The man who headed Environmental Protection Agency regulation of the Hanford nuclear site for more than eight years died Tuesday.
Dennis Faulk, the retired Hanford project manager for EPA in Richland, was 64.
He was being remembered Wednesday as a strong advocate of Hanford site cleanup, who made a lasting difference.
"He always tried to do the right thing — whether people were watching or not," said Susan Leckband, the chairperson of the Hanford Advisory Board much of the time that Faulk headed EPA's Hanford work.
The Washington State Patrol reported that Faulk was driving on Copalis Beach in Grays Harbor County in Washington Monday evening when his SUV entered a river access point. The car came to a stop when it began to flood with water and eventually became submerged in the surf.
Faulk was taken to a hospital in Aberdeen, where he died Tuesday morning.
He led the EPA office in Richland from 2009 to 2017.
EPA and the Washington state Department of Ecology both regulate work at the Hanford site adjacent to Richland in Eastern Washington where the federal government now is spending $3 billion annually on environmental cleanup.
The Hanford nuclear reservation is contaminated with radioactive and hazardous chemical waste from the past production of plutonium for the nation's nuclear weapons program from World War II through the Cold War.
"Dennis was a strong leader, knew the importance of the cleanup mission at Hanford and EPA's priorities for the cleanup," said Stephanie Schleif, Ecology's nuclear waste manager. "Dennis was very encouraging, welcoming and brought fun to the complex regulatory discussions we would have on the cleanup."
When he retired in 2009, Alex Smith, Ecology's nuclear waste program manager then, wrote to Faulk saying she was going to "miss your wise counsel, your straightforward, always-honest answers to even the most difficult questions, and your steadfast dedication to a safe, reasonable and thorough cleanup at Hanford."
Part of Faulk's legacy was his successful opposition to the Department of Energy's plan not to dig up waste burial grounds along the Columbia River at Hanford.
Instead, DOE wanted to put earthen caps over them to keep precipitation from driving contamination deeper into the ground.
Faulk argued that the long-term costs would be just as much or more than digging up the contamination.
His stand that thorough cleanup was needed was proved right when hundreds of pieces of highly radioactive, irradiated uranium fuel were discovered buried near the river, Smith said when Faulk retired.
John Price, Ecology's former Hanford Tri-Party Agreement section manager, said that work has been completed on all but one of the 50 radioactive sites that Faulk wanted excavated.
Faulk considered his work with the state and DOE to come up with the plan to clean up the 220-square-miles along the Columbia River a highlight of his career.
At his retirement, much of the work had been completed to remove hundreds of buildings, dig up buried waste, demolish research reactors near Richland and put most of the plutonium production reactors along the river in long-term storage while some of their radioactivity decays.
Smith also praised Faulk's role in the cleanup decision that led to the creation of the 200 West Pump and Treat Facility at Hanford, a sophisticated plant to clean multiple contaminants from contaminated groundwater in central Hanford.
He also was passionate about saving Hanford's historic B Reactor, which is now part of the Manhattan Project National Historical Park, in the days when DOE was saying it "was not in the museum business."
Faulk kept asking questions in his role as a regulator, which delayed a decision to start tearing down the outer parts of the reactor to cocoon it — or put its core in temporary storage — until Congress passed legislation for the national park.
His questions were good, but his goal was to delay proceedings until there was a decision to preserve the reactor, said Maynard Plahuta of the B Reactor Museum Association.
"He was a tireless advocate for preserving B Reactor as a museum," Price said. "He did everything he could as a regulator to support it becoming a museum."
Faulk also was among the officials who helped establish the Hanford Advisory Board.
Both sides of issues
Rick Bond, who represented the state Department of Ecology at Hanford Advisory Board meetings before he retired, said Faulk was good at seeing both sides of issues.
Dave Einan, the current manager of the EPA Hanford Project Office, called Faulk "a glass half full" type of person.
Smith praised Faulk for his guidance of new staff members, and Einan agreed that he worked to make sure new EPA employees were engaged and involved. He had a natural way of making sure everyone was working together, Einan said.
"He just really cared about people," Leckband said. She called him "a stand-up guy" and a "great family man."
Faulk was a graduate of Washington State University and an avid Cougar football fan, holding season football tickets since the '80s.
He was an agriculture teacher in Toppenish in 1985 when he took what he thought would be a three-month job at Hanford. He would join EPA six years later, bringing hands-on experience working at Hanford's N Reactor and the Plutonium Finishing Plant.
Faulk lived in Grandview, the town where he was born, and often spent winters in Texas.
He is survived by his wife, Vicki; daughter Alena Dunn of Minden, La., and son Zachary Faulk of Mesa, Wash.
Smith Funeral Home in Grandview is in charge of his memorial arrangements.
