As part of the omnibus spending package signed Dec. 27 by President Donald Trump, the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management will receive almost $7.6 billion for fiscal 2021, which is $131 million above its funding level for the 2020 budget year that ended Sept. 30, 2020.
It is also about 22% more than the $6.17 billion which the Trump administration requested in February 2020. The DOE and other federal agencies have stayed open since Oct. 1 thanks to a series of short-term continuing resolutions that kept funding at fiscal 2020 levels.
The Hanford Site in Washington state is having the combined funding of the Richland Operations Office, $926 million, and the Office of River Protection, $1.65 billion, increased almost 2% from the 2020 enacted budget. The White House proposed far less, a combined total of $1.81 billion for the two offices.
Elsewhere, nuclear cleanup at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina is funded at $1.53 billion, nearly $76 million or 5% more than the 2020 level due largely to a $90 million increase in liquid waste stabilization and disposition.
The Oak Ridge Site in Tennessee’s cleanup spending is increasing from $450 million to $475 million under the 2021 spending plan that includes more than $22 million toward construction of a new on-site waste disposal facility.
Funding for the Idaho National Laboratory remains unchanged from the $433.5 million in fiscal 2020.
Funding is increased by $16 million, to $413 million in fiscal 2021, for the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico. Elsewhere in New Mexico, the Los Alamos National Laboratory cleanup funding is up $6 million to $226 million in the current fiscal year.
The environmental budget for the Nevada National Security Site remains flat with the 2020 level of $60.7 million.
The amount of money set aside for decontaminating and decommissioning excess facilities at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California drops from $65 million to $35 million.
Funding for the West Valley Demonstration Project in New York rises from $75 million in 2020 to $88 million in fiscal 2021.
The omnibus bill allows more than $6.42 billion for defense environmental cleanup, up from $6.25 billion in fiscal 2020. This accounts for the bulk of the DOE Environmental Management budget. Non-defense environmental spending is flat with the prior year’s level of $319 million. The Uranium Enrichment Decontamination and Decommission fund is $841 million for the fiscal year, $40 million less than the 2020 level.
