It only took the House Appropriations Committee’s Energy and Water subcommittee about 20 minutes Monday to bless an almost $7.8-billion fiscal 2022 budget proposal for the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management.
Following a voice vote, the panel chaired by Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio) sent the proposal on to the full House Appropriations Committee for its consideration.
The funding is more than the roughly $7.6-billion budget for the current fiscal year that ends Sept. 30, and the DOE Office of Environmental Management budget request from the administration of President Joe Biden in May.
Defense Environmental Cleanup, which accounts for the largest share of the DOE Environmental Management (EM) spending, would receive $6.6 billion or $166 million more than the fiscal 2021 level. While the Biden team asked for $6.8-billion for this line item, $415 million of the amount would be transferred to shore up a fund for remediating uranium enrichment plants in Tennessee, Kentucky and Ohio.
Non-Defense Cleanup would be up $334 million, up $14.7 million over the current level while the Uranium Enrichment Decontamination and Decommissioning Fund, would receive $831 million, down nearly $10 million from the current level according to a summary from the subcommittee.
The Non-Defense Cleanup and Uranium Enrichment Decontamination and Decommissioning Fund line items both equal the DOE budget request.
The material released Sunday prior to Monday’s markup, does not list site-by-site spending proposals for EM’s 16 cleanup sites. Such details are expected with the release of the committee report Thursday.
Seth Kirshenberg, executive director of the Energy Communities Alliance, which advocates for localities near DOE nuclear facilities, was generally pleased with the bill.
“There is a lot of good work going on at the sites and the House Energy and Water Appropriations subcommittee leadership recognizes the work,” Kirschenberg wrote in a Monday email to Weapons Complex Morning Briefing.
In addition, Kirshenberg told Morning Briefing, the bill would not allow the administration’s planned cuts to payments in lieu of taxes at the Hanford Site in Washington and the Savannah River Site in South Carolina. Kirschenberg cited “congressional representatives” as the source of the information.
“[W]e look forward to seeing the details,” Kirshenberg said.
In the past, the House Appropriations energy and water development subcommittee has released its detailed bill report for DOE’s annual budget proposal the day before the full Appropriations Committee marks up the budget bill. At deadline, the full committee had its markup scheduled for Friday.
