WC Monitor
1/23/2015
IN CONGRESS
Senate Republicans this week officially named Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) as chairman of the Senate Energy and Water Appropriations Subcommittee. Alexander had been expected to assume the top spot on the panel since Republicans took control of the Senate in November. He served as the ranking member of the subcommittee for the last four years alongside former chairman Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who will serve as the panel’s ranking member.
Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio) will remain the ranking member of the House Energy and Water Appropriations Subcommittee, but the panel will have two new Democratic faces, House Appropriations Committee ranking member Rep. Nita Lowey (D-N.Y.) said in a statement this week. Reps. Mike Honda (D-Calif.) and Lucille Roybal-Allard (D-Calif.) will join the subcommittee, replacing Reps. Ed Pastor (D-Ariz.) and Chaka Fattah (D-Pa.). Pastor did not run for reelection last year, while Fattah shifted his attention to other subcommittees. The fourth and final member of the subcommittee is Rep. Peter Visclosky (D-Ind.), the panel’s former top Democrat and the ranking member of the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee.
House Energy and Commerce Committee staffer Annie Caputo has joined the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, led by Chairman Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.), Caputo announced this week. “I will dearly miss the Members, the staff, and the work of House E&C, but I am honored and humbled that Sen. Inhofe has included me on his team in the new Senate majority once again handling nuclear issues,” Caputo said in a message to colleagues.
IN DOE
The Department of Energy this week awarded a $5 million, five-year cooperative agreement to Mississippi State University’s Institute for Clean Energy Technology to evaluate High-Efficiency Particulate Air Filters and related nuclear cleanup technologies. Work to be performed under the new agreement will be a continuation of research already underway into how HEPA filters perform under various conditions and obtain information for nuclear applications, according to a DOE statement. “This new cooperative agreement award will also fund research for new technology developments to support cleanup of contaminated sites as well as address emerging needs of the air treatment industry as a whole, for more robust HEPA filtration technologies,” according to DOE. “This research will provide data to support development of more reliable and robust filtration technologies, codes and standards that could ultimately reduce exposure to contaminants of the public, the workers, and the environment.”
