The House Armed Services Committee on Thursday proposed a nearly $5.6 billion cap on defense environmental remediation spending at the Department of Energy for fiscal 2020, about $400 less than recommended by the lower chamber’s Appropriations Committee.
The National Defense Authorization Act sets policy and annual spending limits for the largest funding tranche of legacy nuclear cleanup managed by DOE’s Office of Environmental Management. The actual funding comes via the appropriations process.
The House Armed Services NDAA authorizes a little more than $6.6 billion for environmental and other defense activities, up incrementally from the over $6.5 billion request from the Donald Trump administration for the budget year beginning Oct. 1.
On the defense cleanup funding front, the House Armed Services authorization is a slight bump up from the White House request of just over $5.5 billion but well below the nearly $6 billion called for in the energy and water funding bill from the House Appropriations Committee.
The full House this week debated the multi-agency “minibus” appropriations legislation that includes the energy bill. Debate is scheduled to resume Tuesday.
The NDAA passed the House committee on a mostly partisan vote of 33-24 after about 18 hours of debate on nuclear weapons policy and other issues. The yearly defense policy bill now heads to the House floor.
Here are a few details on the defense environmental cleanup funds proposed in the House committee’s NDAA.
At the Hanford Site in Washington State, the largest and most expensive cleanup job managed by DOE, House Armed Services authorized $679 million for the Richland Operations Office. That is more than the $629 million requested by the Trump administration for the office that oversees most environmental remediation operations at Hanford, The House NDAA calls for $1.42 billion for the Hanford Office of River Protection, which manages the site’s radioactive waste storage, up from the $1.39 billion sought by the administration.
At the Savannah River Site, the House NDAA authorization would match the administration’s proposed $1.46 billion in defense environmental funding.
The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in New Mexico could receive about $392 million under the House Armed Services NDAA, equal to the administration’s request.
The NDAA does not address the other, smaller budget line items for DOE’s Office of Environmental Management: non-defense environmental cleanup and the Uranium Enrichment Decontamination and Decommissioning (UED&D) Fund applied to three cleanup sites.
The House Appropriation Committee in total proposed almost $7.2 billion for the Office of Environmental Management in fiscal 2020, roughly flat with the current enacted level and well above the $6.5 billion administration request. Along with the defense cleanup funding, the committee recommended $308 million for non-defense cleanup, just below the 2019 enacted level and well above the $248 million request. The panel’s figure for the Uranium Enrichment Decontamination and Decommissions Fund is about $874 million, up from the current $841 million and the $715 million administration request for fiscal 2020.
In a statement of policy this week, the White House decried the over $700 million funding increase for DOE Environmental Management in laying out its opposition to H.R. 2740, the minibus that would fund the agency in 2020.
“The Administration opposes the $706 million increase, $487 million of which is defense funding, for the Environmental Management program. The bill allocates more than half of this increase to the Hanford site in Washington State, where the Department’s Inspector General recently compiled concerns regarding mismanagement, weak internal controls, and fraud,” according to the statement. “The Administration urges the Congress to reallocate these funds to higher national security priorities.”
The Senate Armed Services Committee this week made public its approved version of the fiscal 2020 NDAA. Like the White House, it would put defense environmental spending at $5.5 billion. Its line item for environmental and other defense activities is essentially flat with the White House’s $6.5 billion request.
The Senate committee actually approved the bill in May, several weeks before it was released. The full chamber could take up the NDAA as early as next week. There was no immediate schedule for House floor debate on its version of the bill.
The Senate legislation would authorize the White House’s proposed $629 million in defense environmental cleanup funding for the Hanford Richland Operations Office and mirrors the administration’s proposed $1.39 billion for the Office of River Protection.
The Senate NDAA mark also requires the Energy Department to issue an annual report updating the cost of meeting environmental milestones required by any legal settlements at every nuclear facility.
