Measure Contains Provisions to Address Funding Issues at Portsmouth, WIPP
Mike Nartker
WC Monitor
9/12/2014
House lawmakers this week unveiled a stop-gap funding measure to continue to fund the federal government at the start of Fiscal Year 2015 beginning Oct. 1, but pushed back action on the bill until next week due a last-minute request from the White House for the inclusion of authorization to take action against ISIS in Iraq and Syria. The Continuing Resolution would fund most Department of Energy and National Nuclear Security Administration programs at annualized Fiscal Year 2014 levels through Dec. 11. The CR also includes provisions intended to help address funding needs at the Portsmouth D&D project and the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant.
The CR is necessary due to Congress’ failure to complete individual appropriations bills prior to the start of FY 2015, including the bill that funds DOE. Under the CR, DOE’s Office of Environmental Management would largely be funded at a total of approximately $5.830 billion on an annualized basis. That’s about $200 million more than EM’s budget request for next fiscal year, which is approximately $5.6 billion.
CR Impact on Planned Portsmouth Layoffs Unclear
The CR also includes language that appears intended to help address the looming threat of significant layoffs at the Portsmouth D&D project, though the exact impact remains unclear. Fluor-B&W Portsmouth, LLC, responsible for the D&D project, has estimated it is facing a $110 million budgetary shortfall heading into FY 2015, and as a result the contractor has announced plans to eliminate a total of 675 positions out of the Portsmouth D&D project’s current workforce of approximately 1,900 employees through a mix of voluntary separations and involuntary layoffs.
To help reduce the threat of layoffs, the Obama Administration had sought an “anomaly” for the CR to provide a rate of operations of $664.7 million in uranium enrichment D&D funding, which covers cleanup work at the Portsmouth site, as well as at Paducah and Oak Ridge. Uranium enrichment D&D funding at FY 2014 levels amounts to a total of $598.5 million.
The CR does not include the increased funding sought by the Obama Administration. Instead, the measure says that uranium enrichment D&D funding “may be apportioned up to the rate for operations necessary to avoid disruption of continuing projects or activities funded in this appropriation.” As a result, DOE would have the ability to spend more of the provided funding upfront during the CR at Portsmouth. DOE declined to comment on the CR this week, saying the measure had not yet been finalized by Congress.
CR Would Allow DOE to Increase Spend Rate at WIPP
Similar language is also in the CR concerning funding for WIPP. The Administration had also sought an $8 million anomaly in the CR to help assist recovery efforts now underway at the site following two incidents that occurred earlier this year that has resulted in an ongoing shutdown. The CR, though, includes language that would allow available cleanup funds to be “obligated at a rate for operations necessary to assure timely execution of activities necessary to restore and upgrade the repository.”
Explaining how the provisions regarding Portsmouth and WIPP are intended to work, a Congressional staffer told WC Monitor this week, “It gives them our policy objectives, what we want them to ensure does or does not happen during the period of the CR and it gives them the ability to make money available for it. We don’t give the programs any additional funding above FY 14—it’s just during the period of the CR they can make available more money than they would have if they’re sticking to the strict rate of operations that was applied for ’14.” The staffer added, “Essentially the way the CR works when you’re in the Administration is that the full account—even though it’s only a partial year CR—is made available by OMB [the White House Office of Management and Budget]. Then OMB does an allocation to the Department of a specific amount of money, but they have the whole year’s appropriations available to them.”
