Director of Moab disposal is tireless stickler for details

MOAB — The governor, other state leaders and the hoopla have left this red-rock country in southeastern Utah, but the work is just beginning for Donald Metzler, the Department of Energy project director for the Moab tailings site.

He's up the to the task, having worked on 25 other tailings sites across the country, traveling to Germany 18 times to offer assistance there and carrying out his duties with a fervor hard to surpass.

"It is my passion," Metzler said. "And a lot of that passion and intensity, no matter how hard I try to turn that dial down, it is hard for me."

That's a feat for someone who has been enmeshed in the cleanup of abandoned mill tailing sites for 21 years, starting out first as a field geologist, one of the lowest positions on a tailings remediation project.

Now, like a conductor, he directs the efforts of more than 150 people at the Moab tailings project and Crescent Junction Disposal Site, and 25 more at the Department of Energy's office in Grand Junction, Colo., where he makes his home.

The goal is overwhelmingly simple on its face — the removal of 16 million tons of mining waste — but deceptively complex because of the risk to workers and the community due to the waste's radioactive nature.

"I'd rather be faulted for over-communicating than under-communicating, and that makes a person a bit of a hard charger," he says. "That is what the taxpayer wants; they want a hard charger as a manager but one who slows down enough to listen to his team."

Metzler knows not to take anything for granted, and he's a self-admitted stickler for details — down to the tiniest — at the $1 billion project.

"We know that the radioactivity and especially the air monitoring are really important to the community," he said. "We have to be vigilant in our communications. If there is one exceedance of any of our monitors, they are notified that same day; same with groundwater."

Metzler said it's the very least people should expect given the project's immense nature, which has a cleanup timeline of 2025 that he hopes to whittle down to 2019.

It's no small undertaking. On Wednesday, the project hit its daily hauling goal of 88 containers of waste by rail to the Crescent Junction Disposal Site 30 miles to the north.

That is 88 containers that are loaded, unloaded and then returned by rail to Moab for the same trip the next day. When $108 million of stimulus funding for the project kicks in this summer, the operation will ramp up to include 136 containers.

There's been no time lost to accidents so far, and Metzler knows he's not only taken on the responsibility for the workers' safety, but that a community is watching.