The New Mexico Senate on Monday unanimously confirmed former U.S. Environmental Protection Agency manager James Kenney as secretary of the state Environment Department.
New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham (D) named Kenney as secretary-designate to NMED on Jan. 7. Along with enforcing environmental laws, the department oversees hazardous waste and radioactive sources at U.S. Department of Energy sites in the state, including the Los Alamos National Laboratory and the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant.
Kenney’s predecessor, Butch Tongate, in December approved a hazardous waste permit revision that allows DOE to change the way transuranic waste volume is recorded for disposal at WIPP. Tongate, a longtime state employee who was appointed NMED secretary in 2016 by the prior governor, retired Dec. 31.
The Tongate ruling allowed DOE to stop recording empty spaces between drums within a larger container as waste. The accounting change under the 1992 WIPP Land Withdrawal Act cuts current waste volume from roughly half full to one-third full of the maximum of 176,000 cubic meters of defense-related transuranic waste allowed in the underground salt mine.
The change went into effect Jan. 20. It has already been appealed by two advocacy groups: the Southwest Research and Information Center and Nuclear Watch New Mexico. The Energy Department and its WIPP contractor, Nuclear Waste Partnership, have intervened in the case before the state Court of Appeals.
The New Mexico Court of Appeals typically seeks mediation first in such administrative disputes, although no mediator has been appointed yet.
A native of New Mexico, Kenney spent over 20 years total with the Environmental Protection Agency. His final EPA post was as a senior policy adviser for oil and natural gas at headquarters in Washington, D.C.
