WC Monitor
2/05/2016
Lawmaker Seeks Full FY17 Funding for Hanford Richland Operations Office
Rep. Dan Newhouse (R-Wash.) is urging President Barack Obama to request full funding for the Hanford Site’s Richland Operations Office when the administration’s fiscal 2017 appropriations request is released on Feb. 9. Last year the administration proposed a $93 million funding cut for the Richland Operations Office, “which would have resulted in cleanup delays, increased total project costs and missed legal milestones within the river corridor,” Newhouse said in a letter to the president this week. Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), with help from Newhouse, succeeded in getting the cut largely restored in the final appropriation, to $922.6 million. “Work associated with the River Corridor Closure project is very near completion and is truly among the brightest success stories of the entire EM (environmental management) complex,” Newhouse said in the letter. “There are no technical reasons why work must stop within the river corridor at cleanup sites like the 324 Building and the 618-10 Burial Ground.“
Legal and technical uncertainties could make formulating a workable budget for Hanford’s Office of River Protection challenging at the time the administration’s budget request is released, Newhouse said. But the budget request, at a minimum, should include stable funding for the Waste Treatment Plant, funding for the Low-Activity Waste Pretreatment System, adequate money to continue retrieving waste from single-shell tanks, and funds for implementation of measures to protect workers from tank vapors, he said. It also should make retrieving waste from double-shell Tank AY-102, which has waste leaking between its shells, a priority, Newhouse said. Inadequate funding for Hanford would lead to more work being postponed, which could result in higher costs to taxpayers, more lawsuits. and fines for missed deadlines, he said.
Earnings Dip at Jacobs
Conglomerate Jacobs Engineering, a government contractor on nuclear waste programs on both sides of the Atlantic, reported fiscal first-quarter earnings that, after excluding after-tax costs related to its ongoing corporate restructuring, came to $95 million, or 78 cents a share, on revenue of $2.8 billion.
The total was down somewhat from the year-ago period, in which Jacobs earned $100 million, or 77 cents a share, on revenue of $3.2 billion, for the quarter ending Dec. 26, 2014. Including the after-tax hits from the restructuring, first-quarter net income was $47 million, or 38 cents a share.
Jacobs is a junior partner in the Mission Support Alliance consortium now led by Lockheed Martin, but slated to become part of Leidos, of McLean, Va., under a $5 billion sale announced in late January. Mission Support Alliance provides a range of services at DOE’s Hanford legacy cleanup site, including emergency response and training, fleet and road upkeep, cybersecurity, and utility operations.
