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ES&T News
Some new funding at EPA amid a 4% drop
U.S. Fiscal Year 2007 Budget Proposals
- Overview
- Some new funding at EPA amid a 4% drop
- DOE targets clean-energy and nuclear technologies
- NSF sees a small increase
- USGS budget focuses on hazards and energy
- NOAA faces 6% decrease
President Bush has proposed $7.3 billion for the U.S. EPA’s overall budget for FY ’07, marking a 4% cut from its current funding. Bush asks Congress for $55 million more for the agency’s homeland-security efforts and shifts money to expand research in nanotechnology and computational toxicology. Still, the agency’s Office of Research and Development (ORD) would be cut slightly from what Congress approved last year. ORD programs have been reduced by 14% over the past 3 years.
When he unveiled the budget to reporters on February 6, EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson said that all federal agencies are “being called [upon] to exercise fiscal restraint.” Nonetheless, he added, the budget “maintains the goals laid out in EPA’s strategic plan, while spending less.”
Bush is asking Congress for $184 million for EPA’s homeland-security activities, compared with the $129 million that EPA is spending this year. These monies include $33 million to protect drinking water from “terrorist attack”, $10 million to develop environmental laboratory preparedness and response capabilities, and another $10 million for environmental decontamination efforts.
Overall, the agency’s science and technology account, which funds science programs operating in all its offices, would slightly increase to $788 million. Of that, ORD would receive $528 million. ORD has seen a 14% drop in funds in the past 3 years, staff say, and Bush’s total request for ORD is $557.2 million, compared with the $595 million in the present budget.
Yet, even within this slim budget, certain ORD programs would get a boost under Bush’s plan: Nanotechnology research would get $8.6 million, compared with the $4.6 million in the current budget; new water infrastructure research would be funded for the first time, at $7 million; and the computational toxicology research program would increase by $2.7 million, to $15 million. EPA says it will expand computational toxicology in four areas: information technology, categorization tools, systems biology models, and cumulative risk assessment.
After suggesting last year that Congress significantly cut the Science to Achieve Results grant program for academia, Bush has proposed $65 million; Congress provided $67 million for the current budget.
Funds for the Integrated Risk Information System, a database describing the toxicity of chemicals, would remain almost the same at $8.9 million. Bush proposes no funding for the Environmental Technology Verification program—this work has been steadily shifted to outside vendors. This transition will be completed in FY ’07, says Al Edwards in ORD’s budget office.
Overall funding for EPA’s clean air and climate change programs would increase by $8 million to total $932 million. Programs related to science and research would be cut by $10 million, to $119 million, and funds related to reducing greenhouse-gas intensity would drop slightly to $110 million, according to EPA’s budget summary.
Bush has proposed a $200 million, or 23%, reduction from the $886 million Congress approved in FY ’06 for the Clean Water State Revolving Fund (CWSRF), a loan program for localities seeking to prevent sewage overflows and to implement other storm-water-related improvements. Johnson says the CWSRF funding would provide “sufficient annual capitalization” to make $3.4 billion available each year, enough to pay for the local projects that request funding. Congress normally restores some of the presidential cuts to the SRF, although the federal share of CWSRF funding has been shrinking.
Steve Brown, executive director of the Environmental Council of the States, notes that mandatory state-run programs—including monitoring air and water, developing plans to protect water bodies, and even enforcement—would be cut by $416 million. This exceeds the $390 million Bush proposes to cut from the entire EPA budget, Brown adds.
