Robert G. Card
Card was No. 3 at the Department of Energy from May 2001 until April 2004, where he oversaw the Office of Environmental Management. This office is in charge of one of “the nation’s most sensitive and expensive jobs”: cleaning up nuclear waste sites. In Card’s three years at DoE, billions of dollars worth of nuclear waste cleanup contracts went to two affiliated companies where he formerly presided as CEO and President: Kaiser-Hill Company and CH2M Hill Inc. One of those companies was fined more than $725,000 for violations during Card’s tenure.CH2M Hill and its partially-owned subsidiary Kaiser-Hill hold two key nuclear clean-up contracts: CH2MHill has the $4 billion contract to clean up the Rocky Flats Site in Colorado, and Kaiser-Hill has a $4 billion contract to clean up Hanford, a similar site in Washington state. Card’s former companies were also awarded contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars to clean up sites in Ohio and South Carolina. These companies are two of the very few with the ability to build long-term nuclear waste storage sites, and they stand to profit profoundly from the selection in 2002 of Nevada’s Yucca Mountain as a storage site. CH2M Hill also partnered with BWXT and DynCorp in 2003 to win a $314 million Department of Energy contract to close a nuclear site in Miamisburg, Ohio.
Card left DoE just after the revelation that contractor Science and Engineering Associates paid just one $15,000 claim under a $74 million program to help sick nuclear weapons workers exposed to toxic chemicals. (A SEA program manager reportedly had a salary over $400,000.)
After his resignation, Card returned to CH2M Hillas a director and the President and Group Chief Executive of its International Group. CH2M Hill has since won contracts related to Hurricane Katrina, Iraq, and domestic naval facilities.
Categories
Energy | Defense | Functionaries | Environment | Government Officials | Middlemen
Sources
- June 6, 2002 New York Times, Questions Raised Over Energy Dept. Official’s Industry Ties, By DAVID FIRESTONE
- Las Vegas Review-Journal, June 10, 2004, Editorial: More DOE bungling http://www.nucwatch.com/ymclips/2004/ymclips040611.htm
- http://www.house.gov/mckinney/news/pr010502.htm
- 2 Leave Program Criticized For Not Helping Ill Workers, (AP), April 4, 2004
- http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=21843
- http://www.reviewjournal.com/lvrj_home/2002/Jun-04-Tue-2002/news/18893463.html < /ul>