Less than two months after stepping aside as the No. 2 official in the Energy Department’s nuclear cleanup office, James Owendoff is taking a new job within the agency.
Starting next week, Owendoff will be DOE-wide chief risk officer, a senior executive position within the office of the Chief Financial Officer John Vonglis. He formally assumes the role on Sept. 30, according to an email distributed Wednesday within the Energy Department.
“In this role, Jim will review DOE’s Enterprise Risk Management (ERM) model” and help keep the department keep abreast of its “risks, challenges, and opportunities,” says the message.
Owendoff became principal deputy assistant secretary for environmental management in June 2017, effectively serving as day-to-day leader of the cleanup office until Anne Marie White was confirmed as assistant secretary in March. In August he was named DOE Office of Environmental Management special adviser for the Savannah River Site in South Carolina. His selection for the new job was intended to improve collaboration between the cleanup office and DOE’s semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration.
It was not immediately known whether Owendoff continues to work in that capacity. A DOE spokesperson said by email the department does not comment on personnel matters.
An Energy Department website lists Vonglis both as the agency’s chief financial officer and its chief risk officer.
A retired Air Force officer, Owendoff has served since the 1990s in management roles at Environmental Management and other DOE offices. He was a senior adviser for the Environmental Management office from 2010 to 2017.
The New Mexico Environment Department issued notice Saturday it is moving ahead with an Oct. 23 public hearing in Carlsbad on the Department of Energy’s application to amend the state hazardous waste facility permit for the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP).
The hearing will be held at 9 a.m. the Carlsbad branch of New Mexico State University. Technical testimony and other oral comments will be taken by a state hearing officer. Written public comments on the draft permit can be submitted until the conclusion of the public hearing.
The Energy Department and WIPP contractor Nuclear Waste Partnership want to change the way in which waste volume is counted at the underground repository for defense transuranic waste. The federal agency has asked that the gaps between drums in a standard waste container no longer be counted as waste volume, which could effectively reduce the current waste emplacement figure by about 30 percent. Under the current math, DOE has already empaneled roughly 90,000 cubic meters of material, more than half its 176,000-cubic-meter limit.
The Santa Fe New Mexican also reported Saturday that NMED was starting this week on draft permit issues prior to the public hearing.
The nongovernmental Southwest Research and Information Center, Concerned Citizens for Nuclear Safety, Nuclear Watch New Mexico, and Citizens for Alternatives to Radioactive Dumping, have all said NMED is rushing things on both the negotiation schedule and the October public hearing date.
The public comment period only ended Sept. 20, and the NMED’s short notice will exclude some parties, the four advocacy groups said.
It could be days or possibly weeks before the Energy Department takes a second stab at issuing a decade-long contract for management of liquid radioactive waste in storage at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina.
“It’s always soon,” a source in South Carolina quipped Wednesday to Weapons Complex Monitor.
Energy Department officials have said in recent months they hope to re-award the contract by the end of September after an earlier contract was successfully protested. The Aiken Standard newspaper in South Carolina quoted SRS Associate Deputy Manager Thomas Johnson Jr. as saying Tuesday the award was close, but DOE wants to ensure the contract can withstand another potential protest.
But two other industry sources were skeptical about DOE avoiding another protest.
“Good luck with that,” an industry source said Tuesday when told of Johnson’s remarks. Another industry source on Wednesday agreed: “There is nothing they can do to keep it from being protested.”
BWX Technologies-led Savannah River EcoManagement won a 10-year, $4.7 billion contract last October. But the victory was short-lived for BWXT and its partners, Bechtel and Honeywell. In February, the Government Accountability Office upheld a bid protest brought by a team of AECOM and CH2M. The GAO found the Energy Department failed to properly vet the viability of the winning bidder’s technical approach to process the waste and convert it into more stable forms.
The Energy Department accepted revised bids from all three contractor teams, including a Fluor-Westinghouse partnership. The winning venture will manage storage, treatment, stabilization, and ultimate disposal of over 30 million gallons of liquid waste at Savannah River resulting from decades of nuclear weapons operations.
The current contractor, AECOM-led Savannah River Remediation, has received contract extensions through March 31, 2019.
