Today, the White House released a blueprint entitled, "
Delivering Government Solutions in the 21st Century," which proposes the reorganization of multiple federal agencies within the Executive Branch. The plan contains several recommendations for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) and the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), including a reorganization of the Environmental
Management (EM) program. The plan also recommends consolidation of Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) cleanup programs. A summary of proposed changes to DOE, the NRC, and EPA are listed below.
DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY
Streamline Environmental Management Headquarters
Organization:
This effort will review the Environmental Management (EM) organiza-tional structure to identify opportunities to streamline the manage-ment team. EM will specifically review supervisor-to-worker ratios, skill gaps, and cost reduction measures such as consolidating facili-ties and reducing administrative support. This proposal focuses on completion of the EM clean-up mission in an efficient and cost-effec-tive
manner.
Consolidate International Staff Under Office of International Affairs:
The Department is consolidating international affairs offices from DOE’s applied energy programs into the headquarters Office of International Affairs. This effort centralizes staff and resources with technical expertise and foreign affairs policy knowledge to advise on and carry out the Department’s
international engagement efforts.
Merge Shared Service Centers and Other Activities:
The Department continues to merge DOE’s Human Resources Shared Service Centers, consolidate human capital functions across the DOE enterprise, and merge DOE training and development functions. This effort will streamline processes, reduce costs, and improve services.
Office of Science Restructuring:
The Department of Energy’s Office of Science is evaluating several proposals to merge and consolidate field and headquarters activities to improve efficiency and reduce costs. Potential options for con-sideration include: merging geographically associated site offices; reorganizing the Integrated Service Centers; realigning safety and technical services; streamlining the Office of
Science organization; and reducing staff and/or administration support costs.
NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION
Merge the Office of New Reactors (NRO) and the Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation (NRR):
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) recognizes that a merger of NRO and NRR will provide flexibility and improved agility to
man-age uncertainties associated with the workloads in both the new and operating reactor business lines. As part of the merger of NRO and NRR, the NRC will conduct an assessment of technical review func-tions to identify efficiencies and eliminate redundancies.
ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY
Consolidate portions of the Department of the Interior’s (DOI) Central Hazardous
Materials Program and the Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Hazardous Materials Management program into the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Superfund program:
This consolidation would allow EPA to address environmental cleanup under the Comprehensive Environmental Response Compensation & Liability Act (CERCLA) on Federal land regardless of which of these agencies manages the land, while DOI and USDA would maintain their existing
environmental compliance, bonding, and reclamation programs for non-CERCLA sites.
Consolidating the cleanup programs in a way that allows EPA to add sites in need of CERCLA-level attention to the Superfund program would create efficiencies by eliminating inconsistent interpretations among various agencies, reducing the number of decisions and approvals, and ultimately expediting the cleanup of
sites.
