Ed Aromi, the president of the Hanford contractor in charge of the nuclear reservation's tank farms, has taken another job within the CH2M Hill corporation.

Mark Spears will replace him as president of CH2M Hill Hanford Group.

Aromi will take a new job as senior vice president for strategic business development, serving as CH2M Hill's corporate representative and working to expand the corporation's nuclear activities related to the Hanford nuclear reservation.

Aromi will continue to be based in the Tri-Cities, where he holds several community leadership positions, including immediate past chairman of the Tri-Cities Visitor and Convention Bureau and vice chairman of commerce and industry for the Tri-City Industrial Development Council.

Spears joined CH2M Hill in May after working for Kaiser Hill as chief operating officer at the Rocky Flats, Colo., nuclear site and leaving there as cleanup was being completed.

He came to Hanford as senior vice president of nuclear operations technical services. When Dale Allen, deputy general manager of CH2M Hill Hanford Group, retired this fall, Spears was promoted to chief operating officer with responsibility for nuclear operations and supporting organizations.

Aromi joined CH2M Hill Hanford Group in 2001 as chief operating officer and was named president in 2002. He saw work at the tank farms through a difficult period as workers questioned the safety of breathing vapors released in the air from huge underground tanks holding radioactive and hazardous chemical waste. State and national studies confirmed that worker safety could not be assured.

CH2M Hill responded by requiring supplied-air respirators be worn around tanks that vented into the air, making engineering changes and launching studies to find out more about the vapors and their effects on worker health.

Aromi also led CH2M Hill during a time of some unprecedented accomplishments at the tank farms. The last of 149 leak-prone single shell tanks were emptied of liquids, and work began to empty the remaining sludge and salt in those tanks. The first three of the tanks have been emptied and work is under way on four more.

Spears will face significant challenges on the technically complex project.

DOE is concerned about missing a legal deadline to have all 16 underground tanks in an area called C Farm emptied by a legal deadline of Sept. 2006.

Construction also has been temporarily stopped on a pilot plant meant to test bulk vitrification as a way to treat some of the low-activity waste in the tanks, which will likely lead to a missed legal deadline