DOE Stresses Dialogue With Regulators, Eyes Cleanup Cost Efficiencies

Senior officials in the Department of Energy's (DOE) Environmental Management (EM) program are stressing the importance of an ongoing dialogue with regulators to try to repair and improve relations over cleanup issues in the face of an ongoing annual $2 billion gap between regulatory requirements and appropriated budgets. While senior officials are awaiting proposals from EM cleanup sites across the country to pare back their operational costs -- due at the end of September -- one high-level official acknowledges that...