On Monday, two more members of Ohio’s congressional delegation asked high-ranking appropriators to ensure cleanup work at the former Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant near Piketon, Ohio, is not interrupted because of the short-term spending bill slowly working its way across the Hill.
The Senate is working this week on a so-called continuing resolution that will extend current fiscal 2016 funding levels for federal agencies, including the Energy Department, to Dec. 9. That means projects slated for increases under the White House’s 2017 budget request will either have to cut back on work, or have money transferred to them from elsewhere in the budget.
Reps. Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio) and Bill Johnson (R-Ohio) appeared, in a letter dated Sept. 19 and delivered on Wenstrup’s stationary to the leadership of the House Appropriations Committee and its energy and water subcommittee, asked that Portsmouth receive sufficient funding to prevent any work stoppages or layoffs — a prospect the project has faced in previous budgets.
“[W]e want to ensure that a short-term [continuing resolution] does not have negative long-term consequences for the workers at Portsmouth and the Piketon community,” the lawmakers said in the letter, which Wenstrup posted on his website.
Earlier in September, Sens. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) and Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) made a similar plea for Portsmouth funding in a letter to the leadership of the Senate Appropriations Committee and its energy and water subcommittee.
Portsmouth was slated for a funding increase in the fiscal 2017 budget request the White House delivered to Capitol Hill in February. The Obama administration requested about $255 million for the budget year beginning Oct. 1: a 14 percent boost above the current appropriation. In appropriations debate this spring, lawmakers went beyond that, with the Senate approving almost $265 million for Portsmouth and the House approving more than $270 million.
The increases would pay, among other things, for construction of an on-site waste disposal facility needed to store debris generated by planned decontamination and decommissioning of the former uranium enrichment infrastructure at the Pike County site.
The Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant, which enriched uranium for the Pentagon’s nuclear weapons during the Cold War, and for commercial power plants, is being decontaminated and decommissioned by Fluor-BWXT Portsmouth under a contract awarded in 2011 and worth up to $2.6 billion over 10 years, including options.
