House Appropriations Committee Chair Nita Lowey (D-N.Y.) on Thursday said she would retire from Congress rather than seeking re-election in 2020.
“I am honored that my colleagues in Congress elected me as the first Chairwoman of the House Appropriations Committee and will fight vigorously for House Democratic priorities as I negotiate spending bills for fiscal years 2020 and 2021,” Lowey said in a statement.
Lowey joined Congress in 1989, and became ranking member of the House Appropriations Committee in 2013. She was elevated to the chairmanship in January after Democrats won the House majority in the November 2018 midterm elections.
One of Lowey’s peers thanked her for reversing the House’s prior support for the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository in Nevada.
“I am especially grateful to Chairwoman Lowey for her leadership in blocking the dangerous efforts to revitalize Yucca Mountain – and I look forward to working with her eventual successor to do the same,” Rep. Dina Titus (D-Nev.) tweeted on Thursday.
Under the previous Republican majority, the House Appropriations Committee and then full chamber supported the Trump administration’s requests for funding to end the nearly decade-long freeze on licensing for the disposal site at the Department of Energy and Nuclear Regulatory Commission. For the just-ended fiscal 2019, the House actually added $100 million to the White House request. In the end, though, the funding was zeroed out in the face of continued Senate opposition to Yucca Mountain.
For fiscal 2020, which began Oct. 1, House and Senate appropriators both blanked the administration’s latest request for roughly $150 million in Yucca Mountain licensing funding.
In passing its energy and water appropriations spending plan in June, covering DOE and the NRC, the House instead proposed $47.5 million for “integrated management” of U.S. radioactive waste. Just over half of that would be for advancing consolidated interim storage of the nation’s spent nuclear power reactor fuel, which by law ultimately must go into a permanent repository.
The Senate Appropriations Committee in September approved its nearly $49 billion version of the energy and water bill, with money funding for a pilot program for consolidated storage and for DOE to send such material to commercial facilities licensed by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The full Senate has yet to vote on the bill. In the absence of a final 2020 spending plan, the federal government is funded by a stopgap budget through Nov. 21.
Among the names being floated to replace Lowey as chair, assuming Democrats retain leadership in the House, is Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio), Politico reported. Kaptur chairs the House Appropriations energy and water subcommittee, which writes the first draft of spending bills for the Department of Energy and Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
In a statement posted to Twitter on Thursday, Kaptur said she would be “interested in placing my name for consideration” as chair of the Appropriations Committee “when the time is appropriate.”
U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), seeking her party’s nomination for president, on Wednesday proposed reinstating corporate taxes to pay for cleanup of Superfund sites contaminated by hazardous wastes.
The measure is among a list of proposals in the candidate’s new environmental justice plan.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency lists more than 1,300 Superfund properties on its National Priorities List for remediation, according to Warren.
“So-called ‘orphan’ toxic waste clean-ups were originally funded by a series of excise taxes on the petroleum and chemical industries,” the plan says. “But thanks to Big Oil and other industry lobbyists, when that tax authority expired in 1995 it was not renewed. Polluters must pay for the consequences of their actions – not leave them for the communities to clean up. I’ll work with Congress to reinstate and then triple the Superfund tax, generating needed revenue to clean up the mess.”
A number of properties overseen by the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management are on the EPA’s Superfund site list. These include: three areas at the Hanford Site, a former plutonium production complex in Washington state; the Oak Ridge Reservation in Tennessee; and the Idaho National Engineering Laboratory.
Also on the list, with direct oversight by the EPA, is the West Lake Landfill in Missouri. However, the cost of cleanup of the radioactively contaminated portions of the Superfund site are being borne by three “potentially responsible parties”: the Energy Department, Bridgeton Landfill LLC, and Cotter Corp.
The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission on Oct. 4 asked states and Indian tribes to weigh in with their thoughts on best practices and operations for organizations intended to provide local guidance for decommissioning of nearby nuclear power plants.
That input would be incorporated into an agency report on the topic that was mandated in the Nuclear Energy Innovation and Modernization Act from Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), which President Donald Trump signed into law in January. The report is due by next June. It will address matters including topics that could be considered by a community advisory board, how decommissioning stakeholders might use input from the local board, and how the board could be a means for public input throughout a site’s decommissioning.
The NRC since August has held a series of meetings in communities near nuclear plants that have closed or are due for retirement in coming years. The 11th and final meeting was held Thursday in Crystal River, Fla., home to the same-named facility that Duke Energy closed in 2009.
Public comments are being taken through Nov. 15, Paul Michalak, chief of the NRC’s State Agreement and Liaison Programs Division, wrote in a letter addressed to all agreement and nonagreement states, state liaison officers, and federally recognized Indian tribes. Comments can be submitted via the website regulations.gov, Docket ID NRC-2019-0073; or by mail, to the Office of Administration, Mail Stop: TWFN-7-A60M, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Washington, DC 20555-0001, ATTN: Program Management, Announcements and Editing Staff.
From The Wires
From Agence France-Presse: Tokyo Electric Power Co. struggles to manage a growing amount of radioactive water at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.
From ITV: The United Kingdom’s Environment Agency is taking public input on upcoming permit changes at the Sellafield nuclear site as it prepares to end nuclear fuel reprocessing.
From Engineering and Technology: A London company wants to put its robot technology to work in nuclear decommissioning.
From The Examiner: Locals raise concerns about nuclear waste storage at the Indian Point Energy Center in Buchanan, N.Y., which is scheduled for closure by 2021.
