Last week, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) released two reports on the management, projects, and operations of the Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Environmental Management (EM).
According to the report, the average top leader at EM has served for less than two years. In the last two decades, there have been five Senate-confirmed assistant secretaries (political appointees) and nine acting assistant secretaries or senior advisors.
Frequent turnover has created challenges for achieving the department's complex and long-term cleanup mission, such as difficulty building relationships with stakeholders, inconsistent and incomplete initiatives, and a focus on short-term actions over long-term priorities, according to those GAO interviewed.
Several options exist that can enhance leadership commitment, according to GAO. Specifically, DOE's Deputy Secretary told GAO that filling EM's top leadership position with a senior career official, rather than a political appointee, could help overcome some of the challenges, if serving for a long enough tenure.
Alternatively, GAO has found that term appointments can help agencies facing long-term challenges that require sustained leadership attention over time. For example, GAO has previously supported establishing term appointments of at least five to seven years for certain leadership positions.
Legislation establishing a term appointment for EM's top leader could help improve leadership stability, address challenges, and better support EM's long-term mission to clean up nuclear waste by helping create an organizational commitment that can endure across administrations.
The report also pushes for a new, dedicated DOE under secretary position for nuclear waste management and environmental cleanup that could help ensure that EM receives the sustained attention and commitment it needs to make cleanup progress.
According to EM data, there were 23 active capital asset projects as of December 2020, 15 of which GAO selected for this review. The 15 capital asset projects are located at seven sites and had total project costs ranging from $127 million to $16.8 billion. These projects include a variety of cleanup activities, ranging from constructing the Waste Treatment Plant at the Hanford, WA, site to demolishing a contaminated building at Portsmouth,
OH.
According to EM officials, as of September 2021, the agency is managing 76 operations activities at the 16 active cleanup sites. GAO selected 11 EM operations activities—one at each of 11 sites—with estimated costs ranging from $1 billion to $180.5 billion. These operations activities cover a variety of mission activities, such as deactivating and decommissioning a nuclear facility and remediating soil and groundwater.
GAO found that most projects were expected to be completed within initial cost and schedule estimates. However, officials at several projects that experienced cost overruns and schedule delays cited staffing shortages as a contributing factor. In addition, the life-cycle estimates for cleanup operations were frequently out of date, and DOE was in the process of implementing a new policy to require annual updated estimates.
The full report provides a summary of each site's work status for EM, each of which should be reviewed.
