The House Appropriations Committee appears ready to reject the Trump administration’s request to transfer a nuclear cleanup program from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to the Department of Energy.
In its spending legislation for fiscal 2020, released Tuesday, the panel’s energy and water development subcommittee proposed $155 million for the Formerly Utilized Sites Remedial Action Program (FUSRAP) – and kept it firmly under the line item for the Army Corps.
A spokesman for energy and water development subcommittee Chair Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio) confirmed the decision, but did not discuss the thinking behind it. The topic did not come up during the panel’s brief markup of the bill Wednesday. After 30 minutes, House appropriators reported the legislation for further review by the parent committee.
More detail could be included in the subcommittee report for the spending legislation, which will be released at least 24 hours before the full panel’s markup Tuesday morning.
FUSRAP identifies, evaluates, and remediates sites that were radioactively contaminated from the 1940s to 1960s by nuclear-weapon and energy operations of the Manhattan Engineer District and Atomic Energy Commission. Congress previously shifted the program from DOE to the Army Corps in a 1998 spending bill.
In the fiscal 2020 budget plan issued in March, the White House requested that the program receive $141 million under management of DOE’s Office of Legacy Management. That would be down from the current appropriation of $150 million.
The Energy Department already manages separate cleanup of 16 radioactively contaminated nuclear sites through its Office of Environmental Management. In March, the agency said “Consolidating cleanup programs under a single agency will allow DOE to consider the full range of cleanup responsibilities in prioritizing work each fiscal year.” While DOE would be the program manager under the proposal, the Army Corps would continue to handle operations on-site on a “reimbursable basis.”
Legacy Management is charged with monitoring and maintaining DOE properties where environmental remediation has been completed. It provides the same service for cleaned-up FUSRAP sites, along with determining which locations are eligible for remediation.
There are 23 active FUSRAP sites in 10 states, according to the Army Corps’ 2018 update on the program.
In total, the $46.4 billion House bill would provide $37.1 billion for the Energy Department and $7.36 billion for the Army Corps for harbor maintenance, construction, and other programs. Those numbers are, respectively, $5.6 billion and $2.53 billion above the White House proposal for the agencies.
The Senate Appropriations Committee has not yet released its energy and water bill for fiscal 2020 or indicated which way it would lean on the FUSRAP transfer.
The proposed program transfer has not garnered much attention in recent congressional hearings on the latest Energy Department and Army Corps budget plans.
However, in a March hearing, House Appropriations energy and water subcommittee Ranking Member Mike Simpson (R-Idaho) called the proposal “bizarre.”
“I haven’t had any complaints about how the program is being run now, how the Army Corps of Engineers is running it. My Dad said when something isn’t broken don’t try to fix it,” Simpson told R.D. James, assistant Army secretary for civil works. James indicated the Energy Department had pressed to reclaim the program.
