Jeremy L. Dillon
RW Monitor
11/6/2015
As congressional lawmakers negotiate toward a final fiscal 2016 spending bill, a newly formed lobbying group has already set its sights on the fiscal 2017 budget allocation for the Army Corps of Engineers’ Formerly Utilized Sites Remedial Action Program. The FUSRAP Coalition, made up of members of industry, local government, and federal agencies, is lobbying to raise the FUSRAP yearly budget to $150 million from its average annual total of about $100 million in recent years.
“At $100 million per year, cleanup progress at the FUSRAP sites will be painfully slow,” the coalition said in a white paper outlining its reasoning. “An increase of $50 million per year will significantly accelerate cleanup, reduce risk to people and the environment, and save lifecycle costs for the U.S. taxpayer. Congress should fund the FUSRAP cleanup program at $150 million per year.”
The Army Corps of Engineers manages 24 active cleanup sites across 10 states, with many of those locations having different operable areas within the larger site. While the program conducted mostly preliminary planning efforts in recent years, FUSRAP is preparing to gear up for major remediation efforts across its cleanup complex. The Corps earlier this summer awarded the $100 million Luckey remediation project in Ohio to Portage, although that remains under protest, while it expects to initiate procurement for the Shallow Land Disposal Area (SLDA) in Armstrong County, Pa., anticipated to cost $350 million, by the end of the year.
The program also anticipates launching major remediation efforts at the Harshaw, Seaway, and Niagara Falls Storage sites in New York in the coming years, in addition to the ongoing Maywood cleanup in New Jersey.
“In additional to some of these ramping up to the remedial phase, the FUSRAP program has actually added additional sites,” said Andy Lombardo, senior vice president for Perma-Fix and a founding member of the FUSRAP Coalition. “There is a lot on the plate for FUSRAP work for the Army Corp of Engineers.”
The Corps is requesting $104 million for FUSRAP in fiscal 2016. That request would mark a $2.5 million increase from the program’s total current funding level of $101.5 million, and a $4 million increase from the Corps’ fiscal 2015 budget request for FUSRAP. The major active sites, including SLDA and Maywood, would receive the largest funding amounts in fiscal 2016 under the budget request, but some lawmakers, like Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y), have pledged to fight for additional funding for their sites. According to the coalition’s white paper, funding was relatively level between $130 million and $140 million from 1997 to 2009, but in the past five years has dropped to between $100 million and $105 million.
In an effort to increase that total budget allocation, the FUSRAP Coalition has begun reaching out to decision-makers in Washington, D.C.
“We are advocating through traditional lobbying measures, trying to bear pressure from constituents out at the sites and in the districts who have concerns that these public risks could be adequately addressed,” said Sean Todd, president of Fox Potomac Resources and another founding member of the coalition. “We have had meetings on the Hill and in the administration to share our points of view and to make the case on the merits of funding these cleanups. The message has been well-received.”
In a statement USACE FUSRAP National Program Manager Nicki Fatherly said “We appreciate the support and confidence that our stakeholders have shown in our program. Our goal is to ensure that we continue making progress on cleaning up the sites through the effective and efficient use of the FUSRAP funding we receive annually.” Additional funding could be used to expedite completion of current cleanup operations and studies or to begin remediation projects or studies that do not yet have funding, according to Fatherly. “Those decisions would be made as part of the annual budget and appropriations process based on available FUSRAP funding and most efficient execution of the program.”
The concern with raising the total allocation, though, is where the Corps directs the additional funding — to just the major cleanups like SLDA or throughout the complex in a more equitable manner. The coalition, though, did not share those fears, instead invoking the “rising tide lifts all boats” philosophy.
“The one thing I’ve seen from the Corps management of FUSRAP is that they sure do get a lot done with the resources they get,” said Gene Blake, senior vice president for AMEC Foster Wheeler and also a founding member of the coalition. “If you look at how the budget is laid and managed, they are getting tremendous bang for their buck. The program has been effective even in a diminishing funding arena. Obviously, when you have so many sites active, and they have a lot of site active, where you spend the money is where the biggest public safety impacts are. But they really spread the money pretty well.”
Even a slight raise would help FUSRAP devote resources to better demonstrating the cost of slowing the pace of cleanup, Todd said.
“There has never been a life-cycle cost estimate done for FUSRAP. They don’t have the resources to do that,” he said. “That is why FUSRAP needs more money to do even some basic analysis of a life-cycle estimate. $150 million is the target for FY17, whether we get there or not remains to be seen. Even $125 million would do a lot of large, incremental benefit to the program.”
