EM Leaders: Future Success Tied to Engagement with Stakeholders, Workforce

PHOENIX – The future for EM success will be determined as much by engaging with communities and stakeholders as it will in solving technical challenges, program leaders told an audience at the 2022 Waste Management Symposia last week.

“EM knows how to do things,” Chief of Staff Mike Nartker said. “We know how to treat waste. We know how to tear down a building.”

Future success will be tied “more to getting alignment and support around these approaches, and then we can implement them. Alignment is what’s going to be needed tingo solve some of the last major challenges,” he said.

Nartker and the three EM associate principal deputy assistant secretaries, or APDASes, Nicole Nelson-Jean, Jay Mullis and Dae Chung, discussed the program during the popular Hot Topics panel at the conference.

The session was highlighted by the announcement that EM has completed cleanup work at the Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York following the demolition of the distinctive, 320-foot-tall, red-and-white exhaust stack associated with the former High Flux Beam Reactor at the lab. Completion of activities at Brookhaven leaves EM with 15 active remediation sites, out of 107 when the program was established in 1989.

“The legacy cleanup at Brookhaven is done,” Nartker said. “So that is gone. That is what EM is about, completing work.

“There’s still a lot to go,’’ he added, although EM plans to complete activities at several other locations over the next decade, including at the Moab Uranium Mill Tailings Remedial Action Project in Utah, the Nevada National Security Site, and the Sandia National Laboratories site in New Mexico.

As work proceeds at remaining sites, the challenges ahead are not all necessarily technical, Nartker said.

“The key component of the issues that remain is engagement, with all the constituents of this program, ranging from local communities at the sites, Congress, tribal nations, activist groups,” he said.

Nartker said the administration’s emphasis on environmental justice — of making sure all voices are heard — will be key to obtaining alignment.

“And once that happens, you’ll really unlock what this program can do,” he said.

Mullis, APDAS for regulatory and policy affairs, noted that EM “hires a lot of engineers and scientists who know how to solve our technical problems, and typically that’s not the long pole in the tent. But ultimately it’s getting more of the stakeholders in the tent with you.”

Mullis said new initiatives to enhance stakeholder engagement “give us additional tools to reach out to audiences and stakeholders that in the past might have felt neglected.”

Nelson-Jean, APDAS for field operations, said the long-range success hinges on maintaining a quality workforce. She recognized EM field managers as key links.

“The accomplishments we’ve had in the past year is because of these individuals and their contractor partners they work with every day,” Nelson-Jean said. “For us to continue this important work, we have to make sure they not only have the people they need, but their contractor partners also have the people they need.

“None of us are getting any younger,” she continued. “We have wonderful people here at this conference in STEM and in other locations working with us every day that we really have to build up and ensure they are there to support us with the work that we have to do in the future.

“We know how to do this work, but we still have a long way to go,” she said. “With the right people in the right places at the right time, we can go and accomplish the things we need to.”

Chung, APDAS for corporate services, said EM strives for the correct mindset for success.

“If you do the little things right more frequently, the better chance you are going to have to be successful” on larger tasks, he said. For instance, EM’s use of the end-state contracting model to invigorate a completion mindset in setting cleanup tasks and goals brings similar benefits, he said.

“One of the things the end-state contracting model brings to the table is setting up the frame of mind, setting up the right conditions so we can be more successful,” Chung said.

“So I think we have tremendous opportunities in terms of tackling issues, whether technical or any other issue,” he said. “As long as we have that right mindset, we will continue to be successful.”