A group of House lawmakers from states with legacy nuclear cleanup sites overseen by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers dusted off their annual plea for more program funding with a request for $150 million to the leaders of the House budget panel that writes the first drafts of the federal government’s annual energy and water spending bill.
“As you develop the Fiscal Year 2018 Energy and Water Appropriations bill, we respectfully request that you restore funding for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Formerly Utilized Sites Remedial Action Program (FUSRAP) to its historical level of $150 million,” a bipartisan group of eight lawmakers wrote in an April 4 letter on congressional stationery to Reps. Mike Simpson (R-Idaho) and Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio), the chairman and ranking member of the House Appropriations energy and water subcommittee.
The letter was signed by Reps. William Lacy Clay (D-Mo.), Chris Collins (R-N.Y.), Marcia Fudge (D-Ohio), Brian Higgins (D-N.Y.), Mike Kelly (R-Pa.), Frank LoBiondo (R-N.J.), C.A. “Dutch” Ruppersberger (D-Md.), and Paul Tonko (D-N.Y.).
The letter, and the funding requested in it, is similar to a missive most of those lawmakers sent Simpson and Kaptur last year. That plea did not avail them, when the appropriations energy and water subcommittee sent a bill to the floor that met the Obama administration’s fiscal 2017 request for about $100 million in FUSRAP funding.
FUSRAP cleans up sites contaminated by weapons and civilian energy programs run by the Manhattan Engineer District and Atomic Energy Commission from the 1940s to the 1960s. The commission was one of the predecessor agencies to the Energy Department, which retains responsibility for managing FUSRAP sites after they are cleaned up.
