The Senate Environment and Natural Resources Committee on Thursday endorsed the nomination of Liberty Energy CEO Chris Wright to be secretary of energy by 15-to-5, with Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Wash.) being one of the five Democrats to vote against the executive.
The nominations of both Wright and former North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum (R) to be secretary of interior will now move to the full Senate. No date has been set for a floor vote. Burgum was approved by the panel with only two opposing votes.
Cortez Masto did not explain her vote during Thursday’s committee business meeting.
In a post-hearing statement, Cortez Masto said she voted against Wright because of the Trump administration’s move to “gut key energy investments in Nevada.” The lawmaker said she did secure a promise from Wright and the administration not to try and revive the Yucca Mountain high-level waste project, though in his confirmation hearing last week, declined to say outright that he would unconditionally oppose storing radioactive waste at Yucca, a project that many, if not most, politicians holding statewide office in Nevada oppose.
Also voting no on Thursday was Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.). After the vote, Cantwell said she opposed Wright’s confirmation because she questioned if he was fully committed to defending the Tri-Party Agreement for cleanup of the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site near Richland, Wash. His answers on the subject during the recent confirmation hearing were “unsatisfactory,” Cantwell said.
The agreement between DOE, Washington state and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is one reason why the former plutonium production site traditionally receives more than $2 billion in nuclear remediation funds, Cantwell said.
Every energy secretary is pushed by the Office of Management and Budget to do Hanford cleanup “on the short,” Cantwell said.
