The Energy Department’s Office of Environmental Management (EM) might have to wait to get the funding boost being considered on Capitol Hill, assuming an anticipated short-term budget measure becomes reality in the next few weeks.
Congress, returning to Washington on Tuesday after its August recess, has only a few weeks to pass some sort of spending measure to avoid a federal government shutdown when fiscal 2018 starts on Oct. 1. Various general national news outlets reported this week that lawmakers will cobble together a three-month placeholder spending bill to keep the lights on and provide some early relief to victims of Hurricane Harvey.
A continuing resolution would likely sustain the current funding level at DOE EM, which oversees cleanup of the department’s nuclear-weapon legacy. That could mean short-term belt tightening and perhaps some scheduling headaches for DOE and federal cleanup contractors.
The Energy Department requested $6.5 billion for fiscal 2018, a roughly 1 percent step up from its current funding level and the largest budget proposal in 10 years. In July, the House of Representatives approved $6.4 billion for the office, including $75 million to clean up facilities transferred from DOE’s semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration – the White House wanted $225 million. The Senate is still considering energy spending legislation that would give EM $6.6 billion, with $55 million for cleanup of facilities taken over from the NNSA.
Under a CR scenario, funding would be distributed in monthly increments rather than every three months, which could complicate some contract work. The new cleanup jobs on transferred NNSA plants would also presumably have to wait until a permanent budget is passed.
The funding situation could be even more noticeable at certain DOE cleanup and waste storage sites. For example: The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico, the nation’s sole permanent underground repository for transuranic waste, received $292.7 million in defense environmental cleanup funding for fiscal-year 2017.
The Energy Department asked for $317 million for WIPP in fiscal 2018. The House came through with $323 million, while the Senate Appropriations Committee passed a WIPP budget of roughly $320 million that is now awaiting approval from the full upper chamber. Any continuing resolution would use the $292.7 million figure as its starting point.
The White House request and draft appropriation bills include money to begin construction on a new ventilation system at WIPP in 2018. By the middle of next decade or so, this system would allow workers to tunnel out new waste-disposal space while also performing mine maintenance and routine disposals.
The Richland Operations Office, one of two offices that oversee remediation of the former plutonium production complex at Hanford in Washington state, received $839.8 million in defense environmental cleanup funding for fiscal 2017. The Trump administration request for next year is only $716 million.
The House passed a Richland budget with $837.6 million in defense environmental cleanup funding — some 0.26% less than fiscal 2017 level and almost 17% more than the administration request. Senate Appropriators passed a figure of $826.2 million, or 1.62% less than the fiscal enacted level.
