I am writing today to announce the closure of the New Mexico Independent. After three and a half years of operation in New Mexico, the board of the American Independent News Network, has decided to shift publication of its news…
While environmental activists played their part yesterday during demonstrations at the capitol building, going so far as to dress up as solar panels and to sing the tune of “You Are My Sunshine,” their counterparts, the anti-cap-and-trade contingency who has…
Roughly one quarter of University of New Mexico students are unimpressed with the state’s flagship public school, according to a survey that questioned college students about their higher education experiences.
Despite the fact that Inés R. Triay supported George W. Bush in 2004, Barack Obama chose her to stay on as assistant secretary for the Office of Environmental Management (OEM).
And AllGov gave a rundown on just who Triay is, from her “her post-doctoral studies in the Isotope and Nuclear Chemistry Division at Los Alamos National Laboratory” to her time working in 1999 as the manager of the Energy Department’s Carlsbad field office in New Mexico under Bill Richardson — who was at the time the Secretary of Energy.
In that position, Triay was responsible for the waste isolation pilot plant, or WIPP. The facility is essentially a landfill for certain types of nuclear waste material. AllGov tells us more:
However, in October 2003, it was revealed that 98 drums of nuclear waste arriving at the WIPP had not been properly inspected. Later that month Triay announced her resignation from the department and said that she would start her own company “in the area of homeland security,” In fact, she did not actually leave until January 2004, by which time no company had been started and instead she was in Washington, DC, working for OEM as deputy chief operations officer. She was later promoted to chief operations officer in 2005. During her tenure in these positions, OEM completed the cleanup of the Rocky Flats nuclear weapons site in Colorado and the Fernald uranium processing plant in Ohio. She also played an instrumental role in the commencement of remote-handled transuranic waste disposal operations at the WIPP in New Mexico.
Triay has been in her current position since November 2008.
Between 2001 to 2005, Triay gave a total of $3,500 to George W. Bush and Pete Domenici, according to OpenSecrets.org.
