DOE urged to establish 'Energy Parks' program so workers won't be furloughed

1136 words5 April 2010Inside EnergyIEISSN: 1556-3928English(c) 2010 McGraw-Hill, Inc.



An Energy Department initiative to allow developers to build wind farms, solar plants and other renewable-energy projects at remediated nuclear weapons sites has drawn keen interest from private industry and communities in the shadows of those defunct weapons plants.



Supporters say the so-called Energy Parks initiative will provide new employment opportunities to DOE cleanup workers who would otherwise work themselves out of their jobs when the sites where they work are cleaned up. But some observers fear that DOE will not get the initiative up and running before it spends all of the $6 billion in economic stimulus that it received for environmental cleanup, and that thousands of workers would have to be furloughed as a result.



"A year and a half from now, the cliff arrives," said Lawrence Papay, an energy consultant who sits on DOE's Environmental Management Advisory Board. "EM is going to be left holding the bag of a lot of people who can be employed and don't have prospects moving forward. Even if you were to act today, I am afraid you would not have enough time."



DOE's Environmental Management Office would like to draw on resources from across the department to help with Energy Parks, including tapping into its offices of energy efficiency and renewable energy, science and fossil energy. But to date, EM has not put a formal structure in place to do that.



At a meeting in Washington last week, some members of the EM advisory board said that without a formal structure in place, there could be massive job losses at some of the cleanup sites as the economic stimulus money runs out. The agency must have that money out the door by September 2011, and DOE expects to have completed cleanup on vast stretches of its land by that time.



James Antizzo, the senior coordinator of the Energy Parks initiative, said at the meeting that "conceptually, there is a lot of buy in" for the effort. But Antizzo acknowledged that the initiative "has not been blessed by [senior DOE] management, per se."



Ines Triay, DOE's assistant secretary for environmental management, said at the meeting that the department would soon form a task force to coordinate Energy Parks-related work across various DOE offices.



Despite the lack of a formal plan from DOE, interest has been strong in the Energy Parks initiative. The Mid-Columbia Energy Initiative, put together by a local-government-run development group, is working on acquiring up to 60 square miles of cleaned-up land at the Hanford Site in Washington state for use in future energy projects, according to Antizzo. Other projects are also in the works at the Pantex site in Texas, Oak Ridge in Tennessee and Mound in southern Ohio, he said.



EM received $6 billion in last year's American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, and a big fraction of the funds are going towards reducing the size of the so-called "cleanup footprint," or the amount of land DOE is responsible for cleaning up.



Using the stimulus funds, EM plans to reduce its overall footprint by some 450 square miles, or by 50% of its current size, by September 2011.



So far, EM has spent $1.5 billion of its $6 billion in stimulus funds, and Energy Secretary Steven Chu said last month that the cleanup program has created 14,000 jobs. Those jobs could dry up with the end of Recovery Act spending.



DOE contractors have used subcontractors for much of the work, and maintaining long-term jobs at the sites in the wake of the Recovery Act has emerged as a primary concern of local community groups. The Energy Communities Alliance, which represents communities near DOE sites, has been a strong advocate of Energy Parks.



Several ECA local-government members have drafted a one-page legislative proposal legislation that would formally establish the Energy Parks program. Seth Kirshenberg, ECA's executive director, said members of his group are working with senators and members of Congress to get the bill introduced.



The current initiative would leave it up to local communities to push for Energy Parks, but the draft legislation from ECA members would establish a formal program at DOE to promote the use of former defense nuclear facilities, such as Hanford and the Savannah River Site in South Carolina.



It is unclear whether DOE would support legislation. In remarks to the board, Merle Sykes, the office's chief of business operations, said that the administration would consider supporting legislation.



"I have actually looked at the legislation. We'll see if there is not a way we can figure out how the administration can support that in a more active way," Sykes said. According to Triay, the purpose of the program is simply to have DOE act as a facilitator for communities hoping to bring in energy projects.



Even after a task force is in place, DOE still faces challenges, according to Antizzo. It must perform an audit of available resources, develop site plans, and determine a strategy for performing the environmental reviews required under the National Environmental Policy Act.



While the Energy Parks Initiative is being thrashed out within the department, some of the sites have been pursuing similar efforts on their own for years, such as land transfers and leasing at the Oak Ridge Site, according to Antizzo.



"I think the idea with the Energy Parks Initiative is to kind of make it a little more strategic, so that you have in addition to the opportunities that come up as an individual opportunity, how do we then take the opportunities and link them to a national strategy," he said.



Still, some local advocacy groups warned that DOE must act in a transparent manner if it pursues its initiative to build renewable-energy projects on remidiated nuclear weapons sites. Tom Carpenter, the executive director of Hanford Challenge, a watchdog group near the Hanford Site, said that his major concern was the lack of transparency in the Energy Parks process.



"I understand the jobs issue," Carpenter said. "But it needs to be done in an open and transparent process with buy in from the regional stakeholders, and not just make it happen in the dark, behind the scenes and hope to get away with it."



Carpenter added that local stakeholders have a number of tools at their disposal, including lawsuits, to delay or derail Energy Parks projects that are not done openly.



"I don't think the Department of Energy has any business whatsoever deciding to use a part of that site, whose future has been undetermined, and just start leasing or selling land off of it without wide agreement," he said. "They can expect resistance." — Derek Sands
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