Name: Nicholas Lombardo

Age: 49

Home: Lake Valley neighborhood, north of Boulder

Job: President and co-owner of S.M. Stoller, an environmental cleanup and restoration company in Lafayette

Recent distinction: Earlier this spring, the U.S. Department of Energy picked Stoller to become its new prime contractor at the Grand Junction project office. Under the contract, worth more than $128 million for three years, Stoller will manage the cleanup of old uranium mine sites and tailing dumps throughout the West. The sites are radioactively contaminated.

How do you clean them up? "Generally, in some type of landfill or pit, or with some type of cap," Lombardo said.

He and his colleagues will be dealing with one particularly controversial site, the Atlas uranium mill, which lies along the edge of the Colorado River near Moab, Utah. Lombardo said the government has talked about moving the site 10 to 15 miles away, so it won't continue to threaten water quality.

Uranium can move through water, he said, but engineers can prevent that movement by putting in thick polyethylene or clay barriers. "There's a tremendous amount of effort taken to minimize percolation to groundwater."

Why is your work important? "We are cleaning up and dealing with a lot of residual contamination from the Cold War era," Lombardo said. "Much of the regulatory programs that drive these cleanup actions are based on ... risk both to human health and the environment."

His company does other important work, he said: Stoller ecologists are studying elk and other wildlife on a Department of Energy facility in Idaho; engineers are characterizing waste headed to a nuclear waste dump in southern New Mexico, and scientists have just begun to do geological research at Yucca Mountain, Nevada, identified by the federal government as a likely burial spot for spent fuel rods from the nation's nuclear power plants.

So you are involved in controversial projects? "We certainly are aware of the political controversy, but we have not gotten caught up in it," Lombardo said.

What do you do when you're not at work? "I climb mountains," he said. "I climbed Kilimanjaro (in Tanzania) last year, and almost summitted Aconcagua (Argentina) two years ago. I ran out of daylight."

He also flies planes and gliders, rides a Harley Davidson motorcycle and river rafts. Lombardo's 22-year-old daughter and 2-year old grandson live in Broomfield.

— Katy Human

May 19, 2002

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