SENATE COMMITTEE TO REVIEW DOE-EM NOMINEE ASSISTANT SECRETARY TIM WALSH
The Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources will hold a Full Committee Hearing to consider Mr. Timothy Walsh to be Assistant Secretary of Energy for Environmental Management later today (July 9), at 9:30 am ET.
To view the hearing, click here. An archived recording of the video will also be available at this link.
ECA has submitted a letter of support to the Senate Committee to voice support for Mr. Walsh's confirmation:
"ECA supports the nomination of Mr. Walsh, who would be the first political appointee in over six years to lead the EM program. ECA believes that EM should be led by a political appointee to enable the difficult decision-making that the program requires to evolve and best serve the U.S. taxpayers and the host communities. Congress and President set up the EM program to have a political leader to ensure that the leader of the program would go through the Senate confirmation process and be directly accountable to the President, the Secretary, and Congress.
The next EM leader needs to balance the core mission, the budget constraints and the need to decrease the large liabilities while also understanding the long-term nature of the program. Decisions made today can impact the next decade of the cleanup program at some sites. EM has the potential to accelerate, and ultimately complete, large portions of the current program in the near-term, and we believe this should be a core goal for the next program head. ECA views Mr. Walsh’s leadership and decision-making ability, combined with his extensive military and private-sector experience, as key to bringing in new ideas and views to the EM program to make improvement and capitalize on this potential.
Furthermore, in light of Secretary Wright’s initiative to reuse DOE sites for datacenter and energy development, Mr. Walsh’s development and financing expertise will make him an ideal candidate to enable and facilitate new opportunities on former defense properties that have been cleaned up and returned to the community for beneficial reuse. We are seeing economic opportunities being created where EM sites are cleaned up and repurposed for nuclear energy, manufacturing and other key economic development projects. ECA wants to continue to see EM take liabilities and turn them into assets.
Mr. Walsh seems to have the executive experience necessary for this role, and a track record of cooperating and communicating with businesses and local governments who are the current and future hosts of our nation’s nuclear facilities. Communication and partnership with these entities is critical to the success of the EM mission, and ECA believes Mr. Walsh understands that creating relationships with local government leaders and industry to enable the advancement of that EM mission will assist to move the EM program for the short and long-term."
To read the full letter of support, click here.
ECA appreciates the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources for their consideration of this request.