The House Appropriations Committee on Tuesday affirmed a plan to keep Energy Department Office of Environmental Management funding at about $7.2 billion for fiscal 2020.
The funding is included in the energy and water development appropriations legislation for the budget year starting Oct. 1, which the committee reported to the full House. The measure would sustain the enacted appropriation for the current fiscal 2019 for the DOE nuclear cleanup office, rather than the $6.5 billion requested by the White House in March.
The bill passed 31 to 21, essentially along party lines. Committee Chair Nita Lowey (D-N.Y.) expects the full House to vote on the measure in June. At deadline, House leadership had not scheduled a Rules Committee markup to govern floor debate of the $46.4 billion bill.
The Office of Management and Budget, however, complained the plus-up in environmental remediation spending comes at the expense of DOE nuclear weapons programs.
Much of the increase to the Environmental Management office, some $400 million in total, would be directed to the Richland Operations Office and the Office of River Protection at the Hanford Site in Washington state. Provided the measure becomes law, the two DOE field offices would together receive about $2.4 billion, compared to just over $2 billion in the budget request.
The committee also approved a “manager’s amendment” from Appropriations energy and water subcommittee Chair Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio) that made several bipartisan tweaks to the bill.
The manager’s amendment reminds DOE of its authority to transfer “excess personal property and equipment” to community reuse organizations that promote economic development near DOE sites such as Hanford, Paducah in Kentucky, Portsmouth in Ohio, and Savannah River in South Carolina, Rep. Dan Newhouse (R-Wash.) said.
Elsewhere, the bill provides:
- About $424 million for environmental work at the Idaho National Laboratory, down from $433 million in the current fiscal year but up from the $335 million sought in the budget request.
- The Oak Ridge Site in Tennessee would receive $368 million, less than the $410 million in the current year but more than the $293 million in the administration request.
- For the Savannah River Site in South Carolina, the bill provides about $1.43 billion, up from $1.39 billion in fiscal 2019 but less than the $1.46 billion in the administration request.
- The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in New Mexico would receive $397 million in the new fiscal year, level to the 2019 enacted budget, and more than the $392 million administration request. In line with the budget request, the bill plans $58 million for continued construction of an underground ventilation system and about $35 million for an underground exhaust shaft.
- Legacy cleanup operations at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico are funded at $220 million, same as a year ago, and more than the $195 million budget request.
- The Nevada National Security Site would receive nearly $61 million for environmental management, virtually flat with both fiscal 2019 and the budget request.
Overall, the defense environmental cleanup line item receives almost $6 billion, essentially flat with fiscal 2019 but above the $5.5 billion sought by the administration. Non-defense environmental cleanup would be set at $308 million, compared to $310 in fiscal 2019 and the $248 million in budget request. The latter category includes money to restore sites used for civilian purposes such as nuclear energy research.
The bill includes about $874 million for the Uranium Enrichment Decontamination and Decommissioning Fund, compared to $841 million in fiscal 2019 and $715 million in the budget request. The fund pays for remediation at DOE’s former gaseous diffusion plant sites in Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessee.
White House Irked at How House Panel Divvied Up Weapons, Cleanup Money
The Trump administration lashed out at House appropriators for proposing to spend additional money for nuclear cleanup even while cutting funding for DOE nuclear weapons programs.
While House Appropriations increased nuclear cleanup by $700 million, it shaved the budget request for DOE’s semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration’s (NNSA) by $600 million. The White House blasted the cut to NNSA’s portfolio of active nuclear weapons and nonproliferation programs.
“[T]he bill shifts resources to Environmental Management and reduces funding for nuclear security activities, which jeopardizes critical investments to modernize the nuclear weapons enterprise to strengthen national security,” Russell Vought, acting director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, wrote in a Monday letter to Lowey.
Many Republican members of the committee also complained about the nuclear-weapon spending cut in the bill.
If approved without major changes to nuclear weapons funding in the House, where Democrats hold a majority, the bill would still have to clear the GOP-controlled Senate. Republicans in that chamber last year gave the NNSA all $15-plus billion the White House requested.
ExchangeMonitor Reporter Dan Leone contributed to this article.
