His leadership at Hanford began in February 2019 with a limited appointment as the manager of the DOE Office of Environment Management’s Richland Operations Office and Office of River Protection. He was named the permanent manager of both offices in July 2020.
Hundreds of fired probationary employees from the U.S. Department of Energy are returning to work but they may have to go through a new hire onboarding process and face the looming possibility of being fired again.
The repercussions of a mid-February layoff of hundreds of probationary federal employees at the Bonneville Power Administration, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and the U.S. Department of Energy’s Hanford field office continue to be felt across the Mid-Columbia.
Five leases in the region have been terminated by the Department of Government Efficiency, including in Richland. The move leaves more questions than answers.
A company subcontracting for other primary contractors on the Hanford site will pay nearly $500,000 in restitution for fraudulently receiving Covid-19 relief funding, and its owner will pay $1.1 million to settle an affirmative civil fraud lawsuit.
Most of the claims this year—703—were filed after President Donald Trump’s inauguration, with an average of 25 being filed per day since Feb. 13, according to a release.
In the seven areas assessed for the fee to be awarded, the federal agency said the contractor’s performance was “excellent” in three areas but that there was still room for improvement.
Federal lawmakers from Washington state and Oregon have criticized the layoffs, saying they are going to cripple cleanup efforts at the nation’s largest nuclear contaminated site and a power grid that supplies power to multiple states and hundreds of thousands of consumers.
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