepped down as head of the cleanup program and became a senior technical adviser for EM.
Now, Regalbuto has left DOE altogether and is working for Idaho National Laboratory prime contractor Battelle Energy Alliance as the integrated fuel cycle program manager, a lab spokesperson wrote in a Friday email to Weapons Complex Monitor.
Regalbuto left EM June 23, a source said.
Meanwhile, the Trump administration has yet to nominate anyone to be assistant secretary for environmental management on a full-time basis. Former DOE Oak Ridge contractor John “Rick” Dearholt’s name has churned in the rumor mill for months, but Dearholt himself has repeatedly disclaimed any knowledge of the administration’s plans for EM when questioned by Weapons Complex Monitor.
