Questions remain about certain decisions in the Obama
administration’s proposed budget for Hanford next year, although it is
better than its proposal a year ago, Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., said
Tuesday.
She questioned Peter Orszag, director of the White
House’s Office of Management and Budget, about Hanford and the Veterans
Administration construction budget at a hearing of the Senate Budget
Committee.
On Hanford she got no immediate answer, but OMB agreed
to meet with her to discuss issues.
“We’re in a different place from last year when the (Department of
Energy environmental management) budget had a proposed cut, and I do
want to thank you for the proposed increase, which I view as an
acknowledgment that the federal government does have an obligation to
clean up these sites across our nation,” Murray said.
The Obama
administration’s proposed Hanford budget for fiscal 2011 would increase
spending for environmental cleanup by as much as
$39 million to about $2.1 billion.
The budget would increase
spending at the DOE Hanford Office of River Protection, which is dealing
with the critical issue of emptying leak-prone underground tanks of
radioactive waste and building the $12.2 billion vitrification plant to
treat the waste.
But it would decrease spending at the DOE Hanford
Richland Operations Office, which handles the rest of the work at
Hanford, including protecting ground water and cleaning up the 80 square
miles of ground water contaminated with hazardous chemicals or
radioactive waste at the nuclear reservation.
Among the proposed
cuts in the Richland Operations Office budget is a reduction from $205
million being spent this year on ground water protection and cleanup
work to $130 million in the proposed budget. That’s a concern, Murray
told Orszag.
The Richland Operations Office work, which includes
cleanup of central Hanford and along the Columbia River at Hanford,
should receive much of the nearly $2 billion going to Hanford from
spring 2009 through fall 2011 from federal economic stimulus money.
But
that money is not intended to offset money for core work at Hanford,
Murray said. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act money is being
used primarily to shrink the contaminated foot print of Hanford by doing
the sorts of work that Hanford has proved it can do well, such as
digging up contaminated waste sites and tearing down contaminated
buildings.
The Obama administration’s proposed budget for Hanford
next will be considered by Congress, which will set the appropriation on
which Hanford’s final annual budget will be based. Last year Murray
worked to get Hanford more money for its current budget than the
administration had proposed, and she’s credited with providing the
administration with persuasive information on the needs of Hanford and
other DOE cleanup sites before it released its proposal Monday for next
year’s budget.
Also at the hearing Tuesday, Murray questioned why
the construction budget for the Veterans Administration is proposed to
decline by 15 percent while the number of veterans is increasing.
Among
VA construction planned in Washington is a new outpatient clinic at the
Jonathan M. Wainwright Memorial VA Medical Center in Walla Walla
authorized by President Obama in November. The $71.4 million project
would serve veterans from Washington, Oregon and Idaho.
Although
the proposed 2011 construction budget is lower than this year’s budget,
it is still at a historic high level and will allow the Veterans
Administration to focus on its top construction priorities, Orszag said.
The total Veterans Administration budget would increase by 20 percent
from the current year under the proposed budget, he said.
Murray
said she is pleased to see policy changes in the budget that would
provide greater access for nondisabled veterans with modest incomes.
– Tri-City Herald
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