The head of Texas’s environmental regulation agency is staying for another term, the governor’s office said Tuesday.
Gov. Greg Abbott (R) on Tuesday reappointed Jon Niermann to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ), according to a press release. Now in his second term on the commission, Niermann can remain in his post until 2027, the release said.
Niermann has been TCEQ chair since 2018 and has been a member of the three-member board since 2015, alongside Emily Lindley and Bobby Janecka. Prior to that, Niermann was chief of the environmental protection division within the Texas attorney general’s office.
Among its regulatory responsibilities, TCEQ oversees Waste Control Specialists’ (WCS) low-level radioactive waste disposal facility in Andrews, Texas. The WCS facility handles waste shipments as part of an interstate compact agreement between Texas and Vermont.
The WCS site is also the proposed home of an interim storage facility for spent nuclear fuel currently under federal licensing review. Interim Storage Partners (ISP), a joint venture between WCS and Orano USA, is currently awaiting the final go-ahead from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to start work on its proposed facility.
NRC has said that it would make a licensing decision on the ISP site, which has faced staunch opposition in Texas, in the coming weeks.
