Boston Government Services disclosed Tuesday it is partnering with Cincinnati-based Trinity Engineering Associates in the BTP Services joint venture that on July 31 won a potential $49.5 million technical support services contract from the Energy Department.
Oak Ridge-based Boston Government Services previously said it is majority owner of the partnership. Headed by founder and President Harry Boston, the firm specializes in engineering, technology, and security issues for nuclear, energy, and government clients.
Trinity Engineering works in fields such as nuclear engineering, environmental compliance, and radiological emergency preparedness, according to its website.
The bid protest period recently ended without any challenges to the indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity (ID/IQ) contract for technical support services at DOE’s Office of Environmental Management.
In a news release Tuesday, BTP said other members of its team are: Nebraska-based Inspection Experts Inc., a trio of Maryland-based firms, Project Enhancement Corp., MELE Associates, and Link Technologies; and Booz Allen Hamilton, the international consulting company headquartered in Northern Virginia. All the companies have done work for the Energy Department or other government agencies.
The joint venture will provide technical support and subject matter expertise to the DOE cleanup office’s Field Operations, Regulatory and Policy Affairs, and Corporate Services offices, according to the vendor’s press release.
The venture will provide technical support and systems support in areas such as safety management, waste management, quality assurance, decommissioning, transportation, and contract management.
Claire Chase, government affairs director for a New Mexico oil and gas company, intends to seek the Republican nomination to represent the congressional district that covers the U.S. Energy Department’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) near Carlsbad.
If successful in a GOP primary for New Mexico’s 2nd Congressional District, Chase would challenge Rep. Xochitl Torres Small (D-N.M.) in the 2020 election. Last November, Torres Small, an attorney, squeaked out a win over Republican state legislator Yvette Herrell in a race so close that Herrell initially claimed victory.
The GOP candidate’s campaign organization, Claire Chase for Congress, filed its paperwork Tuesday with the U.S. Federal Election Commission.
Chase is a former chair of the New Mexico Oil and Gas Association and works in government affairs to promote “a political environment” friendly to oil and natural gas development at Mack Energy, founded by Mack Chase, according to the company’s website. She also worked as a senior legislative assistant to the district’s former congressman, Steve Pearce. Chase holds a journalism and mass communications degree from New Mexico State University.
Pearce gave up his seat to pursue an ultimately unsuccessful campaign last year for governor against Democrat Michelle Lujan Grisham, who also left Congress to run.
The 2nd District covers southern New Mexico. Along with WIPP, it encompasses the Lea County property planned for Holtec International’s consolidated interim spent nuclear fuel storage facility.
The Ruidoso News reported her competition in the GOP primary is likely to include Herrell, who lost to Torres Small in 2018.
Nearly two years after it said the complexity of remediating the Santa Susana Field Laboratory was responsible for missed cleanup deadlines, the California Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC) has still not published two key environmental reports
In its summary of June activity at the 2,850-acre chemically and radioactively contaminated site in Ventura County, the state agency said it is finishing its response to public comments collected by December 2017 on both the draft Program Environmental Impact Report (PEIR) and the draft Program Management Plan (PMP). The environmental report will inform the public about site contamination, and the management plan will provide a roadmap for remediation.
The state expects to issue the finished PEIR later this year and then have the parties responsible for remediation at Santa Susana – Boeing, NASA, and the U.S. Department of Energy – develop their draft cleanup decision documents detailing how they will conduct the work. After these decision documents are issued for public comment and subsequently finalized, remaining remediation would begin.
The parties have already torn down many structures at SSFL. The final cleanup of contaminated soil, which accounts for much of the remaining work, is likely to take 15 years, according to the state.
A 2007 consent order originally called for remediation of contaminated soil to largely done by mid-2017. But a separate 2010 administrative consent order between the state and the three responsible parties stipulated the major soil cleanup should wait for completion of the environmental reports.
The Energy Department is responsible for soil remediation within 470 acres of the SSFL property, located 30 miles northwest of downtown Los Angeles.
In December 2018, DOE released its environmental impact statement for tearing down remaining buildings and cleaning up soil in Area IV and the Northern Buffer Zone at Santa Susana. For decades, DOE’s former Energy Technology Engineering Center did research on liquid metal technology that contributed to contamination in these areas of SSFL. Critics say the federal environmental plan does not go far enough.
