The Energy Communities Alliance got some good news last month when the omnibus budget for fiscal 2018 kept in place existing Payment in Lieu of Taxes (PILT) agreements, ECA Director of Nuclear Energy Programs Kara Colton said Monday.
The budget does call for a report on how the Energy Department formulates PILT payments to communities near its facilities, to compensate for the loss of property taxes not paid for federal lands. House Appropriations energy and water subcommittee Chairman Mike Simpson (R-Idaho) had sought such a report to calculate how DOE will divvy up any PILT money. The lawmaker had previously expressed interest in a full overhaul of the PILT program.
The 2018 omnibus bill will fully fund the PILT program at an estimated $530 million, a $65 million increase over 2017 funding levels. It was not clear if the figure is specific to DOE.
Many local governments adjoining DOE cleanup sites rely upon these payments from the Energy Department to help fund local schools, ECA Executive Director Seth Kirshenberg said in opening remarks during the organization’s annual conference April 12 in Washington, D.C. Unfortunately, these payments are sometimes late due to continuing resolutions on the federal budget, he added.
PILT is a big deal for localities, Oak Ridge, Tenn., City Manager Mark Watson, said at the ECA gathering. The city of 27,000 adjoins the DOE Oak Ridge Site and the National Nuclear Security Administration’s Y-12 National Security Complex.
During the state of Tennessee’s 2017-2018 fiscal year the city received about $1.7 million in PILT money from DOE. That doesn’t include payments to two counties that border the federal complex, Watson said by phone Friday.
PILT and the manner in which the Energy Department defines high-level waste were top topics of conversation at the ECA gathering.
Waste definition is an ongoing concern for local communities, said Rick McLeod, president and CEO of the Savannah River Site Community Reuse Organization. During his presentation, McLeod said DOE missed a February deadline under the National Defense Authorization Act to issue a report on waste characterization.
Colton hopes the report might be issued soon now that Anne Marie White has been sworn in as assistant secretary of energy for environmental management. In a September report, ECA urged the Energy Department to consider defining waste more by its radiological composition and less by its source of origin.
Many of the containers of waste now stored at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina, which are classified as high-level, might well be determined to be transuranic waste if radiological components were the chief factor, McLeod said. Because there is no national repository for high-level waste, this waste has no permanent path to disposal. Meanwhile, transuranic waste can be shipped to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico.
Water, Security, Employment Bind Interests of DOE and Localities
Whether it’s law enforcement, water lines, or hiring practices, the Energy Department and its cleanup contractors are intertwined with their host communities in many ways, ECA speakers said.
Oak Ridge City Manager Watson once received a permit request to set up a landing strip for model airplanes. However, Watson informed the applicant the site would be located too close to the Y-12 Complex.
Typically, such a request comes across the city manager’s desk. It is handled locally and “doesn’t reach the folks inside the fence” at the Oak Ridge Reservation and Y-12, Watson said.
The city and the DOE site deal with each other on dozens of issues, Watson said, such as potential radio communication between local police and Oak Ridge Site security.
Likewise, when DOE launches a major construction project inside the fence, it will connect with the city’s old, leak-prone water system. “You’re going to have the most advanced nuclear processing facility in the world hooked to a 75-year-old soda straw,” Watson said, alluding to the Uranium Processing Facility.
The Energy Department, its contractors, and the host communities also must also cooperate to attract young workers into the nuclear cleanup field, said McLeod said. The group works on nuclear issues within a five-county area in Georgia and South Carolina near the DOE facility.
With Southern Co. building two new nuclear reactors at the Vogtle complex in Waynesboro, Ga., SRS and its contractors have significant competition for nuclear workers in the region, McLeod noted. Local job applicants want a clearer idea of how to seek employment inside the fence, the two speakers said.
