The U.S. Energy Department has tapped a longtime agency hand, Jack Zimmerman, to head its Cincinnati-based Environmental Management Consolidated Business Center (EMCBC).
Zimmerman is currently manager of DOE’s Idaho Cleanup Project, where for the past five years he has helped lead environmental remediation of the Idaho National Laboratory. He is expected to assume his new post as director of EMCBC in early December.
“Jack has proved to be an effective leader in tackling some of the greatest challenges of the EM mission in Idaho,” DOE Undersecretary for Science Paul Dabbar said in a press release. “We are fortunate he has agreed to fill a critical need at EMCBC as EM moves forward on its end state contracting initiative that focuses on cleanup completion.”
Zimmerman has more than 30 years of experience in nuclear operations and more than 20 years with the Energy Department. Before his Idaho assignment, Zimmerman was program manager for DOE’s Portsmouth/Paducah Project Office’s depleted uranium hexafluoride (DUF6) conversion project. He has also been associate director of the Mound Closure Project in Miamisburg, Ohio.
The EMCBC manages contract procurement for the department’s roughly $7.2 billion annual program for cleanup of 16 Manhattan Project and Cold War nuclear-weapon sites. The center was set up in June 2004, to provide the Office of Environmental Management with improved business and technical support services.
The center also has management authority for some smaller nuclear cleanup field sites: the Energy Technology Engineering Center in California; the Moab Uranium Mill Tailings Remedial Action Project in Utah; the Nevada National Security Site; the Separations Process Research Unit and the West Valley Demonstration Project, both in New York; and remediation at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California and the Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York.
With Zimmerman’s departure, Connie Flohr, deputy manager of Idaho cleanup, will serve as acting manager.
Zimmerman takes over at EMCBC from Tim Harms, who served as acting director from January. Harms has apparently become a senior adviser for budget and planning at the DOE Office of Environmental Management’s Washington, D.C., headquarters.
The last permanent director at EMCBC was Jeffrey Kash Grimes. According to his LinkedIn account, Grimes is now executive director of the Continental District of the Veterans Administration’s National Cemetery Administration.
