House appropriators want to keep the Hanford Site’s budget flat in fiscal year 2023 and nixed the Joe Biden administration’s plan to increase the site’s liquid-waste budget at the expense of solid-waste programs, according to a bill up for debate in committee on Tuesday.
Overall, the bill proposes roughly the $7.9 billion requested for DOE’s Office of Environmental Management (EM) — about what the administration wound up seeking for nuclear-weapons cleanup. The request’s top line includes an extra $190 million or so the White House proposed for Hanford in June a couple months after releasing its initial budget proposal.
But according to the detailed bill report published ahead of Tuesday’s scheduled debate in the House Appropriations Committee, House lawmakers did not agree with the administration’s plan, engineered by Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), to use the extra money to increase the budget for Hanford’s Office of River Protection while cutting funding for the site’s Richland Office.
The House bill would keep funding for both sites flat year-to-year, providing about $1.65 billion for liquid waste cleanup at River Protection instead of the roughly $1.68 billion requested, and some $950 million for Richland instead of almost $925 million as requested, the bill report shows.
“The recommendation continues to fund a balanced approach that sustains the momentum of ongoing cleanup activities more consistently across all Department cleanup sites,” according to the Energy and Water subcommittee report on the bill.
Total Hanford funding would be almost $2.6 billion under the bill up for debate in the full Appropriations Committee. That’s roughly even with both the request and the 2022 appropriation approved in March. The debate was scheduled to stream on the committee’s website.
Editor’s note, 06/28/2022, 2:32 p.m. Eastern time: the story was changed to include the correct proposed appropriation for the Office of Environmental Management.
