The director of the Washington state Department of Ecology Laura Watson hopes to have a new person in charge of nuclear waste cleanup by the end of the year.
The agency had not settled on a replacement as of Thursday, spokesman Randy Bradbury said in an email.
After spending five-and-a-half years in charge of Washington’s nuclear cleanup, much of which involves regulating the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site remediation, Alex Smith left the job Friday. Smith, who is becoming a deputy secretary with the Washington Department of Natural Resources, told the Oregon Hanford Cleanup Board Thursday that Washington has conducted a national search for her successor.
The first two rounds of interviews were conducted during late October, Smith told the cleanup board for neighboring Oregon. Finalists for the Washington nuclear cleanup job should be presented to Watson as early as this week, Smith said.
While speaking later in the same program, Watson said she hopes to have a new nuclear cleanup director in place during December.
Smith is a lawyer with a background in environmental matters. She was appointed to lead Ecology’s nuclear cleanup program in March 2016. The job includes state enforcement of the federal Resource Conservation and Recovery Act at Hanford. Ecology also represents state interests at Hanford in the Tri-Party Agreement that governs cleanup at the former plutonium production complex.
Before taking the nuclear waste position, Smith worked briefly as a senior lawyer for the Port of Seattle after serving as the director of environmental programs for the Port of Olympia from 2011 to 2015.
Stephanie Schleif, the deputy program manager for nuclear at Washington’s Ecology Department, will be acting program manager until the new person takes over, Bradbury said in an email last week.
