As part of a proposed reorganization of the Energy Department’s Office of Environmental Management (EM), Stacy Charboneau, manager of DOE’s Richland Operations Office at the Hanford Site, would move from Washington state to Washington, D.C., and become head of a new office to which the managers of DOE’s nine nuclear-cleanup field offices would report.
Charboneau’s promotion was one of three disclosed in a Wednesday email blast from Monica Regalbuto, assistant energy secretary for environmental management. Weapons Complex Morning Briefing obtained a copy of the email.
Charboneau, a 20-year DOE veteran, would become associate principal deputy assistant secretary for field operations, responsible for a new Washington-based office DOE plans to stand up as part of its second bureaucratic reorganization of EM since 2014. Charboneau has since 2014 been manager of the Richland Operations Office, in charge of the mostly solid-waste cleanup, reactor interim storage, and groundwater remediation efforts at the Hanford Site’s central plateau and Columbia River corridor, along with building decontamination and demolition and site-wide services. Doug Shoop, Charboneau’s deputy, would replace her on an acting basis.
Currently, field office directors report directly to Regalbuto’s office.
The proposed reorganization would turn seven separate EM offices known as mission units and mission supports into a three-branched tree comprising Business Operations, Field Operations, and Regulatory and Policy Affairs.
In a Capitol Hill reception Wednesday evening, Regalbuto’s deputy, Mark Whitney, publicly briefed the proposed change for the fist time, telling an audience of contractors and beltway insiders the “badly needed” reorganization was intended to restore a “field-centric focus” to EM.
“To a certain degree, we’ve gotten away from our core mission, which is supporting the field,” Whitney said at the reception, hosted by the Washington-based Nuclear Energy Institute trade group.
DOE plans to tap Frank Marcinowski to lead the Regulatory and Policy Affairs unit, and Candice Trummell to head the Business Operations unit, according to Regalbuto’s email. Marcinowski is now acting associate principal deputy assistant secretary for environmental management at EM headquarters in Washington. Trummell, a former EM hand of five years, has for the last 10 months been deputy chief of staff for Deputy Secretary of Energy Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall.
The latest Environmental Management reorganization has not officially gone into force, according to Regalbuto’s email. Among other things, the proposal requires approval from the National Treasury Employees Union, which represents federal workers. In a brief interview Wednesday evening, Whitney said DOE has “a meeting planned” with the union.
