Congress returns to Washington after Labor Day to the legislative morass that entangled the Energy Department’s fiscal 2017 budget before lawmakers stormed out of town in mid-July for their traditional summer recess, again raising the possibility of a stopgap spending bill that freezes the agency’s legacy waste-cleanup funding at the 2016 level of roughly $6.2 billion.
While that outcome would actually leave DOE’s Office of Environmental Management with 2 percent more funding than the White House requested for the next budget, it could also crimp the agency’s plans to ramp up cleanup activities at sites across the complex where the 2016 appropriation would not cover work planned for the rapidly approaching 2017 fiscal year.
Some people across the complex speculated privately that liquid waste operations at the Savannah River Site near Aiken, S.C., and at DOE’s Hanford Site near Richland, Wash., could be underfunded if current spending levels are carried over into budget year beginning Oct. 1.
DOE headquarters in Washington would not authorize anyone to speak on the record Thursday about the possibility of a continuing resolution for fiscal year 2017.
The Senate passed its proposed 2017 Energy and Water Appropriations Bill in April, but the House failed, in a May meltdown, to approve its version of the DOE-funding legislation on the floor. Between the fiery death of the lower chamber’s proposal and the start of summer recess, House leaders made overtures to the Senate about proceeding directly to a bicameral conference that could have produced a unified bill, based on the live Senate proposal, for President Barack Obama to sign.
The Senate declined the invitation to conference, setting the stage for lawmakers returning to Washington next week to either complete a frantic race to pass a new DOE budget bill by midnight Sept. 30, or write their way out of the jam with a continuing resolution that kicks the can at least a little ways down the road.
Funding needs that would be unmet in a straight continuing resolution are known as anomalies. A federal agency can alert Congress to these anomalies in hopes that lawmakers in charge of writing stopgap budget bills can perform whatever accounting puts and takes are necessary to divert funding from projects that can spare it to projects that need it.
While DOE would not say which, if any, Environmental Management cleanup jobs would need anomalies in the event of a continuing resolution, the White House’s 2017 budget request lends some credence to the idea that Savannah River and Hanford might not be able to get by on fiscal 2016 budget levels.
The Obama administration requested about $1.3 billion for Savannah River cleanup for 2017, or about 7 percent more than in 2016. For Hanford’s Office of River Protection, which is in charge of liquid cleanup at that site, the administration sought about $1.5 billion, some 5 percent above the fiscal 2016 enacted level.
The Office of River Protection needs a boost in part for “design and long-lead procurement activities for the Low Activity Waste Pretreatment System” that is critical to starting treatment of low-level liquid waste by 2022 at the Waste Treatment Plant now under construction at Hanford, according to the latest budget request.
Savannah River, meanwhile, needs an increase for “construction of the Salt Waste Processing Facility, completion of the Saltstone Disposal Unit #6, and the initiation of the Saltstone Disposal Unit #7.”
The February budget request was written before DOE announced Parsons Government Services had has finished building the Salt Waste Processing Facility at Savannah River and moved on to punchlist work in the testing and commissioning phase. The facility, which has seen its worker headcount fall to about 300 from about 900 at peak construction, was finished ahead of the latest DOE deadline, but will not be operational until December 2018, about three years after a regulatory deadline set by South Carolina.
The Salt Waste Processing Facility is crucial to preparing radioactive salt resolved from solidification of Savannah River’s 36 million gallons of liquid tank waste for on-site disposal. Until the big facility is ready, site contractor Savannah River Remediation — an AECOM affiliate — will continue to rely on the smaller Actinide Removal Process and Modular Caustic Side Solvent Extraction Unit for salt waste processing.
Savannah River Remediation’s eight-year, $4-billion liquid waste cleanup contract is set to expire on June 30, 2017. Bidding for a 10-year follow-on contract valued at between $4 billion and $6 billion, including options, wrapped up Wednesday.
Meanwhile, west across the DOE complex at the Hanford Site near Richland, Wash., Washington River Protection Solutions, the AECOM-led prime contractor for the facility’s tank farms, is designing the Low-Activity Waste Pretreatment Facility needed to funnel Hanford’s low-level liquid waste directly into the Waste Treatment Plant being built by Bechtel National.
Hanford’s tanks hold about 56 million gallons of primarily liquid chemical and radioactive waste. Low-activity waste takes up most of the volume, while the sludgier, high-level waste represents the most radioactive part of the batch. After technical and safety concerns put construction of much of the plant’s high-level waste treatment infrastructure on hold in 2012, DOE authorized a plan to treat low-level waste first.
To that end, the agency in June finalized a contract modification with Washington River Protection Solutions for advanced conceptual design of the Low Activity Waste Pretreatment System. This work, which began in 2015 under an undefinitized agreement, is set to stretch into 2018 and cost almost $35 million over those four years. That includes nearly $17 million of design work in 2017, which would be the first year of contract’s final two-year option. DOE has not yet picked up this option, which would extend the contract to Sept. 30, 2018.
Washington River Protection Solutions’ tank farm contract is potentially worth about $6 billion over 10 years, including options. In April, a federal judge in Washington state ruled the Waste Treatment Plant must begin treating all Hanford waste by 2036, regardless of when low-level waste treatment begins.
