DOE reorganizes environment and security offices

A plan to restructure the Department of Energy's security, environmental, safety, and health functions was finalized last week. The move seals a controversial proposal to do away with the current DOE Office of Environment, Safety & Health and the Office of Security & Safety Performance Assurance and place most of their functions in a newly created Office of Health, Safety & Security. The new office will report to the energy secretary and be led by a career employee rather than a Senate-approved assistant secretary, which had been the case. DOE officials say the merger will allow closer integration of related functions and better interaction with DOE field offices. Critics, including unions, governors, members of Congress, and former top DOE officials, however, say the reorganization will weaken these functions within DOE, lower their visibility, and place them under career staff and field offices, rather than a more independent assistant secretary. The plan also rolls back reforms put in place in the mid-1980s after congressional hearings on worker, environmental, and safety problems at DOE sites. However, DOE Deputy Secretary Clay Sell stresses Energy Secretary Samuel W. Bodman's commitment to security and safety and counters that the head of the new office will report directly to Bodman. "Safety begins and ends with the secretary," Sell says, "and if the secretary of energy is behind safe performance, that is what is going to happen; if not, it doesn't matter how many kinds of offices are created elsewhere."