Spending plans that would ensure the Energy Department’s Office of Environmental Management (EM) will have somewhere in the neighborhood of $7 billion for cleanup of Cold War nuclear sites in fiscal 2019 continue to make their way through Congress.
On Friday morning, the House of Representatives approved its fiscal 2019 energy and water appropriations as part of a broader “minibus” spending package. The bill, which would provide $6.9 billion for EM, now goes to the Senate.
The Senate Appropriations Committee on May 24 passed its energy and water bill, which would provide $7.2 billion for the EM office. It awaits a floor vote. The 2018 budget includes $7 billion for EM.
The Senate’s latest National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) would allow the Department of Energy to spend $5.63 billion on defense environmental cleanup operations in fiscal 2019. That matches the department’s request for the budget year beginning Oct. 1, but it is $50 million lower than the level authorized in the House NDAA.
The Senate measure was released on Wednesday, a week after it was advanced by the upper chamber’s Armed Services Committee. The Senate adjourned for the week Thursday without passing the defense policy bill. A floor vote could happen early next week.
Defense nuclear nonproliferation is the largest funding tranche for the Office of Environmental Management, which oversees remediation of legacy nuclear-weapons activities at 16 sites around the nation. The department also receives funds for non-defense environmental cleanup and for remediation at three former uranium enrichment sites through the Uranium Enrichment Decontamination and Decommissioning Fund. Those are not covered by NDAAs.
The Senate NDAA wants Energy Secretary Rick Perry to have the National Academy of Science to evaluate cleanup efforts within the Office of Environmental Management.
At the Hanford Site in Washington state, the NDAA would authorize $1.4 billion in defense environmental cleanup funds for the Office of River Protection, which oversees management of radioactive tank waste, and $658.2 million for the Richland Operations Office, which is charged with remaining cleanup operations. The House NDAA would allow for $708 million in spending on the Richland Operations Office while meeting DOE’s $1.4 billion request for the Office of River Protection.
The NDAAs provide direction, but not actual funding, for congressional appropriations committees that set actual defense spending levels.
The Senate energy and water development budget would in total provide $1.573 billion for the Hanford Office of River Protection, while the Richland Operations Office would receive $838.17 million. The House bill would set the offices’ respective spending levels at $1.48 billion and $863 million, covering both defense and non-defense environmental cleanup.
Among other major cleanup sites, the House and Senate NDAAs put defense environmental cleanup spending at the Oak Ridge Reservation in Tennessee at $226.2 million; the Savannah River Site in South Carolina would be authorized for up to nearly $1.5 billion; and the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant would get about $397 million.
The House and Senate Appropriations bills would both fund WIPP at the same $397 million level. The Savannah River Site would receive $1.4 billion in the Senate Appropriations bill, slightly above the $1.38 billion included in the House legislation.
The House version of the NDAA would require the assistant secretary of energy for environmental management to promptly inform congressional defense committees of any contamination leak resulting from defense waste at the Hanford Site. The committees would have to be notified within two days and briefed within seven days of the event.
While the House NDAA authorizes $30 million for defense nuclear waste disposal, covering interim storage and the planned Yucca Mountain repository in Nevada, the Senate measure allows for no such spending. That is in line with the two chambers’ divide over Yucca Mountain: The House energy and water funding bill for fiscal 2019 provides for nearly $270 million at DOE and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to resume licensing of the repository, while the Senate version zeroes out all Yucca funding.
