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DOE's Order 450.1 Environmental Management System
Implementation Workshop
Forrestal Building, DOE Auditorium, GE-086
February 25, 2003
Thank you, Bev, for including me in this workshop as you all set out on this next step in your journey to improve DOE's environmental stewardship by implementing the new environmental protection Order 450.1.
It's a privilege being here today, and it's a privilege to work for President George W. Bush. I've worked for President Bush for more than 6 years on natural resource and environmental issues, and I know that he is personally committed to stewardship.
As governor, he made sure that the Governor's Mansion was one of the first facilities in Austin to sign up to receive renewable energy. At his ranch in Crawford, he installed a 25,000-gallon rainwater cistern for irrigation and planted native plants. A geothermal heating and cooling system sends water into the ground 300 feet to keep it at a constant 67 degrees, using 75% less electricity than traditional heating and air-conditioning systems consume and so efficiently heating the outdoor pool that the initial plans to install solar energy panels were cancelled. And the ranch vehicles are powered by propane. He's made sure the White House has significantly improved its energy efficiency, and they recently installed 167 solar panels on a maintenance building.
For all of us, he wants the federal government to lead by example. We have to be in compliance. We have to be wise fiscal stewards of the resources the American taxpayers have given us - and wise environmental stewards of the natural resources God has given us.
President Bush is an MBA-trained, results-oriented person who believes in leading by example and being graded on performance. To improve the federal government's performance - a big job, to say the least - he and his team, including DOE, have developed a management agenda. President Bush has described this as "a bold strategy for improving the management and performance of the federal government. Government likes to begin things - to declare grand new programs and causes. But good beginnings are not the measure of success. What matters in the end is completion. Performance. Results. Not just making promises, but making good on promises."
To achieve this, the Administration is working on five government-wide reforms: strategic management of human capital, competitive sourcing, improved financial performance, expanded electronic government, and integration of budget and performance. And they're grading everyone - with red, yellow, and green light scorecards.
We're also working to provide the tools to reach those expected results. And an environmental management system is just such an effective tool to help you achieve your mission. In 2000, President Clinton issued Executive Order 13148 requiring all federal agencies to adopt environmental management systems by December 2005. The Bush Administration has kept that EO in place, and President Bush expects agencies and facilities to meet this as a step in pursuing excellence in environmental stewardship.
The White House Office of Management and Budget and the White House Council on Environmental Quality have offered clear direction that all agencies are to use EMS as an effective management and stewardship tool in their policies, practices, and budgets. And the Cabinet secretaries and their teams appear to be on track for putting into place the needed policies and resources for training and implementation.
One of the best things we can do to prod the federal government along is to provide a helpful scorecard, identifying who is doing what - and who is not doing what. When I first took this job in April 2002, I asked how the federal government was doing in adopting EMS. We didn't know. So we developed a scorecard, which has now been through a couple of versions, to help us gauge everyone's progress.
Recently, in our latest report to the President on the federal government's progress in energy and environmental management, we highlighted EMS implementation and included some of the scorecard's information. I urge you to take a look at the report, at our website, www.ofee.gov.
To date, we know of 183 Federal facilities and programs across the country that are implementing EMS. And because many agencies and facilities are ramping up efforts to develop and implement EMS, we expect these numbers will grow considerably soon.
DOE has long been a leader in the EMS field. Today, seven DOE facilities have received ISO 14001 certification:
- The Kansas City, Missouri Plant
- The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in Carlsbad, New Mexico
- The Brookhaven National Laboratory in NY
- The Strategic Petroleum Reserve in Texas and Louisiana
- The Idaho National Engineering & Environmental Lab in Idaho Falls
- The Pacific Northwest National Laboratory-Hanford Site in Richland Washington, and
- The Savanah River Site in Aiken, South Carolina.
Two other operations have an EMS: the West Valley, Western NY Power Authority and the Western Area Power Authority. And the new DOE Order 450.1 should only improve that strong track record.
The new order replaces a similarly named DOE order that was almost 15 years old. Much has changed since then - both in DOE and in the environmental protection arena. The Order is very timely in that it places management systems front-and-center as the tool DOE will use to strategically tackle environmental, health, and safety matters at DOE sites.
The essential elements of an EMS are described, and, importantly, responsibilities are very clearly delineated. Bev Cook has given herself a big job here, all of which is described for everyone to see in the Order.
The Order applies even to most of the National Nuclear Security Administration, most of the power administrations, and to contractors. DOE expects its contractors to comply with the Order, requiring the contractors who operate DOE sites to have their own environmental management systems as part of their integrated safety management systems.
As the new Order recognizes, EMS is a tool that can help you achieve DOE's mission better because we've seen EMS help other entities - in the private and public sectors - around the world - achieve their missions.
It can do this by helping you achieve compliance, preventing risks and future liabilities, reducing costs, improving operating efficiencies, and meeting the challenges of constant changes and the need to move faster and do more.
We have an obligation to be good neighbors, and EMS can help you improve relations with your communities as you work together to address the range of encroachment issues.
EMS offers an opportunity to manage not just environmental issues, but also health and safety, energy, transportation, housing, and more. It is very adaptable and comprehensive tool that can bring sound management practices to many issues you have to face. And because it's not static, it makes you keep pushing to continually find even more improvements. In sum, it can help you and others address environmental, safety, health and other issues as efficiently as possible so that everyone can focus on DOE's core mission.
The challenges and complexities of your work and the expectations of others will only increase with time. We will have personnel and budget and other issues - and you will have plenty of distractions - and others' expectations of you will only grow.
We're seeing 2 competing trends around the country now as environmental programs mature and budgets get tighter.
Some are saying we need more of the command and control approaches that helped us make the significant environmental improvements we have already achieved - and if our budget shrinks, environmental protection will have to be cut.
Others are saying that we have to be innovative and find the new tools that will carry us to the next level of environmental protection - and that smaller funding streams simply mean we have to be more creative quicker to find those approaches that yield more, not less, environmental protection.
Your approach, as evidenced by this Order - and this Administration's approach - is to pick the forward-looking second approach of rising up to meet these new challenges by transforming your facilities and using effective tools, such as EMS.
Adopting EMS means making changes, and those won't all happen smoothly. But we'll learn from those problems and move on.
And DOE's approach has even more challenges than some, as your program seeks integration of environmental, health and safety. The Order says the EMS must be part of your Integrated Safety Management Systems, which DOE sites began adopting over the last seven years.
The trend in the US and around the world is toward such integration of EH&S;, but the transition may not be easy - and many will be watching you to see how you do. Know that we're supportive and believe that this integration is the right approach.
To me, the most important benefit of an EMS is not compliance, or cost reduction, or risk avoidance, or any of those things I just listed. Those are important. Instead, the most important benefit of EMS is the unforeseeable and positive dynamic synergy that will flow from a team of people coming from throughout a facility or agency to work together on a shared vision. An EMS can bring them together - and then who knows what good they'll achieve once they're encouraged to work for the betterment of the facility and the agency.
You were invited to this Workshop because you are the people DOE is calling on to implement this important new order. We know you'll do a great job - and we expect you to do a great job - as you help ensure DOE continues to be a world leader in environmental, health, and safety stewardship. Good luck to you all as you work to make good on the promise of Order 450.1.
Thank you.
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