The U.S. Senate on Thursday approved two Trump administration nominees to the Energy Department by voice vote.
Mark Wesley Menezes of Virginia was approved to be undersecretary for the Department of Energy. Also approved was Paul Dabbar of New York to be undersecretary for science.
Most recently, Menezes worked as vice president of federal relations for Berkshire Hathaway Energy. Before joining Berkshire, he was a partner at the Hunton & Williams law firm heading its energy practice group. Prior to Hunton, he was chief counsel for the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Energy and Commerce.
Menezes would be in charge of the part of DOE that includes legacy nuclear cleanup programs overseen by the Office of Environmental Management.
Dabbar was most recently managing director for mergers and acquisitions for J.P. Morgan, and has over $400 billion in investment experience across all energy sectors. Before joining J.P. Morgan, Dabbar served as a nuclear submarine officer. He has also served on the DOE’s Environmental Management Advisory Board.
Both were approved by the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee earlier this year.
The administration has not nominated anyone to lead the Office of Environmental Management itself. Department veteran James Owendoff has been acting assistant secretary for EM since June.
Dayton, Ohio-based Ardent Technologies has been awarded an indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity (IDIQ) support services contract from the Energy Department’s Office of Environmental Management (EM) that could be worth up to $4 million.
The contract, which is for three years, calls for Ardent to provide support services – such as information technology, server management, and cybersecurity – to the DOE Environmental Management Consolidated Business Center and various sites across the department’s nuclear cleanup complex.
Ardent Technologies is considered a small disadvantaged business for DOE procurement purposes. Fixed-price and time-and-materials-type task orders may be issued against the contract for specific work orders, DOE said in a news release.
The company’s website indicates that Ardent is a 16-year-old firm specializing in information technology. It has more than 70 employees serving clients in federal, state, and local government, as well as in commercial markets.
The Energy Department, Boeing, and NASA have submitted a plan to the California Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC) outlining how they plan to determine baseline air quality prior to cleanup work at the Santa Susana Field Laboratory.
That is among the recent milestones cited in a September report by DTSC on progress at the 2,850-acre SSFL site in the Simi Hills in Ventura County. The Santa Susana Field Laboratory (SSFL) is located 30 miles northwest of downtown Los Angeles.
Boeing, NASA, and DOE are the responsible parties for site cleanup. In a document filed in September, the parties said they plan to use more than a dozen monitoring stations to assess current air quality over a year before the start of remediation, which is currently targeted for 2019.
The parties will measure concentrations of dust, volatile organic compounds, and radionuclides around SSFL prior to excavation. Meteorological data will be collected from on-site towers for factors such as wind speed, direction, temperature, and precipitation, among other things. The research should help identify “data gaps” in current information, the parties said in a report submission.
The September report notes that DTSC and DOE continue to discuss technologies for treatment of chlorinated solvents at the DOE-controlled portion of the site. DOE must still submit a final white paper on the issue. Santa Susana is a former rocket engine and nuclear research facility.
The federally appointed citizens panel for the Oak Ridge Reservation in Tennessee is getting a half-dozen new members, and many of them have some background with Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
The Oak Ridge Site Specific Advisory Board (ORSSAB) was established to provide local input on the operation of the DOE facility. It is comprised of up to 22 members who serve two-year terms. Five members retired from the board this summer. The newest members were introduced at the panel’s Oct. 11 meeting.
They are:
- David Branch of Knoxville, a retired letter carrier for the U.S. Postal Service.
- Michelle Lohmann of Lenoir City, a human resources director for U.S. Cellular who previously worked with University of Tennessee graduate programs at Oak Ridge.
- Leon Shields, also of Lenoir City, a field operations supervisor for the Lenoir City Utilities Board.
- Bonnie Shoemaker, of Clinton, Tenn., who retired from the East Tennessee Technology Park at Oak Ridge in 2008.
- John Tapp, of Powell, a retired civil and environmental engineer who worked in both government and the private sector.
- Tara Walker of Knoxville, a chemical engineering undergraduate student from the Tennessee Technological University who has interned at ORNL.
ORSSAB meets the second Wednesday of most months and meetings are open to the public. Dennis Wilson is chairman of the board.
